BERT PAYNE

a man for all seasons

by Harry MacLure

When talking about a person as multifarious as Witbert Payne, it’s almost impossible to brand his personality within the parameters of any distinct definition. He’s a successful businessman, renowned accountant, sought-after fashion consultant, model and a knowledge-able trader of stock options.

Bert is a man for all seasons and he has been often termed as the chap with the proverbial Midas touch.

He has indeed had long and successful innings with his account-ing firm, Starcare International in Walnut Creek, California, USA. His elegant salt and pepper hair bespeaks his years of experience, years that he wears lightly, without any airs or attitude.

But Bert remembers that everything in his earlier days was not all that rosy. As an Anglo-Indian who was born and brought up in Calcutta, educated in India and Great Britain and established himself in the United States, he is used to challenges.

Oak Grove was Bert’s boarding school in the Himalayas – “nine months schooling, three months vacation from the age of five to sixteen” – then off he went to England in 1962 after finishing his Senior Cambridge.

After obtaining his General Certificate of Education from the University of Cambridge he qualified as a Chartered Accountant and worked for Price Waterhouse & Co, in London. After having lived in the UK for a while, he then felt the urge to move on to greener pastures – he immigrated to the United States in 1971 where he qualified as a Certified Public Accountant.

Bert met Rosemary who was then working as a nurse in Chicago and fell deeply in love with the beautiful young American woman of Slovak ancestry.

Bert and Rosemary started Starcare International in 1981. The firm, specialising in financial consulting services to hospitals, was instrumental in bringing out the best in both of them and their different backgrounds.

“We had no office to operate from in those days,” says Bert. “The computer was in the living-room and the typewriter sat on the dining table. Rosemary did the secretarial work and managed our first baby, while I laboured at the computer. When our second child came Rosemary resigned from her job.”

From humble beginnings to an entire office block, a whole team of employees, a thriving business and four children, the Paynes rose to be hospital financial consulting experts for the State of California.

Bert believes that no one’s indispensable. “Somebody leaves who was very good, you say, ‘Ah, that’s bad for the company.’ But you’ll find someone better!”

Bert is also popularly referred to as ‘the accountant with fashion sense’. In fact, he moonlights as an executive wardrobe consultant after he set up Star Image International Inc. Seeking to bring more formality to the business world, Bert has produced a video, “Fashion Suits The Man.” This video, created with the expertise of Pleasanton-based International Corporate Video Inc., helps men learn how to dress more appropriately and tastefully.

Bert says he plans to market the video – which will eventually be available in Spanish and Japanese as well – to men’s apparel stores, image consultants and various media outlets as well as human resource managers at major corporations, who may want it for their up-and-coming executives.

A fan of ‘Classic’ men’s styles, Bert uses his video to pass along advice on finding the right fit, judging quality and accessorising with style. Fashion-impaired men could get clued in on even basics such as shirt and tie combinations.

“I believe in dressing well for success,” Bert says. He wants to convince other businessmen to follow suit. Even though he knows he has an uphill fight on his hands, educating men in the art of fine dressing has become a passion for him.

“While there are lots of clothing advice available for professional women, men have far fewer resources to call upon,” Bert says. “Most men in North America spend too little time and money shopping for suits that fit well and are appropriate for various social and professional occasions. The biggest mistake they make is buying a suit in the first store they visit. They should try on suits in five different stores before making a decision.”

Can bad dressing affect business-men? Bert says inattention to appearance has dire consequences even in his adopted homeland, the birthplace of ‘Casual Fridays.’

“Tell me, who would you rather do business with? A well-dressed man or some guy wearing a T-shirt and jeans?” asks Bert.

Bert’s reputation as a fashion consultant has even had a positive impact at The White House. President George W. Bush has written a personal letter to Bert thanking him for his input in creating an awareness for fashionable dressing among American men.

In his book From Yukon to Yucatan, Allan Sealy the famous Anglo-Indian writer has this to say about Bert: ‘...I was going to meet a man I’d corresponded with for some years. He had a collection of Anglo-Indian literature I wanted to see. Like me, Bert Payne was an Anglo-Indian. Like me, he went to a boarding school in North India. Unlike me, he is a millionaire.’

It is indeed very rare today to see a rich Anglo-Indian acknowledging his roots. Bert is an exception. He supports organisations that help underprivileged Anglo-Indians in India and waxes eloquently about his Anglo-Indianess. He has attended every major inter-national Anglo-Indian reunion, including the 5th big one held in Auckland, New Zealand 2001 and the Himalayan Hill School Reunion in London, UK, in March 2002. He’s looking forward to the next worldwide reunion in Melbourne in 2004.

In fact, the Community fascinates him so much that he has found the time, over a period of many years, to build up a vast collection of Anglo-Indiana — a personal library that has a collection of books, documents, articles, periodicals and publications concerning Anglo-Indians. These are by different authors both old and recent.

Bert has also painstakingly compiled a bibliography too. He maintains that learning about the background and essential details that constitute the history and ethos of the Anglo-Indian community is necessary for a better understanding and appreciation. These rare publications are an invaluable source of information for a student, casual reader and even for an Anglo-Indian. For further details about Bert’s collection one could check the website at www.anglo-indians.com.

Bert and Rosemary live in Walnut Creek, a posh suburb of San Francisco, with their children Julie, Natalie, Philip and Patricia.

Twenty-one year old Julie has graduated from St. Mary’s College, nineteen-year old Nat attends special school for the handicapped, seventeen year old Phil is a computer jock and has his own website (www.westcoastbmx.com) and thirteen year old Pat was nominated ‘Student of the Month’ at school early this year.

Having sold the assets of Starcare International in 2000 to a leading competitor, Bert is now consumed with trading stock options for his own account. He is still the President of Starcare and Star Image.

Bert’s father, who died in Canberra, was a PWI on the East Indian Railway in Asansol, India. His brother Christopher lives in Perth; he is Australia’s leading telecommunications expert and was awarded a Public Service Medal by the Queen for meritorious service to the Australian Government. Bert’s sister Jacqueline (Neilson) lives in Melbourne. Bert has some cousins in Calcutta but all his Aunts and Uncles live in Australia, England and the U.S.A.

Surprisingly, Bert is still not a US citizen. “I’m classified by my family as an alien!” he smiles. Maybe it’s his strong ties with India and Britain that subconsciously prevents him from becoming a legal Yank...

End

Copyright © Harry MacLure 2004

Emigration

THE GREAT ANGLO-INDIAN ROPE TRICK

by Harry MacLure

The last time Ronnie Dickson rode a tramcar in Calcutta was 43 years ago. Recently back in town after all these years, Dickson, a U.K. citizen, took a ride again. “It seems to me like nothing has changed,” he says excitedly , “I was aboard one of the same rattling boxcars that had carried me across the city as a teenager.”

Ronnie Dickson was sixteen years old when his family migrated to the U.K. Like the Dicksons, other Anglo-Indian families too migrated by the thousands after India got its Independence.

The situation for most Anglo-Indians just before and after Independence, must have been tense and conflicting. The Community was torn by uncertainty fanned by all sorts of rumours.

“... 14th August 1947. We turned up the radio near the hotel bar before midnight and listened as the Viceroy, Lord Louis Mountbatten, and the first Prime Minister of the new Dominion of India, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, announced jointly that, at the stroke of twelve, the old Indian Dominion had ceased to exist and two independent dominions had come into being. In the background we heard much cheering and shouting and martial music, and next morning an air of euphoria prevailed in the streets, among the coolies and the beggars, among the clerks and the shopkeepers, among the tonga drivers and the hotel staff. The elation, almost giddiness, was felt everywhere, especially round the bar of our hotel, among the British officers on the verge of leaving for England, and the Moslems waiting to catch a train to their new country, Pakistan,” says Captain Stan Blackford in his book, One Hell of a Life.

The subcontinent was divided: the Hindu got his India and the Moslem got his Pakistan. The Anglo-Indian had to look elsewhere – at Australia, England, New Zealand and Canada... some even contemplated going to the Andaman and Nicobar islands.

It was a time when British families were leaving in droves. And some outspoken attacks by Indians were made against Anglo-Indians in the press, “No, we do not want the Anglo-Indians. We never did and we never shall... Give them the boot,” said one pamphlet, distributed in Bombay.

And during these trying times, and to add to everyone’s indecision, the All-India Anglo-Indian Association sent out repeated missives to the Community warning members not to take the misguided step to migrate to the colonies and more particularly to Australia.

In a column entitled “Matters of Interest”, The Review (April 1948) stated: “We have received authentic information from fair Anglo-Indians who are returning in increasing numbers, to India, after learning that Australia is a foreign country, that they are looked upon with suspicion and even with hostility and that the people with whom they are called upon to associate are abjectly inferior in culture and education.

Only recently a letter was shown to the President-in-Chief of the Association from a Domiciled European woman stating that she would give her soul to be able to return to India. She wrote pitiably of the terrible drudgery of life in Australia, the culture of people round them being lower than that of the commonest Indian servant and complained bitterly of how they had been misled by some who had left this Country and who instead of conveying the truth to friends and relatives in India, kept up a facade of false propaganda in order to cover the realisation of their mistake.

We give below an article which appeared in a New Zealand newspaper:

‘The Press’ Thursday, 19th January 1948.
Christchurch - N.Z.
PASSENGERS PUT ASHORE
Coloured Immigrants to Australia.

Sydney, January, 28th

Charges that persons whose families showed any trace of colour had been refused permission to travel by the liner Asturias from India to Australia, were made by passengers. The sailing of the Asturias from India was delayed for ten days while Australian officials checked the passenger list.

A number of persons of mixed British and Indian descent were aboard the ship when she arrived in Sydney, but all those interviewed were passengers travelling on to New Zealand.

Although the ship has accommodation for 1,700 passengers, she arrived in Australia with 843 passengers.

We asked for an explanation. Officers said, ‘Ask Canberra’.

Half-castes are not allowed into Australia, and quarter castes are admitted only when they are of three quarter European origin, it was officially stated in Canberra today.”

But yet, intrepid Anglo-Indian families did leave India in hope of making it to greener pastures. And make it they did, judging by all those success stories we hear or read about in the media. Anglo-Indians have always left their stamp of excellence on everything they did.

One could say that the Anglo-Indian community was born because of migration. Europeans who landed on the shores of India, were in a way migrants. Most of them never ever returned to the countries of their origin. Some married Indian women, lived and died in India. The names on the still-existing tombstones in the old cemeteries scattered all over India bear proof of this.

These unions between migrants and natives gave rise to the Anglo-Indian people. And ironically enough, it is migration that is taking away most of the members out of India to live in England, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and other countries.

The British may have packed their bags and pulled down the Union Jack in 1947, but the offspring of a 400-year-old relationship was left behind.

Today, scattered among India’s one billion people, are about one hundred thousand Anglo-Indians, most of them living middle and lower middle-class lives, and some living below the poverty line. At one point in time, there were more than six hundred thousand Anglo-Indians living in India. As someone from the Community once said, “We are not an accident of history, but a delibrate creation of the East India Company.” Subservient themselves, the Anglo-Indians made a buffer class between the ruling British and the subservient Indians. The British used the Community to help build the defence forces, railways, post and telegraphs and the roadways.

For the first hundred years or so, the British allowed the Eurasians – as the mixed blooded race was then known – to stay by their side. But after a series of rude betrayals by the British, the Community started to realize their predicament.

Sir Henry Gidney, who was a Member of the Constituent Assembly in the 1920s, declared during a discussion on the military budget: “Let me inform the Government of India that we have like faithful dogs followed the bone that has been offered to us as a bait as members of the Auxiliary Force. . . The bone today is meatless yet we follow you like faithful dogs. And what have you done for us? ”

Many felt let down. Rudderless. Those who really felt betrayed, left India.

But for some, India could never be hostile. They loved the country too much to be intimidated by a bad passing phase. Yes, they felt it was only a passing phase, and they would be alright as time went by.

There was a fresh exodus after Nehru’s death in 1964. Informed estimates place four hundred and fifty thousand Anglo-Indians in Australia, Britain, Canada and other countries. In India, the heartland of Anglo-India continues to be in Madras with 35,000, in Calcutta with 25,000, in Bangalore with 20,000 and 20,000 in Kerala and other pockets.

One Anglo-Indian in Bangalore maintains that the members of the Community now do not need to migrate. “In those days, probably it was a necessity. Now it’s a choice,” he says. “No one who is doing well here in India, should contemplate on emigrating. Why should we all leave for a harder life in a strange land, when we’ve found our feet here?”

“The ironic thing with our boys is that many of them who would never do well here, who were always playing truant or were school drop-outs, do well abroad,” says a well-established Anglo-Indian resident of Calcutta in an interview in The Statesman. “In the old days, of course, there were reserved jobs for Anglo-Indians in the essential services such as the Railways, Customs, Posts and Telegraphs. After Independence all this went and the increasing competition made the going difficult for lots of our young chaps who emigrated, the first lot to England, then in the ’50s to Canada and in the ’60s to Australia. And surprisingly many of them who were total duffers here academically, have managed to get professionally qualified over there.”

The exodus abroad characterised the post-Indepence period for Anglo-Indians. The migrations started in the ’50s, grew to unbelievable proportions in the ’70s, and started tapering off in the ’80s but now, migration especially for the young and qualified wihtin the Community, is a choice – a good number of them are college educated and invariably have a blood relative living abroad. The choice is open to them. Countries like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have opened their doors wider since of late, but modern India too has thrown up good opportunities to hard-working, smart youth. Yet, we see many making their way overseas to settle down – “probably migration is in our genes,” says an old Anglo-Indian gentleman, who claims that he had tried migrating many times in the past to Australia and New Zealand, but failed because he didn’t make the ‘points’. “If given a chance to leave today, I will take it!” And the man is 78!

Like Calcutta-born Ronnie Dickson, many Anglo-Indians visit India, curious to see first-hand the changes that have taken place. Some make the trip once in a blue moon to visit relatives and friends. Some religiously do it every year, Christmas-time. And some come and decide to stay on...

One could see this new development slowly gaining momentum. Many Anglo-Indians, especially the older, retired ones, are coming back ‘home’ to India, buying property and settling down. They do it for various reasons: maybe it’s because their dollar or pound goes a long way in India, maybe it’s the warm weather they always dreamed of during those cold, dreary winter spells, or probably they just missed the warmth of the people in India.

“My wife and I know we did the right thing,” says Bertie Rozario, who settled down in Bangalore, after living in the UK for nearly 35 years. “Barbara and I were originally from the South, so Bangalore was an obvious choice – the climate’s good throughout the year, the city is quite modern, all kinds of food and fresh meat and vegetables are available, and we have excellent doctors now in India! But with my arthritis not acting up, who needs a doc?”

The Anglo-Indian people are hard-working, family-oriented and church-going (the only 100 per cent Christian community in the world!); looking after old people has top priority on the filial list. It is economics that is driving Anglo-Indians, like other Indians, to seek life and love abroad.

But for many Anglo-Indians who have opted to make a foreign land their home, India will still be an emotional lure. Colleen Campbell, the Anglo-Indian poet who was born in Calcutta, in her poem My Beloved India, says:

So no matter where I wander
And nor how far I roam;
For something deep inside me
India always will be home.

End

Copyright © Harry MacLure 2004

NOEL "BULLY" NETTO

A TIME TO TANGO

by Harry MacLure

There was a time, within the grasp of memory, when you got just two kinds of people at Anglo-Indian dances: avid party-goers out to have a good time and serious dancers like Bully who considered it a sacrilege to sway out of tune on the wooden dance floor. That was many decades ago, in the innocent days before disco ‘writhing’ took over the scene.

Noel Netto – “Bully” as he is known by everyone – is one of the last great Anglo-Indian dancers left in India. Even though his railway “running” days took up most of his time, Bully had always made it a point to shelve his free periods for his all-time passion: dancing.

Now retired and settled in Madras, Bully can easily be called the grand old man of romantic dancing with whom even the present Anglo-Indian generation could relate to allusively, if not directly. The last lamp of stylish dancing still flickers in Bully.

It was in the final stages of World War II in 1945, when Bully had completed his schooling, passing out from St. Mary’s European High School, George Town. After a brief period of indulging in teenage activity, Bully discovered his penchant for dancing. Even his favourite sport Hockey, took a back seat – he just knew that he had a flexible body that craved to dance. He attended all the evening socials, even though his parents were not too happy with the late hours he kept.

In 1946, Bully joined the M & SM Railways at Madras, as an apprentice fireman. The Perambur European and Anglo-Indian Railway Institute became young Bully’s favourite haunting grounds. At that point in time, he could not dance the way he wanted to, but he loved feasting his eyes on older seasoned British and Anglo-Indian dancers.

To see these couples gliding to a Waltz or stepping out to a Fox Trot, held him in awe. Ballroom dancing was very much in vogue then.

Soon the ‘Dance Bug’ in him became more intense. “I tried very hard, but always ended up stamping my partners’ feet!” laughs Bully, recalling his younger days. “I saw ‘The Sheik’ many, many times – Rudolph Valentino starred in it and the film gave rise to the legend of the Great Dream Lover. I wanted to dance like Valentino... I set my standards very high...”

He then turned to his aunt, an Irish Domicile, to teach him the fine nuances of ballroom dancing. “Even though she thought that I had two left feet,” says Bully, “she was good enough to give me a chance. She put me through a few lessons and soon began admiring my aptitude for grasping every move that was taught to me.”

Bully picked up quickly. Being a natural, his body moved with a rare grace that attracted everyone on the floor. He started to get noticed and word was going around within the Anglo-Indian community in Madras that Bully’s extraordinary style of dancing was out of this world.

Time went by. In 1949, Bully chanced to meet a lovely young girl, Yvonne Clare Jones, who was drawn to him and his dancing. They became close to each other and were soon engaged.

Bully and Yvonne were married on the 4th of July 1954. They are blessed with 14 children - 9 daughters and 5 sons. Incidentally all his daughters had the privilege of dancing the Tango with “Daddy” – the dance that won him many accolades.

During his tenure as a Superfast Special ‘A’ Grade Driver on the M & SM Railways, Bully was transferred to a junction called Jolarpet, which is 90 miles from Bangalore. In those days, Bangalore contonment was teeming with Anglo-Indians. Dances were held on a weekly basis, with many Anglo-Indian bands playing great music; Bully used to run up to Bangalore and dance all night long... he won many fans over there.

As the years went by, Bully ventured into the world of dance competitions. His performances were show-stoppers. And invariably, he and his partners walked away with all the prizes. His masterful dancing skills atracted many women within the Community. They vied with each other to see him dance and also to dance with him. He began getting invitations to perform Tango exhibitions in various Anglo-Indian pockets of India.

Bully has elevated regular ballroom dancing to an art form worth watching and studying. Now pushing 75, he is still in good form, even though he underwent a knee operation a few months back. At a friend’s wedding anniversary get-together recently in Madras, he was called upon to do the Tango. Bully surprised himself and his niece, who he picked as his partner, by giving a commendable performance. The guests surrounded the dancing couple, awed at Bully’s prowess and stamina.

“Dancing is in my blood, I guess,” says Bully, smiling broadly. “I was a bit rusty though, especially after my knee operation; but I think I surprised everyone in the hall. The band played ‘La Paloma’ and I was back in the sixties and seventies!”

Bully was a railway man who worked very hard for his family; he has been a good father to all his many children. His contribution to the Anglo-Indian dance circuit is much more than has been recognised. He has that rare distinction of having shaped his dancing style on his own terms. That, perhaps, is why attempts by some to copy him has failed.

End

Copyright © Harry MacLure 2004