Word: tusker
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...year is 1972, and Colonel "Tusker" Smalley (Indian Army, ret.) is ensconced at an out-of-the-way Indian hill station called Pankot. Unlike most of the British, Tusker never pulled up stakes. He and his wife Lucy, "the last survivors of Pankot's permanent retired British residents," coexist amiably with most of the natives-but not so well with each other. Tusker's irascibility has been honed by questionable health and the approach of his 71st birthday. Lucy, whose chief diversion in recent years has been local showings of Hollywood movies, has begun to feel that life...
Both are, in fact, a little dotty, to the delight of their native servant Ibrahim. Constantly being fired by the colonel and rehired by the Memsahib, Ibrahim cherishes Tusker's curses and colorful tirades ("I'll have both their guts for garters!") and repeats them to himself for days afterward. An unabashed Anglophile, he even admires the way his employers age. "The English," he thinks, "once they began falling physically apart, did so with all their customary attention to detail, as if fitting themselves in advance for their own corpses to make sure they were going...
...what Tusker and Lucy are living through is a tiny version of the ex perience so central to The Raj Quartet...
Britishers are again being told to leave their place in India to the Indians. The rippling comedy in Staying On assumes an undertow that will pull Tusker down...
...hairdo. Then came salutes from the King's loyal subjects, starting with three-year-old Prince Deependra decked out in a miniature military uniform. For the afternoon parade-music was provided by regimental bands, including one of Nepalese bagpipers-the royal couple rode on the King's tusker elephant, Prem Prasad, while the other 22 elephants carried many of the distinguished guests through the city...