Here I am at the edge

 India 1946 At the end of World War 2 , the British withdrew from India . With the growing rise of Indian Independence  the threat of rioting was a great risk. The Britiish government made the decision to maintain a presence in the country, the official reason was a lack of ships to transport the troops; but the reality was in the north mainly the Punjab area, now Pakistan  there were several staged riots. There was a fear they would spread across the north to Delhi and beyond. The cities of Lahore and Hyderabad were the centres of activity as they are on what is now the India-Pakistan border. Until recently, there was still fighting in the area, known as The Kargil Wars .

  When a lady says "No" she means no Last month on LinkedIn I got a lot of hassle from gentlemen in India  about how the British Empire treated Indians during the days of the Raj - a post for later - perhaps. The discussion started as I pointed out that when people watch the tv series "Toughest Prisons on Earth " they never mention the Andaman Islands off the Indian coast. Conditions were so bad the inmates had to turn to cannibalism. Another tough prison which is forgotten is the one off the coast of Goa . This is where Portugal turned a concrete water container into a jail. What Indians forget is that to this day the caste system is still as hard, if not tougher, than in the days of the Raj . A case in point is the movie Pink , the base of the story is that a lady has the right to say NO, and mean it; even if the man asking is the son of a VIP.

The  Andeman Islands   I put this post on LinkedIn a few hours ago, and it has already had over 6,000 readers. When people  view the series on TV called The World's worst prisons they forget the  British Empire  opened the worst off the coast of  India . The Andeman Islands is where we sent hundreds of people who supported  independence  for India. Conditions were so bad the water was black and what food they had what  was riddled with weevils. A film i have come across from  Bollywood  called Kaalapani depicts the  riots  which occurred in 1915.

                A short story from the final days of the RAJ I take this to be a true story as it was told to me by my mother, and she had little imagination for story telling. This short story began towards the end of World War 2 , in England. A young girl who was working for the Land Army pleaded with her parents not to send her back to the farm; the girls she worked with were not her type as they smoked and swore.  Her parents had no option, she had to return to work, She was seen walking down the road to the rail station, but the next day her boss phoned to ask if she'd left. As her parents had seen her go they walked her route to the station, and found her hanging on a lampost. When the news was sent to her boyfriend he broke down and had to take some leave. A few years after the war ended, he got a job teaching Indians about making steel; on a trip to India  to spread his reaching he was thown into a furnace. A little known piece o...

Jewel in the Crown   Severa years ago , I had an  online interview with my Indian friend Malika Gandhi , in  the months after the interview we discussed Indian history as her book  "Freedom of the Monsoon" is  about I ndian Independence . During the talks I mentioned that my late father was out there for the RAF mutiny    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Air_Force_mutiny , this is a little known mutiny, because the government didn't want it known that the RAF had mutinied. This post came to mind as I am writing short stories about India.