Fanny Parks at Kanpur Collector's Bungalow

Fanny Parks at Kanpur Collector's Bungalow

By Prof.Mazhar Naqvi 

The District Magistrate’s bungalow in Kanpur has a distinction that no other Collector House in India can match. It once served as the residence of Fanny Parkes whose book  “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque” is considered to be a classic work on Indian history, culture and customs. A brass tablet on the wall of bungalow silently reminds her connectivity with Kanpur. It was unveiled by the retiring Collector of Cawnpore Mr. Frank Mudie on April 22, 1836. The Pioneer in its edition dated May 17, 1836 had reported the ceremony under the caption “FANNY PARKES OF CAWNPORE-“A PILGRIM IN SEARCH OF THE PICTURESQUE”  - and reported “On April 22, Mr. Frank Mudie the retiring Collector of Cawnpore, unveiled at the “Collector’s House”, a brass tablet commemorating the residence there of Fanny Parkes, whose husband, during the period April 1830 – Feb. 1831, was acting Collector of Customs at Cawnpore……“ After a lapse of over 100 years, it was only last year that the fact that she lived in the “Collector’s House” was brought to light by a Cawnpore resident, A. Grezo”.

 Fanny did not belong to the category of those Britons to whom India was simply a place to amass wealth and live in luxury in spacious bungalows. Rather, she was among those few to whom India was indeed a cozy home away from home. Douglas Dewar talks about the lady in his charming book “Bygone days in India”. “Mrs. Fanny Parkes came out to India in 1822 as the wife of an Indian Civilian…. She resided in the Country for more than 20 years, spending the greater part of that period at Allahabad and Cawnpore. During the whole of her stay in India she kept a journal. Upon this is based her “Wanderings of a Pilgrim in search of the Picturesque…. consisting of two bulky volumes and published in 1850.

Born in 1794 and married to Charles Parks, a writer (clerk) with the East India Company, (EIC) in March 1822, Fanny and her husband lived in India until 1845. She wrote her diary as a record for her mother in England and included her observations about India and its people. In Cawnpore, Deepawali festivities at Sarsaiyaghat  thrilled her so much that she recorded in her journal “"I was greatly pleased: so Eastern, so fairy-like a scene, I had not witnessed, since my arrival in India; nor could I have imagined that the dreary-looking station of Cawnpore contained so much of beauty….On every temple, on every ghat, and on the steps down to the river side, thousands of small lamps were placed from the foundation to the highest pinnacle, tracing the architecture in the lines of light. The evening was very dark, and the whole scene was reflected in the Ganges   ".She also noted some women sending off little paper boats, each containing a lamp, which floating down the river, added to the beauty of the scene.

She had also witnessed with amazement the sight of Oudh’s deposed Prime Minister  Agha Meer, making his way  to Cawnpore across the bridge of boats below the collector’s bungalow. She mentions “His train consisted of 56 elephants, covered with crimson clothing deeply embroidered with gold, and forty ‘garees’( carts) filled with gold Mohurs and rupees. His ‘Zenana’ came over some days ago, consisting of nearly 400 palanquins; how much I should like to pay the visit”. Agha Meer kept two elephants ready caparisoned at his residence and the first time he entered cantonments scattered gold Mohurs .He died in 1837 and lies buried in Gwaltoli Maqbara.

Fanny found India fascinating and delightful immediately on her arrival at Calcutta. She wrote “how I was charmed by the climate; the weather was delicious; and I thought India a most delightful country ... could I have gathered around me the dear ones I had left in England, my happiness would have been complete." She ran away from the stiff officialdom of the Raj and immersed herself in the country. Fanny explored the length and breadth of the country.

 In the 24 years she lived in India, the country never ceased to surprise, intrigue and delight her. Her love for India is imprinted on every page of her book. William Dalrymple, world’s best known travel writer and winner of Wolfson prize for History in 2003 remarks “ It was Parkes's curiosity and enthusiasm that distinguished her approach to India, and her journal traces her journey from prim memsahib, married to a minor civil servant of the Raj, to eccentric sitar-playing Indophile, critical of British rule and passionate in her appreciation of Indian culture.”

The longer she stayed in India, the more Parkes felt possessed by an overpowering urge to pack her bags and set off to explore: "How much there is to delight the eye in this bright, this beautiful world! Roaming about with a good tent and a good Arab [horse], one might be happy for ever in India." She became slowly Indianized. The professional memsahib who came to India to watch over her colonial administrator husband, gradually transformed into a fluent Urdu speaker, spending more of her time on traveling around to visit her Indian friends. Aesthetically she grew slowly to prefer Indian dress to that of the English.

Fanny who found Indian men "remarkably handsome", Indian evenings cool and refreshing ... The foliage of the trees, luxuriously beautiful and novel, like majority of Brtishers also longed for her return to England. She really was keen on seeing her family. Yet  when she finally set foot on English soil again, her return was a moment not for rejoicing, but for depression and disappointment: "We arrived at 6 am. May flowers and sunshine were in my thoughts. But instead [...] it was bitterly cold walking up from the boat - rain, wind and sleet, mingled together, beat on my face. Everything on landing was so wretchedly mean, especially the houses, which are built of slate stone; it was cold and gloomy . . . I felt a little disgusted." Dalrymple describes her as “ an important writer because she acts as a witness to a forgotten moment of British-Indian hybridity, and shows that colonial travel writing need not be an aggressive act of orientalist appropriation - not "gathering colonial knowledge", Unfortunately, she remains unknown to most of the Kanpuryityes today,. Can’t we do something to immortalize her beyond the brass tablet? (The Contributor is a Heritage Management Expert with deep interest in Kanpur’s Heritage)