For a wondering world: General Palit was born in 1919. He was a Bengali. His father and grandfather were medical doctors - they went to British schools and England and adopted English ways especially when it came to gun sports. He opted to go into the Army and went to the Indian (Imperial) Army academy in Dera Dun about 1937. This was difficult for a Bengali at the time because the Brits had classified the various "races" in India according to war fighting proclivities. Pashtuns, Sikhs, Maharattas, Rajputs were warlike...Bengalis were relegated to medical and food. He had the temper of a bantam rooster though and through intellect and force of will (and guile - yes he was wily) climbed the ranks in the Indian Army, first under the Brits then after 15 Aug 1947 in the Indian Army. He was a Major General when the Indian army only had 4 major generals and the Chief of Staff was 3 star. His discussion of the Sino-Indian war (1962) was fascinating...(and as every Indian account of that debacle, possibly self-serving).
https://books.google.com/books/about/War_in_High_Himalaya.html?id=ukw1PuEt8IcCas well as the Pak wars of 1948 and 1967.
He was our landlord in India. He had built a large house in Shanti Nikitin neighborhood of New Delhi, not too far from the American Embassy and rented to the Embassy - and lived on the same compound in a small town house attached to the main house.
He was not a big man - 5'9", wiry. He very fit and was still playing polo when I left - he was 72 at that time. He was divorced; his son wasn't much interested in his life. When I knew him he was extremely disciplined. He would rise at 0500, do an hour or two of yoga, he would write from 0900-1000. He came over every afternoon about 1800 for one whiskey. He also had tea with my wife regularly and adored our youngest son to whom he gave a polo pony (when the boy was 3 years old).
As he got older he became ever more the Indian nationalist and his writing took an anti-colonial Indian socialist turn. Nevertheless his military writings were deemed important and one of his books was used regularly in the US Command and General Staff College in Birmingham.
https://books.google.com/books?id=E...ahUKEwjJsJyqnqXTAhUJMyYKHYGMBWEQ6AEIIzAAIn fact because I had his ear, as Desert Storm approached I was asked by the Ambassador to discuss the upcoming offensive with him and a number of retired Indian generals, to try to get the Indian government to persuade Saddam to get out of Kuwait. The effort failed of course and India, stupidly, following its socialist/anti-Western colonialist mantra threw in with Saddam at the last minute - one of 7 countries to do so, Cuba, North Korea, Peoples Democratic Republic of Yemen, Soviet Union, etc. Nice company.
He had on his wall 5 SxS's. a 12 ga. Holland & Holland; a 12 ga. Army-Navy; a 12 ga. EM Reilly hammer gun; the 20 ga. William Evans and one I'm not sure of (I think it might have been a big-bore SxS rifle). These were handed down to him by his grandfather and father. He also gave us a 500 page typewritten manuscript written by various members of his family over 70 years, much of it about hunting in India...tigers, snipe...you name it. It is an incredible British Raj type journal and an amazing insight into the mores of the early 20th century. He usually used his H&H when we hunted; I never actually saw him shoot the Wm Evans though. However, the story of the gun might be in the manuscript - I have to go through it. (or it may be it was something he acquired and didn't have a direct connection to his family?)
He gave the William Evans to her for several reasons; 1) she was beautiful; 2) she was genuinely interested in India and often accompanied him down town for shopping (she in her hat and long dresses - him in his three piece suits with people in the crowds muttering in English, "Old school"); 3) she took care of him...took up riding for instance; 4) I made a contribution to a historical scholarship fund he had set up for young Indian historians (and Indian "historians" at the time were Marxist or Nationalist and thus their intellectual contribution was suspect); 5) his son wasn't much interested in the guns. And he felt the memory of them or one of them would be better preserved with us. He visited my family in America and came to Greece later where we went up to Thermopylae and to Meteora.
I'll repost a picture of us after one of our hunting trips. And will later post a picture of her and of my son on his polo pony. An utterly fascinating man and I was fortunate to see India at the tail end of the Raj - the "permit raj" - When India was still little changed from the British days.