British Punch: A Surti Concoction

BRITISH PUNCH: A SURTI CONCOCTION

You know from Eastern India came
The skill of making punch as did the name.
And as the name consists of letters five,
By five ingredients it is kept alive

It is a curious fact, not generally known, that Britain’s favourite alcoholic beverage – Punch, was stirred up in the English factory at Surat. The word itself is derived from the Hindustani word Palepunsche or Panch; meaning ‘five’ which were the number of ingredients that added up to prepare the spirit.

In an account of the English factors at Surat,in his book on ‘Early Records of the British Settlements in India’,J.Talsboy .Wheeler narrates how on Fridays ,after prayers, the President and a few friends met for the purpose of drinking to the health of their wives ,whom they had left in England.” Some made to their advantage of this meeting to get more than they could well carry away, though every man was at liberty to drink what he pleased, and to mix the arrack as he thought fit or to drink Palepuntz which is a drink consisting of aqua vitae,rose-water,juice of citrons, sugar and cinnamon.”

This recipe I give to thee,
Dear brother in the heat.
Take two of sour (lime let it be)
To one and a half of sweet,
Of old arrack pour three strong,
And add four parts of weak.
Then mix and drink. I do no wrong —
I know whereof I speak.

That the Brits found the heat and dust in India unbearable is no state secret. Besides, the locally available arrack was as traveler Bernier put it,” a drink very hot and penetrate, like the brandy made of corn in Poland.” Little wonder then, that diluting the arrack in the punch provided the high without heat to the English.” It (punch) acts as a drug, for, it cleanse the stomach, and dissipates the superfluous humours by a temperate heat particular to it.” wrote the traveler who highly approved of the decoction.

And if I get drunk, well, me money's me own
And them don't like me they can leave me alone
I'll chune me fiddle and I'll rosin me bow
And I'll be welcome wherever I go.


Another factor that made punch extremely popular was that it was affordable. As Philip Anderson states in,’The English in Western India’,”The soul of a feast which is good wine was to be found nowhere but in the Dutch and English factories. Usually imported from Shiraz or the Canaries it was available at six crowns a bottle.” On festive days, two common tables were laid out, one where the Governor and higher servants dined while the other was appointed to the English factors and writers, differing only in this, ’one had a great deal of punch and little wine and the other what wine you please, and a little punch” The finest arrack flowed in from Goa and Bengal and was best savored by diluting its strength in punch. During winter months, local toddy replaced arrack. Often, factors like Fryer carried brandy in a flask and diluted it with sherbets when invited to teetotaler dinners by the Surti moors.
What more diversion can a man desire?

Than to sit him down by an alehouse fire
Upon his knee a pretty wench
And upon the table a jug of punch


Tapi town was once tipple town and its taverns were popularly visited by English sailors. Anderson further writes,” Cases of poisoning were said to be frequent in these taverns. The rude manners of British seamen led them to use a freedom with the dark ladies. A rough kiss or an offensive piece of raillery would often result in the sailor paying penalty by his death. The black wench whose employment was to make that beloved mixture of arrack and punch would contrive in a subtle skillful manner to make the punch bowl fatal for the man who abused her, while his companions drank without the slightest injury to themselves.”

Punch was as popular with the Dutch as it was with the English. At Surat’s Dutch cemetery, there once existed a tomb with a huge punch bowl in stone on top. Made in the memory of a merry maker who wanted his friends to come drink and celebrate each time they visited his grave.

And when I'm dead and in my grave
No costly tombstone will I crave
Just lay me down in my native peat
With a jug of punch at my head and feet.

Voyage To Surat- J Ovington

Time Traveler In Surat

A good read in hand turns every travel trip into a two- fold adventure. Travelogues in particular, are perfect in providing the experience of a new culture. Such books encapsulate a different age in time while simultaneously enabling the reader to perceive it with the eyes of a writer.

Centuries since it was published in 1696, John Ovington’s travelogue-A Voyage To Surat in the year 1689, remains oft quoted a favourite and of the greatest possible value to historians and readers alike, who want a glimpse of Surat in the days of yore. Popular in the Australian National Library on one hand, this journal by an English Chaplain provides for case study to many Universities in the United States of America, on the other.

Considered one of the liveliest travel books, Ovington has been described as ‘a shrewd and practical observer of men and manners and by no means devoid of a sense of humour’, on his detailed account of Surat, as he saw it at the end of the 17th century.

Poet Laureate Naham Tate, famous author of the metrical paraphrase ‘The Psalms’, wrote a poetry on Ovington’s ‘Voyage to Surat ‘part of which reads,
’you have so lively Your Discoveries writ, We Read and Voyage with you as we sit, With you hoise Sail and reach the Indian shore; the real scene cou’d scarce delight us more.’

On 11th of April, 1689, Ovington set sail from Gravesend on East India Company’s vessel-Benjamin. While the first hundred odd pages provide for description of the exotic islands he visited en route from Madeira to Bombay, it is upon him embarking at Surat and the two and a half years that he spent there, that accounts for the true essence of the book.

Ovington’s profound and prolific proses provide a detailed and disciplined study of Surat’s contemporary life, customs, religious observances and politics. His diligent observation of the skilled commerce and cuisine that the town till date remains famous for, gives a picturesque glance of Surat city, whose bazaars, he wrote were ‘more populous than any part of London’.

Describing the Castle Green trade grounds and the ‘Kanchanis’-nautch girls who provided entertainment for traders by the river Tapi, John weaves the reader in the warp and weft of Surat’s rich silks, velvets, and taffeta. His text sparkles about the splendour of diamonds, rubies, sapphire and topazes; it is aromatic of spices that were shipped in and out namely nutmeg, pepper, cinnamon and mace.

It accounts how custom duty was charged at $ 1000 for an English ship of 400 tons. He describes how,’ Gold of Suratt is so very fine that 12 or 14 per Cent may be often gained by bringing it to Europe’, how silver had very little alloy in it, that 60 copper pice summed up to a Roupie and often bitter almonds were passed around as currency!


The crux of the commerce lay in the calm that the city functioned with.Ovington points out how despite of Surat being a conflux of several nations, this port from where Haj pilgrims sailed out, was a Mecca for universal merchants where foreign nationals such as Europeans, Arabs, Persian, Turks Armenians and locals merged in large numbers, yet, there was not a single capital punishment carried out in 20 years.

Wali Muhammed Wali

ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST?
Ashleshaa Khurana

Ajab shehron mein pur nur aek shehr bila shak hai voh jag mein maqsad-e-deher ke mash-hur us ka naam Surat ,keh jawey jis ke dekhey sab kudurat ............vahaan saakin ite hain ahl-e mazhab,ke ginti mein naa aaven unke mashrab agarche sab hain voh abnaa-e aadam,vale beenash mein rangaarang-e aalam

Penned in ‘Rekhta’ (ancient Urdu), the above words were part of a masnavi written in praise of Surat by India’s first Urdu poet, Wali Muhammed Wali;also known as Wali Gujarati because he lived and died in our state. Wali’s brilliant prose put Urdu poetry on the world literary map. A rough translation of the text above, provided by poet Max Babi, reads-

“Amongst the delights of humanity is a brilliant city ,one which draws people to quaff celestial joy ,it goes by the name of Surat ,one sheds all malice as it alights on the eye………
so many people of so many religions live there ,their sects cannot be possibly counted ,even though they are all progeny of Adam, in appearance however, they are a multicoloured spectrum.”

Wali, who educated himself via his travels couldn’t have described our town or its visitors better. Besides being the hub for global trade, Surat was also the land where agents of several nations vied with each other to live in the greatest splendour.

It was here that the English first came in contact with the Armenians; it was here that the French gained the unenviable title of being pirates and plunderers, where the Portuguese and the Dutch competed die hard for remaining the masters of maritime trade.

In The Journal of Asiatic Society of Bombay, A F Ballasis records how the English presidents in town dined in ‘vessels and dishes which were all of massive silver and each course was ushered in by a flourish of trumpets and a band of music played during dinner’He also points out, ‘men who lived in such grandeur may naturally be supposed to have emulated each other in erecting ostentation tombs to commemorate their dead’

Undoubtedly, the cemeteries of the English, Dutch and Armenians in Surat are its most grand heritage. England’s Oxenden brothers buried here within tombs which have been described to be of ‘unsurpassed grandeur’ even in Europe, standing tall at forty feet, with a twenty five feet diameter and lofty cupolas.

Many historians have remarked that by adorning their tombs with fine marble, frescos, passages from scriptures and windows with wood carvings the Dutch and English competed to out do each other even in death and tried to impress their status on locals ; how ‘The object of raising Baron Adrian Von Reede’s monument was to eclipse the English cemetery’.

While most of the graves are of women of honour, men of status and innocent children, J Ovington mentions in his travelogue, the grave of a certain merry Dutch man whose last wish was rather strange and whenever his friends visited his grave they,” remembered him there sometimes so much that they quite forgot themselves.”.

Believed to be a relative of the Prince of Orange, banished to Surat by the Dutch government, his was supposedly,’ the most discreditable grave at the burying ground ‘, according to the Calcutta Review,’ the notorious tippler had enjoined that a stone punch bowl be placed on his tomb’s summit and smaller punch bowls with sugar loaves at the corners of his tomb.’ His friends would visit him at night and revel in merry making by preparing punch atop his grave and ladle it in the smaller bowls as they sang,”Oh! That a Dutchman’s draught could be; As deep as the rolling Zuyder Zee”

Yes, there are many strangers from foreign lands buried in Surat;surrounded by fragrant frangipani trees, their tombs are officially ‘reckoned as the most important historical monuments in the city’by the SMC, which provides details of the same on its website. Protected by the Archeological Survey of India (ASI), they all rest in peace .

As for Wali, who died 1707;alas! his mazaar is but a razed road in Ahmedabad since the last nine years.