Balasore was a seaport of importance on the Bay of Bengal
ney, in the thirties, by car from India to Europe and a second stage from New York to California, they sold souvenir bottles of “Indian” air from their tires to what must have been very gullible buyers in Los Angeles.
Balasore held special attractions for Gene and me...the Gilson girls and Eleanor Frost. Ellie had been a classmate of ours at Woodstock, but was now one year ahead because Gene and I had lost a year traveling back and forth to the US when our parents went home on furlough. Personally, I thought that being around girls in high school began to have a civilizing effect on us boys.
Balasore three hundred years ago was a
seaport of importance on the Bay of Bengal and
was the location of an early
East India Company trading post
The ill-mannered boorishness which characterized much of our dormitory life disappeared in the presence of girls. The Gilson girls were a little young, but Ellie was a real possibility. Her interest, unfortunately, was directed toward Gene so I played a supporting role, enjoying the situation vicariously. Looking back on these boy-girl relationships, they seem now to have belonged to a different era. Feelings were excrutiatingly intense, but our behavior so restrained! Balasore three hundred years ago was a seaport of importance on the Bay of Bengal and was the location of an early East India Company trading post. Later, in the course of the Company’s struggles with local authorities, the Company’s sepoy (native Indian soldier) army, under the command of Job Charnock, sacked Balasore. It was the same Charnock who founded the post on the Hooghly River which was to become Calcutta.
Over the years Balasore was cut off from the coast by river silt, leaving behind a sandy beach and flat sea bed. In our day the tide ebbed and flowed here a distance of two miles or more. Local fishermen harvested their daily catch using great V-shaped stationary nets set into the mud flats with the open end facing the shore. The retreating tide left behind large quantities of fish high and dying in the nets, where they could be easily harvested. Others, piled up and thrashing around in the water at the point of the V, were clubbed
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