Thanks to the Kresy-Siberia Virtual Museum, Bhattacharjee met and interviewed a great many“ Polish Indians” and was given access to their diaries, letters and memoirs. She found a treasure in the beautifully written correspondence given to her by Franciszek Herzog, the youngest of three brothers whose father was murdered at Katyń and whose mother died of starvation in Kazakhstan. Seamlessly woven into the wealth of detail from her research, it adds to the story a gripping emotional intensity. As the story unfolds, Bhattacharjee introduces an amazing cast of characters. Kira Banasinska and her husband, unable to return to Poland, lived out their lives in India, a country they came to love. She lived to see Poland free again and received Poland’ s highest civilian honour for her work on behalf of the children. Hanka Ordonówna, the beautiful cabaret star of prewar Poland, cared for the children at the orphanage in Ashkabad and traveled with them in the first convoy to India. Wanda Dynowska, a theosophist and an authority on Indian history and culture who had moved to India in 1935 and was given the name Umadevi by Gandhi, enriched the children’ s lives by introducing them to Indian history and even to Gandhi himself.
At first, some Poles found Umadevi, with her sari and theosophist views, a bit too exotic for their tastes, but she was much loved. Fr. Zdzisław Peszkowski, at that time a Scoutmaster at Balachadi and Valivade whom the author met in Warsaw, recalled meeting Umadevi and another Polish Theosophist and Gandhian, Maurycy Frydman.
He found their discussions“ enriching” and his visit to an ashram was an experience he never forgot. By contrast, the officious Captain Webb described Umadevi as“ a certain crack-brained Pole of feminine gender who has turned theosophist, [ and ] apes Indian dress …” We encounter British officials, some who cared about the humanitarian crisis and others who were indifferent, including Captain Webb in whom the author detected“ unwarranted hostility” towards the Polish refugees. Indeed, she points out, the Poles were often treated more“ as enemy than as ally,” and not as well as German POWs. It is really the Indian people that the Polish children of Balachadi have in mind when they say:“ India is my second homeland,” and“ Balachadi was the happiest time of my childhood. How can we ever repay the kindness we received?” Kindness like this can never be repaid, it can only be acknowledged, and serve as an example. There is, today, a public square in Warsaw named for“ the good Maharaja” and a school named in his honour; and among the many reunions of the“ Polish Indians” some have taken place in India attended not only by officials but also by drivers, cooks, fruit and vegetable vendors, and others who recalled those times fondly. Some could still remember a bit of Polish. Anuradha Bhattacharjee has written a marvelous book, rich with detail from archival sources, oral history, and letters and memoirs of the time. She has a natural understanding of people who have known oppression and her contacts with“ Polish Indians,” whether in London, Poland or Australia, seem to be touched by the same warmth and affection that Indians and Poles shared during the war.