Young Nariman (middle) with his parents Sam and Banoo Nariman, in the most modern car of the times (1932)

We were then forced to embark on a long overland journey to India with what little we had carried to Mandalay: it included several boxes of office records (life policies and general insurance policies); the head office in Bombay greatly appreciated my father’s thoughtfulness in saving these important documents. The overland journey to India lasted 21 anxious and eventful (but for me, also memorable) days, through forests by bullock-cart (which took about seven days), along the Upper Chindwin.

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River by country-boat (for the next seven days), and then (for a week more) up and down steep mountainous terrain on foot and by doolies till we reached the Indo-Burma border—all this without any travel agent’s guidance or even a tour map to help us along the way! But not without excitement. When we were on the mountainous terrain we were providentially saved from being trampled to death by an elephant. The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation owned about 400 trained elephants who were used at Rangoon for removing logs of wood from forests in Lower Burma. These pachyderms were brought up north on account of the war, and were made to carry into British India the baggage of the corporation’s senior staff (only the baggage of the sahibs). Our luggage was carried by Manipuri porters whom we picked up at the starting pointing of our trip. These porters were extremely scared of elephants. They would insist on waiting for a full hour after each cavalcade had passed. On one such occasion, after an entire group of 19 elephants had passed us, we resumed our journey on foot (and doolies).

Fifteen minutes later, when we were on a straight narrow path with a deep ravine on one side and a steep hill on the other, we saw a lonely elephant trundling down without his mahout. The nimble-footed porters left our luggage on the narrow path and clambered up the trees on the hillside. But we had to stick as close as we could to the side opposite the ravine with my parents saying their prayers. They feared it was the end. Just then, the leader of the troupe (a young Englishman), who had trained the elephants, came back looking for the missing one. When the beast was just 30 yards from us, ambling down to where we were (and would have certainly trampled us), this good man seeing the plight we were in shouted in Burmese, ‘Shamba! Shamba, pyam ba, pyam ba’ [‘Elephant! Elephant, go back, go back’]. Apparently, something clicked in the recesses of the small brain of the trained elephant. He obeyed his master’s call and turned around as he was commanded. We then implored the porters to pick up our baggage lying strewn on the narrow path, and quickly rushed-on. A few days later, the same young Englishman met us at a refugee camp in Imphal and told us that he had great difficulty in reining in the animal which had gone berserk.

In the trek out of Burma, apart from biscuits and sweets which my mother had thoughtfully stocked up for the journey, there was not much to be consumed by way of food. In early February 1942, we arrived at a refugee camp in Imphal where we ate our first hot meal after a three-week trek. It was here that we were given the sad news of Rangoon having fallen into the hands of the Japanese Army. There was no going back now. We took the train from Dimapur to Calcutta (now Kolkata), and from there another train to Delhi (happily it is still Delhi), where we stayed for a while with my father’s old friend, Dady Cooper, and his wife, Rutty, who very kindly gave us shelter in their spacious bungalow at Barakhamba Road.

Our arrival in New Delhi marked the first turning point in my life— landing as a refugee from Burma, uprooted from hearth and home.

Excerpted with permission from Fali Nariman: Before Memory Fades; Hay House India