Vietnam 1975

Madhu Bhaduri

In January 1975, I receIved an order posting me as First Secretary to the Embassy in Hanoi, North Vietnam. My father was distraught upon hearing this news. ‘It is raining bombs there, why do you want to be posted to Vietnam?’ he said. Vietnam had been the focus of world attention. That tiny underdeveloped (‘developing’, in today’s parlance) country had been fighting, in succession, first Japan, then France, and was now at war with America, the world’s number one superpower. Vietnam was fighting to unite the divided North with the South. America, as usual, was fighting for freedom and democracy, as it continued to do in many parts of the world, recently in West Asia. In universities and information media within America, critical voices had become louder and fiercer against America’s war in Vietnam. The carpet bombings and chemical warfare in Central and South Vietnam were being deplored. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi called for an end to the bombing of Vietnam. This was an act of courage because during this time, India was critically dependent on shipments of wheat under American Public Law 480. In Asia, or for that matter all over the world, there was no non-communist country which dared to raise its voice. My departure to Hanoi was postponed because Prabhakar Menon, whom I was to replace, could not leave Hanoi before the new ambassador had taken over. In the meantime, on 30 April, American forces withdrew from Saigon, leaving behind them a legacy of devastation and a large cache of arms and ammunition after their defeat at the hands of a small country which had no air or naval power. On the evening of 30 April 1975, the campus of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) reverberated with slogans of ‘Long live, Vietnam!’ Vietnamese students sang patriotic songs in a charged atmosphere at an open-air gathering. We used to live on the campus because Amit was a professor there.

 I travelled to Hanoi by air up to Hong Kong, and then proceeded by train to Canton. The last leg of the journey, from Nanning to Hanoi, was concluded by a short flight on a Chinese aircraft. The Haiphong harbour was yet to be cleared of mines, so my heavy baggage travelled from Delhi to Hanoi via Moscow. This might appear funny today, but the fact that politics takes over geography is something I have experienced very closely.

There were at the time very few diplomatic missions in Hanoi. And with few exceptions like the Indian and French Embassies, the rest were accommodated in a hotel built in the early twentieth century during French rule. Because India had been Chairman of the Peace Commission for Indo-China, we were allotted three villas for the Embassy and also had the best interpreter, who was intelligent as well as a fine person. The hotel accommodation of other diplomatic missions was limited. The Ambassadors of Australia and Japan were among them, and had to convert their bedrooms into offices during the day. They had attached bathrooms, but common toilet facilities. The bathrooms also doubled as kitchens to cater to parties, which were regularly held in the most undiplomatic traditions. I must admit that these were among the most enjoyable parties because they were improvised in imaginative ways, and were not the usual representational functions which diplomats around the world are obliged to suffer. Since the Indian Embassy had villas, the backyard of one of them (where I lived) was converted into a proper badminton court. Almost all diplomats in Hanoi learnt to play badminton; those who did not, came on their bicycles to watch and chat. Hanoi provided little by way of entertainment. Before leaving for Hanoi, I was advised to carry all my requirements, from toothpaste, washing powder and soap, to milk powder, with me. Nothing more than the food items needed for daily consumption were available in the markets. On my arrival, I used some of my saris to make curtains for the windows. A Vietnamese citizen was provided with five metres of cloth every year, along with food, soap, and everything else s/he needed. Everyone had a bicycle, just as everyone had a roof. I had also acquired a bicycle. Diplomatic missions had a car each, but almost every diplomat rode a bicycle. I was provided a cook and a maid to care for my house and kitchen. Ain Thai was a good cook. I taught him to cook some Indian dishes, and showed him how to make yoghurt with the milk powder I had brought along with me from Hong Kong. He had a quick grasp over things and made good yoghurt for about ten days. Then he politely asked me, ‘Are you sick?’ I was puzzled. Pointing at the small bowl of yoghurt, he said, ‘Then why do you eat this?’ It struck me suddenly that my eating yoghurt made from animal milk must have nauseated him. In China and Vietnam, milk is regarded as essential only for new-born babies. Otherwise, it is treated as an animal discharge, like urine, sweat, etc. It was unfair of me to have made him handle milk powder. I told him not to make yoghurt for me and that I would make it myself. Soya milk and cheese were easily available, and I learnt to enjoy them also. I wondered how my mother, who was a vegetarian, would view this. Like most, if not all Indians, she considered milk and its products the best for health and the ideal food for the gods. To think that somewhere in the world God’s food was nauseating would have shocked her. She would have been equally shocked to see that except for cats; almost all other animals were eaten with relish. The adage ‘One man’s meat is another man’s poison’ is literally true. The second lesson I learnt was something like this. The Canadian Ambassador in China had come for a visit to Hanoi just around the time that I went there. He asked me if in India, too, people did not apologise. In China, there was no equivalent to ‘I am sorry’. Was this a tradition all over Asia? I told him that it was not so in India, and I began noticing how the people in Vietnam said sorry. The matter was handled quite differently there. Instead of waiting for someone to apologise, the person is offered an opportunity to save face. If I am late in arriving, I will immediately be handed an excuse: the road is bad, or a family member is ill, etc. If it is a deeper matter, then the offender gives an explanation called ‘self-criticism’. I found the offer to save face quite comfortable and more generous than waiting for ‘I am sorry’.

Initially, while I was in Hanoi, Amit was in Bangkok planning to fly to Hanoi via Vientiane (Laos). I was suddenly told by a Vietnamese friend that the situation in Laos was such that flights between Vientiane and Bangkok would come to a halt after two days. I requested David Wilson, the Australian Ambassador who was flying to Bangkok via Hong Kong that day, to pass this information on to Amit. David Wilson took my concerns seriously. He met Amit and put him on the last flight leaving Bangkok for Vientiane. I was to meet Amit in Vientiane, but that became impossible. Just then, the communist revolution arrived in Laos. Amit found himself in a city where everything had come to a sudden standstill. Markets were shut down and, worse, banks were closed for four days. He was stuck in a totally unknown place in the midst of a change of system. He later wrote an account in Bangla about the unnerving, and sometimes comical, experience of his stay in Vientiane during that period. What created problems for us was the fact that Vietnam was not connected by telephone or even telegraphic links with most parts of the world. It was not a member of the International Postal System. Today, this might sound like a joke, but the reality of the time was such that my letters to Amit left every fortnight by diplomatic bag via a courier, who went to Hong Kong. From there, they went by Air India to Delhi. The letters were posted in Delhi for Bangkok. It took more than a month for my letters to reach, and it took almost two months for his to reach me by the same reverse route. In today’s world of instant communication, it sounds almost prehistoric. It certainly was not easy. Finally, Amit arrived in Hanoi. By this time winter had also arrived, but we had no warm clothes because our heavy baggage was still stuck in Moscow. I turned to Mr Glasnost, my counterpart in the Soviet Embassy, for his help. A few days later, I saw him coming to my office, taking two steps at a time in a state of excitement. ‘Your baggage has come!’ he said, and drove me to the tiny rickety airport where a Russian cargo plane was opening its underbelly, from which came gushing out potatoes. Among them, I spotted a few boxes of my books and warm clothes tumbling out. At the time of my posting to Hanoi, and because I had volunteered for this hard posting, The Times of India had carried a report on it. If I remember right, it had even called me ‘courageous’. This might have been the reason why I was given a somewhat favourable, if not special, treatment by the Vietnamese government. For instance, I got my driving licence at the first test, whereas the British Ambassador had taken the test several times but failed to make it. The application of my boss, the Indian Ambassador, appeared to have been lost because he was not called for the test at all. When I asked a friend why the British Ambassador could not qualify when he had several more years of driving experience than I and was a pilot as well, the answer was that the British did not blink when Vietnam was being destroyed. One evening, I was invited to dinner by the Information Ministry. After a banquet-like meal and several toasts raised to India–Vietnam friendship, a personal request was made to me. Vietnam was going to enter, for the first time, a film at an international film festival. They needed help in dubbing the film into English. Could I help them? I told them that I had no experience in this field. Besides, English was not my mother tongue. I suggested that the British Ambassador’s wife might be much better suited for this. This suggestion was met with the polite reply that my Vietnamese friends preferred my English. I remember that when I told my Ambassador about this request, he asked me, ‘How will they return your favour?’ This had not occurred to me. I accepted the request. Every afternoon, a car came to fetch me and drove to a point at one of the largest and quietest lakes of Hanoi, from where a boat took us to a small island on the lake. A sound studio had been made at this very tranquil place with East German help. The walls and roof were stuffed with cloth to make it soundproof. There, I embarked on my first and last venture in dubbing. I liked the film (the name of which I cannot recall), which was on the unpredictable nature of life in war-time. Nothing was how it should have been. Emotional stress and strain were reflected in the stormy winds which blew everything away. There was a note of understatement running through the story, which was moving. After an hour and a half of work, we would normally take a break outside the studio where delicious cut fruit was offered as refreshment. I wondered why our cook Ain Thai could not buy such papayas and pineapples. When I asked him, his answer was that he could have had access to the best quality of everything if he were a member of the government, but alas, he was only a nobody.

One afternoon, just as the dubbing was proceeding with concentration, a sudden loud sound brought everything to a halt. It turned out that the sound had been made by a very large lizard. I have never before, nor since, seen such a large and dominating animal of this kind. We had probably disturbed it during its afternoon siesta. I was terrified. The others just laughed it off. Work was resumed. At my request, Amit and I had been provided with a teacher from whom we were learning Vietnamese. He was a good teacher, but we were not half as good as students and the language is very tough, so progress was slow. One of my most memorable experiences in Hanoi was the celebration of victory in the Vietnam War in September 1975. The entire population of the town and the villages surrounding it came to the central lake of Hanoi on their bicycles and watched a magnificent display of fireworks. Chinese fireworks are renowned. They were all the more imposing because the brilliant flares of colours leaping up to touch the evening sky were reflected in the still clear waters of the lake below. It was a befitting celebration to mark the end of a long and devastating war. There were no speeches, no patriotic songs. It was just a bewitching spectacle, one not easy to forget. At the end of it, people gradually moved away and rode back home on their bicycles. There were no police in uniform. There was no one to supervise the people who had assembled and no one to ‘control’ an ‘unruly’ crowd in a hurry. No one was in a hurry. I had noticed this at the railway station as well. No one was in a hurry. People were confident that they would get their turn to carry their bicycles into the empty train carriages. It struck me that a nation which had fought an unequal war was less violent than Indians committed to ‘nonviolence’. Perhaps we needed a lesson in nonviolence more than other societies. I requested the Vietnamese Foreign Office to be allowed to visit Saigon and other areas in South Vietnam, which had been especially targeted for carpet-bombing and chemical weapons. North and South Vietnam were still to be united. The South was under the Provisional Revolutionary Government, whose chief was Madame Binh. Saigon was yet to be named Ho Chi Minh City. No diplomat in Hanoi had made this journey, not even Russian and Chinese diplomats. Central Vietnam was cut off because most of its towns were uninhabited ruins. Amit and I had visited Vinh in Central Vietnam, which had only one small brick house left standing, surrounded by ruins. There was no connectivity between the North and the South except through small government airplanes since Central Vietnam had been completely ravaged by bombing. My request to visit Saigon and Cu Chi was accepted and arrangements were made to take me there. I travelled in a small Soviet-made aircraft along with eight other dong chis (comrades). One of them was a woman who spent the entire journey knitting. She seemed to me to be a nurse. The seats were in the shape of overturned buckets. The scene at the airport in Saigon took me by surprise. There were unending lines of American air force fighter planes that had been left behind by the defeated army. I recalled a conversation between the Foreign Minister of Vietnam, Nguyen Co Thaic, and the Indian Ambassador a few evenings ago. Our Ambassador, Chinmay Gharekhan, had said that the Southeast Asian neighbours of Vietnam were apprehensive that the latter might use the sophisticated weaponry left behind by the Americans to export revolution to their countries. The Foreign Minister had laughingly replied that if technologically superior weaponry could win wars, then America would not have lost to Vietnam. He assured Ambassador Gharekhan that Vietnam’s neighbours had no reason to be apprehensive. I was put up in a hotel close to river Saigon, the walls of which still had holes made by gunshots. Buildings still looked devastated, but life in the city appeared to be moving normally. Unlike in Hanoi, where markets were limited to selling only food items, here they were selling every conceivable item. Young women beautifully dressed in their traditional áo dài (a long split tunic dress worn over trousers) were on bicycles and the city restaurants were doing good business. Saigon had been called the Paris of the East. It was still very attractive, even chic. In this environment, the very young Viet Cong soldiers known as Bodoi, from the villages, were misfits. They looked lost. Outside a large department store, one of them asked me if he could go in. I assured him that it was his city and he should not hesitate. Later, I heard many jokes about the innocence of the Bodois, which supposedly bordered on stupidity; such was the way they were viewed in Saigon. Arrangements had been made for me to leave for Cu Chi in a jeep along with a dong chi very early in the morning. As we drove out of the city at dawn, the landscape gradually began transforming into larger and larger bomb craters on all sides, till finally, as far as the eye could see, there was no sign of life. Not even a blade of grass. It could have been a landscape on the moon. Cu Chi was the forested area, once thickly covered with rubber trees and tall bamboos, under which the Viet Cong had dug deep tunnels and created a fighting base complete with hospitals, kitchens, and living quarters for the soldiers. This is why it was made the target of the worst bombings. Anything that was left intact was burnt with Agent Orange, a deadly chemical. By afternoon, we had reached a small hamlet of bamboo mud huts. Except for a young pregnant woman, all the inhabitants had gone out to level the ground, I was told. Since I had stepped out of a government vehicle, the young woman asked me if I was a Russian. I told her that I was not a ‘Lin So’ (Russian) but an ‘An Do’ (Indian). She had no idea what an ‘An Do’ or Indian was, just as she had no idea what a Russian looked like.

A little further, a team was working to level the ground. They had only shovels and bamboo baskets to fill a large bomb crater with mud. I wondered how long it would take to fill those innumerable and unending holes. It seemed to me to be an impossible task. Finally, we arrived at the administrative centre. I was greeted by the dong chi in charge of the centre which, like the huts we had seen, was also made of bamboo and mud. I was offered a cup of hot water which did not have the usual green tea leaves. ‘Things are bleak now, but on your next visit I will offer you a cup of fragrant tea,’ he said. He was reassuring and answered all my questions, although I was not convinced when he said that they had a bulldozer. I did not see one and could hardly believe that even if there was one, it would have the fuel it needed to run in this desolate place. That visit to Cu Chi was disturbing. It seemed to me that winning a war against a powerful adversary is a big achievement, but reconstructing on the destruction left behind is an equally challenging task. When I was leaving, my host said to me very sincerely, ‘When you come next, we will share with you a meal of rice grown here.’

In Saigon, there was a small population of people of Indian origin. The French administration had shipped Tamil labour from Pondicherry (now renamed Puducherry) to work in Vietnam, just like the British had taken shiploads of Biharis to far-off places like Trinidad. The Tamil labourers had married Vietnamese women. Their children had no connection with India. They spoke Vietnamese, and some of them spoke French or English, but no one spoke any Indian language. Among them, there were some who had become businessmen and traders. I met some of them who had been serving long jail terms in prison on charges of tax evasion. Soon after the sudden withdrawal of American forces on 30 April 1975, when the prison gates were opened, these convicts, among others, also got their freedom. They were, of course, fearful of the imminent move towards socialism and saw no future for themselves in Vietnam. They appealed for help to the Indian government to leave Vietnam. This was the time when many Vietnamese in the South were fleeing from communism in rickety boats on the high seas. There were daily reports of these boats sinking, or their passengers being saved by commercial ships.

Some of the Indian businessmen were very well-to-do. But they were determined not to buy their way on commercial airlines to leave Vietnam. I informed them that Air France was still running its flights from Saigon to Paris for a few more days, and that it would be wise to avail of this opportunity before it ceased. They were adamant that the Government of India should provide them with free air transport to leave Saigon. Finally, an Air India plane transported them free of cost to Madras, from where they made their way to France or America. Many of their children visit a completely transformed Vietnam for vacations these days.

In September 2015, Amit and I also travelled to Vietnam after forty years. We had been hearing from friends who had been there that things had changed, yet I was taken aback by what I saw. Those tiny bamboo huts with thatched roofs had disappeared. Their place was taken by colourful brick houses, two or three stories high. These thin and tall red, blue, green, and yellow structures were strange and yet attractive. Those wide avenues around the many lakes of Hanoi, which had exclusively bicycle traffic then, were now crowded with buzzing motorcycles. The few bicycles one saw were being pedalled by children. What had remained unchanged was the sight of women tending their farms on the outskirts of the city, wearing the same large cone-shaped palm-leaf hats which protect them from sun and rain.

Like Bangalore, Hanoi is a city of many large and small lakes. But unlike Bangalore, Hanoi’s lakes are clean and clear. In the race towards development, they have not been used for sewage disposal like the lakes and rivers of India. The markets of downtown Hanoi are no less crowded and bustling with activity than our markets. But they are clean, again unlike our markets. We stayed at a small hotel in what used to be and is still called the ‘Old Quarter’. Forty years ago, the Old Quarter was a run-down part of the town with rickety wooden huts. Only the courageous among the small diplomatic community then dared to go there.

The Old Quarter today has a bustling market for almost everything one might like to buy. It also has the best eateries in town, which come alive as the evening progresses. Wooden benches and tables take over the narrow streets, where young couples enjoy local beer and sea food. One wonders if Delhi’s Chandni Chowk will ever turn into a lively meeting place like this. Not in our lifetime.

We left Hanoi for Hue on our way to Ho Chi Minh City. Hue, situated halfway between the North and the South of the country, used to be the capital once, from where the king used to rule. The town was totally destroyed during American bombing. Only those inhabitants who could run away in time were saved. In short, the entire city of Hue has been reconstructed after the war. Some ruins of the old capital have been restored. So has an old monastery, which is situated at a height overlooking a bend in the river Perfume. It is a most beautiful sight where monks, including women monks, reside. It has a history of playing a leading role in the county’s struggle for reunification.

In the evenings, the river, which is the pride of the city, comes alive when large, illuminated boats offer music concerts along with a ride. We enjoyed this outing and found ourselves the only foreign tourists among the audience, who were nostalgic for Vietnamese songs as they played in a boat made to invite the evening breeze.

The sea around Hue is a hub of the fishing industry. Basa fish has a growing export market, including India and America. The population of Vietnam, which was forty-five million forty years ago, has doubled to ninety million now. The per capita income has far overtaken that of India. The country has full literacy and a healthcare system which covers all its villages, towns, and cities.

Saigon, which is now Ho Chi Minh City, has many attractions. The one which is a must for any visitor is the War Remnants Museum. Museums can be interesting, but this one is moving. It has a collection of articles and photographs by journalists from France, England, Germany, Italy, and America, who had documented the war in Vietnam from dangerously close quarters. Some of them lost their lives in the process, but have left behind live accounts. The Viet Cong had no cameras, nor the time for journalism. Outside the museum, one can see the fighter jets which had rained bombs during the war. The then American General, Westmoreland, had boasted that Vietnam would be bombed back to the Stone Age. Forty years ago, I had personally seen the Stone Age in Cu Chi.

I was eager to revisit Cu Chi after four decades. Fortunately, we found a good guide to take us there. The young man was fluent in English and knowledgeable in history, and not just the history of Vietnam. As we approached Cu Chi from the city, both sides of the road were covered with tall bamboo and green trees. I asked our guide if they were rubber trees. He smiled and nodded. In between, there were fields and nurseries of orchids. Vietnam is one of the leading suppliers of these exotic flowers to Japan.

Our young guide was the son of a farmer who had a small piece of land on which he grew black pepper. Our guide and his brother spent three months of the year helping their parents on the farm. Vietnam is overtaking India as the leading exporter of black pepper.

Could this green environment possibly be the Cu Chi of dust and large craters of forty years earlier? Groups of young European and Australian tourists were making their way to recreated tunnels which had once been the military base of the Viet Cong. They saw the hospitals and kitchens, and the individual underground facilities in which the Viet Cong had operated during the war, all of which had been recreated for public viewing. What they did not see and could not have imagined was the complete devastation of Cu Chi, which was ingrained in my memory from my visit there immediately after the war. The delta of the Mekong, one of the longest rivers of Asia, has turned into a large producer of rice, which is not only the staple food of Vietnam, but also one of its biggest exports. This nation, which had defeated a superpower and its sophisticated war technology on the strength of its bicycles and its determination, has with the same determination been providing welfare to its people. Salaam Vietnam!

[Book Details: ‘Lived Stories’ by Madhu Bhaduri,
ISBN: 9789354420825, Language: English, Pages: 152, Format: Paperback, Year of Publishing: 2021, Territorial Rights: World, Imprint: Orient Black Swan, Price: Rs 580, ]

[Excerpted from ‘Lived Stories’ by Madhu Bhaduri under permission from Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd].

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