Michael Glover beside the grave of his great-grandfather George Clarke in Calcutta and (below) Philippa. Telegraph pictures

Siliguri, March 24: Foreign tourists, especially from the UK, who come to India to trace their roots can get a helping hand from Philippa Waterfield, a woman who herself has strong connections with the country.

Philippa believes that north Bengal, like many other places in India, has great potential to host “family history tours”.

“There is a growing consciousness among the British, whose ancestors lived in India, to explore their connections with this country and reconstruct their family histories,” Philippa said.

Her most recent guests were Michael Glover, a Briton now residing in Australia, and his Australian wife Jill, whom she accompanied to Darjeeling. Although they could not find any trace of their ancestors in the hill town, they had more success elsewhere.

“We were able to find the graves of Michael’s great-grandfather George Clarke, his wife Jane Ellen and their sons John Percy and Robert at the Lower Circular (A.J.C. Bose) Road Cemetery in Calcutta,” said Jill, who is writing the history of the family that had five generations living in India.

Clarke was a sergeant in the Royal Artillery of the Royal Army and later worked with Government Railway Police. His grandfather William Dennison had married an Indian woman.

“We also found the church, St Thomas’s at Howrah, where several members of the family were married or baptised, and the Howrah New Cemetery where several others were buried,” Jill added as she drew the family tree on a piece of paper.

In February last year, Philippa had accompanied 32 people to the settings of their youth or of their ancestors’ lives in India. Twenty-four of them travelled to Darjeeling where they had family connections.

“I put in a lot of time and effort to research and help them give the real feel of India,” said Philippa.

Her own interest, she said, lies in being able to travel extensively in India. “The tours help me earn just enough to be able to afford regular stays here,” she said.

Philippa’s own connection with India was through her now estranged husband, Hugh. His father Thomas Edward Waterfield, fondly called Dada in India, was in the Indian Civil Service. Dada’s father and grandfather were also in the ICS and his great-grandfather had worked for the British East India Company — the reason why Thomas took the Kaiser-i-Hind liner to India in November 1929.

Other relatives over those three generations had served in the ICS, the Indian Army, police and the Indian Accounts Service.

“One had married a descendant of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, several lie buried in south India and one (a brigadier major who telegraphed Delhi with the news of the outbreak of the “mutiny” on May 10, 1857) had been killed by the rebel soldiers and never formally buried,” Philippa said. She was quoting from The Life and Friends of Dada, a book recently brought out by Hugh.

Thomas took Indian citizenship, inspired by Jawaharlal Nehru’s The Discovery of India, and lived on in Pune even after retirement till he passed away in 2001 at 96. “I first came to India to see him in 1990 and it’s dad who instilled in my heart the love for this country,” Philippa said.

She hopes to help others build the same connection with India. “Sixty years is a lot of time to forgive and be forgiven; we should now try to come closer undoing the damage done by history.”