"The time has come", the Walrus said...

My recent trip to India invoked a flurry of reminiscences. Memories of childhood days, passed idly in my own company, wandering through the ample gardens of my grandmother's home, talking to myself and creating games, visiting the cows or finding abandoned kittens and puppies come flooding easily to my mind. Delightful memories. Though at the time, I didn't see it in quite the same light. I remember the intense sense of loneliness and boredom. Being the youngest in that family was no fun. I listen now to the tales of childhood holidays that my siblings tell. Stories of times spent in the joyous company of cousins, uncles and aunts. Times when gangs of cousins would gather together and get up to no good. Times when the house was filled to bursting with family, laughter and noise...and the many arguments that ensued.

My cousin remembers a time when they all played cricket in the upstairs hall at the ancestral home. Inside. The hall was huge and when the families gathered, this was where the children would congregate to sleep, reacquaint themselves with each other, tell stories, gossip and play. I imagine the excitement. I can see the hall filled with them all, their younger selves. I hear their voices raised in argument, jokes and storytelling in a variety of languages. I hear the giggles and squeals as they delight in each others' company. But they are not my memories. Simply my imaginings of their memories.

My memories are quieter, lonelier. Perhaps even tinged with a little sadness. My memories are of wandering that very same hall on my own. Of the stillness and silence that surrounded me. Of feeling the presence of ghosts and spectres, but not fearing them. My memories are of dusty rooms filled with decaying mounted deer's heads, of oppressive heat in the middle of the day and a silent house as the adults all slept off their lunch. My memories are of sitting in the windowsill of the upstairs room, staring through the ornate wood-barred window and imaging a tale of a princess trapped in her tower. The silence broken only by the call of the postman, the dog barking or the cows lowing. In my memory, there was a permanent heaviness in the pit of my stomach. Nervousness? Loneliness? I don't know. But discomfort certainly. I remember every inch of that garden, of the house, because for me, that was my company. The garden became my magical forest. The place where a thousand adventures befell me. The house was my plaything. Immense and elusive, keeping her secrets well hidden, but tantalising me with the hint of a hidden secret if only I cared to look.

Tamarinds, Alor, Indonesia (Photo credit: GlobalCitizen01)

I remember the exquisite tang of tamarind plucked from the tree, tingling my tastebuds into life. Followed quickly by the sharp slap of fresh green peppercorns, snatched from the vines that entwined the tamarind trees. Saliva fills my mouth as I recall the sourness of the bilimby pulli stolen from the trees on my way to the outside bathroom. Even that bathroom evokes a great sense of joy in me. The time spent waiting in the kitchen with the servant as she boiled the water for my bath. Her remonstrations that I shouldn't touch the pot because I was just a child and I would burn myself. Watching her heft that heavy pot past the well to the bathroom, and then return to the well for cold water for me to mix with the hot to achieve the perfect temperature for my bath. I remember those bucket baths with great affection.

മലയാളം: (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember also the servants who, with extraordinary patience and kindness, would incorporate me into their daily tasks. Each of them assigning me a job that they would oversee with great gentleness. I remember laying tamarind, chilli and pepper on great white sheets, weighed down in the corners by large stones, out in the bright hot sun to dry. I remember having to shoo the crows who would try their cunning best to steal the drying goods, and claiming a stalk of tamarind or pepper as my reward. I remember learning to light a fire with nothing more than the husk of a coconut and a long metal tube, of nursing those early flickering flames into a healthy fire. Of the smoke that would fill my eyes, nose and lungs. The ring of the servant's laughter as she guided my feeble efforts at fire-lighting.

I spent a long time in my life feeling sad that I had missed the joy of the company of my cousins. I felt somehow cheated of that companionship, that consolidation of our relationships. Now, I choose to see the great gifts I was given by those wonderful people who worked for my family. Their patience, their kindness, their love are what sustained me through many lonely days spent over many years of Christmas holidays. There was so much that I learnt from them. So much about the simple things in life. So much about hard work. And most importantly, so much about generosity of spirit and pure love. For that and for the many joyous days of my childhood, I hold them deeply in my heart with gratitude and thanks.

A Segue into Memories of Childhood

Seeing Dasamaama, memories came flooding back. This uncle, ever-present through my childhood visits to the ancestral home, and his sister were my saviours from boredom. They were the ones who would come home after a long day at work and insist on taking me away from a day spent in my own company wandering through the ample gardens, making up games as I went. Thinking of them evokes memories of orange ice-cream in a neat square on a saucer, a walk along the beach with roasted peanuts in a newspaper cone. The simple pleasures that defined the bulk of Christmas holidays of my childhood.

But he is old now. At 81 he's no longer fleet of foot, striding impatiently far ahead, dark skin gleaming and muscles rippling. Always lean, now he looks gaunt. My heart feels heavy. This may be my last goodbye with him and I don't feel ready to make it. Are we ever ready?

The first day passes in a haze of sweat and heat and bustling in the kitchen. Fish cutlets for dinner, a bridge too far for Dasamaama. His stomach can no longer cope with even that, let alone the scorching chillies of the past. A restless night, antacids the outcome. The second day was better. The opportunity to reminisce with him, to tell him of our potential futures. Not all our futures are rosy. Dire and depressing, hard to bear for the young, necessary to hear for the old.

Already the passing of his younger sister is playing on his mind. Now I have added to that with news of his even younger nephew. But we are old now, he and I. The days of my childhood exist only in my memory. As the song goes... those schoolgirl days, of telling tales and biting nails are gone. Childish thoughts evaporate like mist and we are forced to face the stark, grounded and cruel reality of our own mortality. With immense sadness, I sought his blessing and parted, perhaps for the last time.

The time has come,

For closing books and long last looks must end,

And as I leave,

I know that I am leaving my best friend,

A friend who taught me right from wrong,

And weak from strong,

That's a lot to learn,

What, what can I give you in return?

If you wanted the moon I would try to make a start,

But, I would rather you let me give my heart...

Plane Musings

Fighting begun? Well, not quite, but certainly loss of patience. Plane full of freshly-minted rising classes, foreign-returned and flashing gold and phones. Ostentatious in their employment of those phones. Loud voices announcing their sense of self-importance. Arms waving back and forth lending emphasis to the volume of the conversation. "Look at me" it shouts. "Look at how well I've done. Look at all that I can afford".

It used to be only the domain of those foreign-born or foreign-bred, this ostentation and preening. But now it's a mark of wealth, of coming up in the world. Perhaps it always was. It just seemed to those of us on the other side, a mark of difference. We never understood the envious daggers that flew so true from retina to heart. We felt their green-hued points pierce the thin shells of our ego-armour long before we ever heard the snide remarks or cruel taunts - the jeers about our now-changed accents, our fancy modern clothes, our westernised, unoiled, short-cropped hair, or worst of all, the easy assumption that our western lives necessarily meant easy morals too.

That is the hardest to encounter still. The apparent comfort men feel in holding their daughter's hand on one side while happily pinching a bottom or groping a bosom on the other. That is the part, the hallmark of every visit to India (or at least Kerala) since the age of 13, that fills my heart with dread and leaves me in a cold sweat of stomach-churning trepidation for weeks before entering the country.