Write or Eat Chocolate?
That's the choice today. I could read of course. Just downloaded one by Tayari Jones. What a writer! Chocolate of course beckons for brunch as usual; I am tempted, because it does not involve any thinking. Dreadful business, thinking. And it threatens:
Bubonic Plague across the road. When I got up in the morning, as a child of seven years, in 1942, and looked out the window, there was always this huge more-or-less, but not-quite-finished house. The porch was big enough to park one of those long Chevrolets that rich Indians favoured in the forties. The red brick had not been plastered -- the owners had gone overseas just before the second world war started, and had been stranded in Penang, much like the families blocked from travelling now in the COVID 19 months. In those days Indians migrated to Ceylon, Malayasia, Burma, Singapore, even East Africa, not the UK or the USA. There was a big pond on one side of the house, in which, many years later, after the family returned, I learned to swim, using a float of old, dried coconuts tied round my waist.
In the war years, though, a family of beggars squatted in that empty house, appearing out of nowhere. Two young men, two women, and several half- naked children. The women came to our well sometimes for drinking water; occasionally there would be a toddler tugging at her mundu. At that time, my father was in jail, having got on the wrong side of the British Raj because of his political activities and we children, Mani and I, could wander across and stare at the beggars.
They cooked on a three-stone fire set up on the front veranda and slept on the end of it too. Nobody had electric lights then and kerosene was rationed. The beggars burned wicks in coconut shells briefly in the evenings, like fireflies flitting around. One day, when Mani and I went to stare, the women chased us away. They didn't speak our language, but their distress was obvious.
'They're sick,' our maid informed us next day. 'Bad sickness,' We found out how bad when the family started dying one by one. Plague, my father's colleague, Nambiar, informed us. 'No one should go that side.' Achamma (father's mother) filled coconut shells with cow dung solutions and lined the walkway to the gate to ward off infections. It must have worked because we didn't get plague, though there was no dearth of huge bandicoot rats in the firewood.
The family across died one by one, until there was just one woman and a child left. When the shit- cart came to take the last dead child away, Mani and I hid on the back-parapet of our house and cried. The unfinished house was empty again, soon after.
Looking back, I am surprised at the number of deadly diseases we survived -- Smallpox, Typhoid, Measles, Whooping cough... My young mother, all of eighteen years old, had died five years back of Tuberculosis, and a young man from the house behind ours also died of Tuberculosis. In homes around us, people died, but we escaped. No doubt the cow dung worked. Inoculations against Cholera, and vaccinations against Small pox gradually became commonplace. I still have an imprint of that old vaccination on my upper arm; the weapon used was so enormous.
Now I am wondering whether I should look for cow dung again.
That's the choice today. I could read of course. Just downloaded one by Tayari Jones. What a writer! Chocolate of course beckons for brunch as usual; I am tempted, because it does not involve any thinking. Dreadful business, thinking. And it threatens:
Bubonic Plague across the road. When I got up in the morning, as a child of seven years, in 1942, and looked out the window, there was always this huge more-or-less, but not-quite-finished house. The porch was big enough to park one of those long Chevrolets that rich Indians favoured in the forties. The red brick had not been plastered -- the owners had gone overseas just before the second world war started, and had been stranded in Penang, much like the families blocked from travelling now in the COVID 19 months. In those days Indians migrated to Ceylon, Malayasia, Burma, Singapore, even East Africa, not the UK or the USA. There was a big pond on one side of the house, in which, many years later, after the family returned, I learned to swim, using a float of old, dried coconuts tied round my waist.
In the war years, though, a family of beggars squatted in that empty house, appearing out of nowhere. Two young men, two women, and several half- naked children. The women came to our well sometimes for drinking water; occasionally there would be a toddler tugging at her mundu. At that time, my father was in jail, having got on the wrong side of the British Raj because of his political activities and we children, Mani and I, could wander across and stare at the beggars.
They cooked on a three-stone fire set up on the front veranda and slept on the end of it too. Nobody had electric lights then and kerosene was rationed. The beggars burned wicks in coconut shells briefly in the evenings, like fireflies flitting around. One day, when Mani and I went to stare, the women chased us away. They didn't speak our language, but their distress was obvious.
'They're sick,' our maid informed us next day. 'Bad sickness,' We found out how bad when the family started dying one by one. Plague, my father's colleague, Nambiar, informed us. 'No one should go that side.' Achamma (father's mother) filled coconut shells with cow dung solutions and lined the walkway to the gate to ward off infections. It must have worked because we didn't get plague, though there was no dearth of huge bandicoot rats in the firewood.
The family across died one by one, until there was just one woman and a child left. When the shit- cart came to take the last dead child away, Mani and I hid on the back-parapet of our house and cried. The unfinished house was empty again, soon after.
Looking back, I am surprised at the number of deadly diseases we survived -- Smallpox, Typhoid, Measles, Whooping cough... My young mother, all of eighteen years old, had died five years back of Tuberculosis, and a young man from the house behind ours also died of Tuberculosis. In homes around us, people died, but we escaped. No doubt the cow dung worked. Inoculations against Cholera, and vaccinations against Small pox gradually became commonplace. I still have an imprint of that old vaccination on my upper arm; the weapon used was so enormous.
Now I am wondering whether I should look for cow dung again.
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