Party-Gate Revisited

Party-Gate Revisited I am watching the elaborate system that is trying to save Boris’s skin. And the best of them is our Press, especially the BBC brigade of sycophants. Once upon a time we had a BBC that was the envy of the whole world, including me when I was working in some god-forsaken countries in Africa. I would wake up to the 6 am news on the World Service and my day would be heralded happily. Now, I look at them on T V, spinning out excuses for Boris, and I am puking. My daughter says, ‘He is one of them, Mum.’ As though that is a good reason. Boris is not going to resign. Remember he said quite recently that they would have to drag him out with heavy machinery. Rishi Sunak will go, because he is not able to face ignominy as well as Boris, who is well acclimatised to it. Rishi is ‘precious.’ As the very rich tend to be. And if you are Indian as well… Once upon a time, the ‘Mother’ of parliaments was revered, and countries (like India) built constitutions based on the unwritten British version. Now we have institutional greed and no principles anywhere in sight. I think we are stuck with this bunch of cowboys at the top. I wonder, surely, within the Tory members of Parliament, there must be some who are ashamed of the way the cabal behaves. Why don’t they get rid of the bunch of incompetents at the top? So, I think, another two years or so of turbulence, disregard of the public, reprehensible behaviour at the top, and of course financial misery for the poor.

What A Sunday Boris Johnson, our undaunted Prime Minister arrived in Kyiv, on Saturday, probably parachuted in like James Bond, I imagine, because no one is quite sure how he got there. Must have asked Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commissioner, who went before him. The Press here did not make a huge issue out of her visit. But, of course, she was a mere woman. And does not weigh anywhere near as much as Boris, and cannot claim an unruly blond thatch. Rishi Sunak, our esteemed gilt-edged Chancellor, meanwhile, is throwing a tantrum, because unknown, conniving people, started investigating his wife’s tax status, and publicised the extent of her enormous wealth. Very bad manners in rich-boy circles. No 10 would never do such a sneaky thing, would they? After all Rishi is a neighbour. Now the lady is threatening to move her establishment to the United States. Our chancellor will become a grass-widower. Boris is on a mission to save his PM-ship. Sunak was getting too close for comfort, but now it looks as though the Chancellor has burnt his boat. Not Machiavellian enough. He could of course, return to California, which he once called home. Boris, of course, is showing big ‘as a global leader.’ The Ukranian PM, Zelenskyy, doesn’t have a clue about how insubstantial Boris’s affections can be. Thankfully, City drew in the match against Liverpool. The commentators were all disappointed. What is City’s magic with the guys, that make all of them drool when City gets a goal? Klopp and Guardiola hugged after the match, as though they meant it.

Prison and Moong for Supper

Prison and Moong for Supper In late August of 1942. the police came for my father. It was all very civilised. There were two of them, in an open-topped jeep and they were not in uniform, but the jeep shouted 'police' loudly. I saw them walking up our walkway. My father was shaving, looking in our mottled old mirror, propped up on the window sill. I saw the jeep because I hovered where my achan was -- always. 'Policukaran,' I said and my father looked up. Achan got up quickly and wiped his face with his small towel. Streaks of lather, as usual, remained in his ear lobes. The men knocked on the front door and my aunt opened the door to them as Achan called out, 'Tell them to come up.' Achan knew they would come for him; a friendly policeman had warned him some weeks before about this LIST. 'Yor name is top of the list,' Lateef had said. Lateef was a member of the crowd that assembled in the far corner of our veranda to play '28', on Saturday evenings. On our veranda because Achan was a widower and didn't have to worry about a wife objecting to the crowd and the noise, or even the many cups of tea that had to be delivered periodically. 'If they pass the QUIT INDIA resolution in Wardha, the arrests will start,'Lateef had whispered, and they did. The ALL INDIA CONGRESS COMMITTEE met in Wardha, and passed the resolution on the 12th of August. It is Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe being released that brought all this back into my head.For Achan also, there had been no trial, the period of incarceration was not mentioned, nor were the nature of his crime, or the jail to which he would be taken. It was three months before we got a letter from him, severely inked out by a vigorous censor. So now, we knew he was in Velloor jail. The policy was to put them in jails away from their states so they couldn't communicate with others in the vicinity. Achan, as many middle-class people spoke Malayalam and English fluently. When he returned from Jail in late 1944, he was fluent in Telugu as well. I was seven years old when Achan went; some days I thought he would never come back. Achamma, his mother thought he was being tortured. She lost her marbles, refused food, spat medication out, and died slowly. When she died, Achan was parolled for two weeks and I knew he would live. At home, my aunt struggled with Arithmetic, the arithmetic of money and its elasticity. She grew spinach, okra and aubergine in the compound and stopped buying fish. In the evenings we ate a conjee made of moong and wheat, because black-market rice was beyond her budget.Kannettan, next door, who took me to the temple festival every year refused that year because I had no dress that was not torn or shabby. The nuns in school were strong supporters of the British Raj; they made me stand up in class, and mocked my 'criminal' dad. After several incidents, I bit back one day. 'He is in jail because he is fighting for our freedom. Yours too, Sister.' She looked shamefaced and stopped baiting me after that. The neighbourhood looked after us, giving us sugar and rice, fruit and vegetables. The tailor, dhobi and jutka driver did not take money from us. And the day Achan came back, they crowded in our veranda and their love of him was obvious. I glowed with pride. My Achan was SO special.

The Banshee Wail

The sirens on the T V are weird, banshee-like wails, from the cities in Ukraine that are being attacked. The people under siege, crowd into the underground stations. A milling, jostling mass of women and children and a few men. The siren is a familiar sound, which started in Thalassery with the second World War, when Japan was threatening the British colonies in Asia. As it happened, Japan dropped a couple of bombs on the Madras coast and never came back. Events overtook them, such as being wiped out in the Pacific after America joined the war. Indians working in Burma, started the long trek home and many died on the way due to starvation and Japanese bombs. My uncle, a doctor working on rubber estates in Penang and Sungei Patani could not get out for four years. By the end of the war, his savings had been wiped out -- when the Japanese came, they had converted all assets to Japanese currency, now totally worthless. He had to start saving again for passages on steamer for his wife and himself. That took another year. He came home in 1947, with crisp bundles of Japanese money, which he gave to us children to play with. Children, yes. He had not seen his son and daughter, who were living with my father for a very long time, and attending school in Thalassery. They melded into our household and did not remember the parents much after the first year. Mani, my cousin, a few months older than me, occasionally talked about her mother’s food and clothes. Mymoon was a noodle dish, she mentioned – what did I know of noodles in Thalassery? Appuettan and Mani gradually became my father’s brood. They never quite trusted their parents after they returned to take charge. Every school holiday, they rushed back to us, like homing pigeons. Our house waited for them. The siren in Thalassery came from the Municipal Building, next to our College. The sound reached us two kilometres away at nine in the morning and six in the evening. At nine a m it reminded us to get dressed for school, and at 6 in the evening, the clarion call was time to wash and settle down to prayers, and then homework. There wasn’t a clock anywhere in our house, so the siren was useful. I wonder—is that siren still going on?

BOOKS RULE, O K.

 

BOOKS RULE, O K.

I am an addicted news-worm. It annoys my daughter, (“The news hasn’t changed since the last half hour, has it?”) She is a sports addict. She shares the living room T V with me. So, I bought a T V for my bedroom. However, watching T V in the bedroom does not compare remotely to the pleasure of communal watching: squabbling over political opinions, taking tea breaks and realising how, we in this household, with all its shortcomings, flares- up of temper, avoidance of chores, not respecting private spaces… still prefer being together (most of the time) than in our separate ivory towers. This applies only to those past teen age. The teen has original methods of adult-avoidance.

               In Thalassery, where I grew up, we had one radio with an uncertain reception. I listened to All India Radio, Kozhikode and Delhi, and my cousin, Mani, had little time for it. She wanted filmi music. When things got unsolvable, I fell back on my reading habit. Books have got me through a great many tough times. I thank my Achan who quietly descanted all sorts of books on me without my noticing. He did not consider my age or abilities at any time; the books were his reading. I remember reading (if you can call struggling through pages of complicated new ideas, reading) Bertrand Russell’s CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS and MARRIAGE AND MORALS when I was fifteen years old. For dessert I had school girl stories by Angela Brazil, which I hid from Achan. Hockey Pam and Netball Nellie reigned. H G Wells’s tome, the HISTORY OF THE WORLD put all of it in perspective.

               By the time Achan gave me FREEDOM AND ORGANISATION in two hefty parts three years later, I was a convert. I remember C E M Joad, in passing – he too was part of my enforced education, until I got used to abstractions and began to have my own opinions.

               Today my daughter is in the West End at a musical, my son is submerged in Mathematics scripts to mark and my granddaughter is doing her usual distancing from all things adult. This involves many hours of sleeping and not responding to being called.

               So, books – in the plural, both in soft backs and on Kindle. ANARCHY by William Darlymple, discussing as it does the inglorious British rule in India, is for me, very personal. It was the time when my father went to jail for his views, war raged in Europe and in S E Asia, and I was seven years old. There was rice rationing, sugar rationing, cloth rationing ---. Kerosene was difficult to find. We were piss-poor with our only wage-earner incarcerated at His Majesty’s pleasure

Exams were cancelled because there was a paper shortage, hip hip hurray. The house went vegetarian for survival, Velyamma grew spinach, Okra and Brinjals in our garden.  Velyamma, sitting on a rickety bench on the veranda, counting her coins, which she kept in her pan box, was a regular sight.

By the time Achan was released from jail two years later, Velyamma had stomach ulcers.

She died soon after. She was my surrogate mother.

 

Going down with a Splash

 Going down with a Splash

Johnson is on his usual ’find someone else to blame’ mission. So, we have a cabinet reshuffle going on right now. They call it rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic. Ministers with unheard 0f portfolios are surfacing.  ‘Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency’ – what does that entail? That is Rees-Mogg’s new elevation for his staunch and blind support. Is Johnson admitting inefficiency within his cabinet?

             Strange day. I am still trying to get over the Johnson-Jimmy Saville outburst. We know his policy is all scorched earth (I hope his supporters know that.) He is brutally dishonest and almost a sociopath in his complete disregard of how the rest of the world is affected by his tantrums. And he is scavenging at the bottom of the barrel to last another day, another breath.

             My consolation is that the longer Johnson draws out his exfiltration, the greater the disappointment of the Tory voters. That can’t be all bad.

             I am eager to see the left and the right of Labour patch up, join hands and seek the common good. I am encouraged by the noises Momentum is making recently. I am, without doubt, a Corbynite. But Starmer will do – or Yvette Cooper, David Lammy,  Ashford, Ed Milliband …  We are rich in talent and commitment.

             Meanwhile fingers crossed. And toes and hair and eyes…

NORTH MALABAR IN THE NINETEEN-FORTIES

NORTH MALABAR IN THE NINETEEN-FORTIES 

Sometimes, the world disappoints – the squabbling for power at the top in many countries, the huge gaping void between the lives of the rich and the poor, the careless wars started for the aggrandizement of the Arms industry… In the Summer I can escape into my garden; in the Winter gloom descends.

                I take refuge in the past; I can pretend the bad things that happened never really happened! It was another world anyway. I flip the pages of old photo albums and the years slip away:

There’s me and my Achan. We are in Gunther’s studio. Gunther is not a Malayalee and I never found out how he got washed up on the second storey of a narrow building on Big Bazaar Road in Thalassery. He puts me on a high stool and I am terrified. Achan quickly pulls a chair up and sits next to me, with his arm behind me. We were a team even then.

                As I grew up, he organised massive rear-guard action to prevent me from going ‘native’ like all the women in his extended family, who stopped going to school as soon as they became literate. Around ten years of age and well before puberty set in. They spent their lives in one kitchen or another. In the 1940s there were few schools in Thalassery; it was not considered worthwhile to send girls to school. They would marry at fifteen years or so and disappear into an in-law kitchen.

    When I started my periods, my aunt thought she had won the battle. She pounced. ‘She is impure now. For three days, this girl should sit outside, not touch anything, sleep in the utility room…’ ‘Nonsense,’ Achan shouted back. He won. We never mentioned periods thereafter.

     Achan would not even let me spend time in the kitchen. He took me with him walking most days, and gave me poems to learn in Malayalam and English. Vallathol and Tennyson were my worst enemies. I still hate both. Later I discovered Aashaan’s Karuna and became a convert to Malayalam poetry. English, of course, was the language of instruction in schools until Independence; school took care of ‘Wandere’d lonely as a cloud’ and Paradise Lost, Book 4, and Merchant of Venice… I migrated around from there, like Omicron.

We didn’t have a radio till the late forties. But, I do remember that I heard of Gandhiji’s death on the radio, when they started his favourite hymns and songs on a loop. ; Vaishnava Janathom… ’ and ‘Raghupathi Raghava raja ram’. My father’s name was Raghavan and he insisted that song was sung to honour him!

                Till the late forties we had no theatre either. During the dry season, when the harvest was in, a field would be levelled and a tent erected on it. We saw travelling cinemas in there; if it rained, water poured down the sides of the tent-poles and we ran for our lives. We had to make up our own amusements – gossip, visiting neighbours, religious ceremonies, temples…

                Life was simple and make-do.