Old India --Old Thalassery
1938. I was three-and-half years old. I am not supposed to remember the day, but I do. There was only one photographer in Thalassery in the forties, and his name was Gunther. (Kodak box cameras were yet to arrive.) His studio was on the top floor of a line of shops on the road to Big Bazaar. The cement stairway to this room was a challenge, so Achan carried me up.
This old sepia photo brings it all back. It is scarred and faint in places; what do you expect after eight decades? Gunther has a tall tripod with a black cloth to use as a cover for his lenses. He arranges me and my father in a pose -- Achan on a chair and me on a tall stool next to him.. I remember the height worried me, so Achan put his arm around me. Nothing could ever go wrong when I had that arm holding me.
My father was a lawyer, just under thirty years old at that time. My mother had died the previous year; after that he took over every aspect of my little life: what I wore, my personal hygiene, my learning, my health, my happiness. He bought the material for my clothes from P A Chettiar's shop, and Shekharan Mesthri, a few doors away, did the tailoring. Another two doors away, on the edge of the bus-stand roundabout was my barber -- no hair dressers then.
Before bed, my father made sure I washed my feet and had my evening wash. His sister and niece had instructions to remove lice from my hair (I had many). Every night, I had to drink a cup of milk. For many years after my mother's death, Achan lived in fear of my getting the tuberculosis that had killed her at eighteen years. When I was a hefty thirteen year old, to the eternal amusement of the doctor, he still periodically marched me to the doctor to check my lungs. I also had to ingest cod liver oil till I became too fat at fifteen and had to stop.
I lived in those slips such as the one I was wearing in the photo until I was of school-age. Nobody wore shoes or sandals in those days. Achan had a pair of shoes for the Courts and wooden clogs for the house. Generally, he wore a mundu and shirt, with a jacket as in the photo, on special occasions. In 1981, when he visited me in England, he still wore the same outfit, minus the jacket.
That was then. Now my grand daughter has a wardrobe full of dazzling clothes and shoes and slippers for all occasions. When I got married, I was barefooted as I had been all my life. I got one pair of slippers to travel to Colombo where my new husband lived.
Life was pared down and sharing was the order of the day. With family, with poor neighbours, with anyone who was needy.
I took my father's care for granted, without realising, that in that little town, and at that time, not many fathers made time to nurture their daughters.
I was lucky.
