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.