Colombo, Here I Come!

In 1957, the country was called Ceylon. When I heard from my family that I was going to get married to this man from Ceylon, my first thought was, what do we know about him? His job, his degree, his salary, my family had investigated all that – as to the man himself, zilch. I had seen him once, when he came for the ‘seeing’. He was quiet, didn’t speak to me, and kept his head down. For us middle-class girls, there was only one way of getting out of affectionate incarceration in the family home – marriage. I had graduated three years ago, was not allowed to work, did not meet men. Many of us escaped through marriage. It was a lottery. My mother-in-law was the familiar mistress of my new home in Colombo; my father-in-law was quite ga-ga at the age of eighty-three, and they lived in this enormous half-empty, house in a posh part of Ceylon, near Colpetty. The bed-rooms were the size of throw-ball courts and the kitchen was ruled over by a young Tamil girl called Pakyam, who did not want me anywhere near her territory. My kind sister-in-law, Kamala, lived a five-minute walk away, and made a concerted effort to take me around, generally introduce me to the Colombo-7 posh set, to which she belonged. I wore whatever came to hand from my small suitcase. I washed my knee-length hair every morning as Malayalee girls did, put Cuticura powder on my face, and a red pottu on my forehead. Eye make-up was the ‘Mayyi’ made for me by my maternal grandmother, mixing clean soot off a new mud-pot in gingelly oil. On my first Saturday in Colombo, Kamala decided to take me to the Eighty club, where all the socialites met to compare clothes, jewellery and circulate gossip. When she came to pick me up, I was already dressed and waiting. White cotton sari and a green blouse. Kamala looked at me, up and down. 'Haven’t you got any silks?' she asked me. I opened my suitcase. She prodded and put everything back, except one of my three silk sarees. She didn’t look happy. I knew I had been found wanting. She came again the next Saturday (full marks for effort) and invited me to dinner at her best friend’s home. Kamala’s husband was an imposing man, and I looked forward to a whole evening in his company. We generally enjoyed talking politics, Indian and Ceylonese. He had occupied slots in the higher echelons of Ceylon Government and had interesting stories to tell. And an infectious laugh. He was also tall and handsome, which was a bonus. This time, Kamala insisted my blouse did not match my sari and fretted till she found one that got close. The next time she invited me, I begged off. This was all beyond me.

My Conjoint Family

My Conjoint Family 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 one teen in our home 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, but my cousin, Mani, who shared radio time with me 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 an untidy smorgasbord 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 by Russel 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 She died soon after. She was my surrogate mot, 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. Achan lost his mother and sister while he was in jail.