A Forgotten World.

Talking about your hometown, which you visit for two short weeks every second year, is slightly hypocritical. Let's face it: this blog is about undiluted nostalgia, which I believe is an old person's congenital illness. If I look too closely I might find things that at the time I grew up, were a tad unpleasant.
   I hated the latrine detail -- the family that came to empty our shit buckets made me desperately sad. Most of the time, it was a young man who came; he did his job, hoisted the big bucket on to his shoulder and carried it to the waiting Tellicherry Municipal Council cart. TMC. We called it, Theetam, Moothram, Cashtom, i.e. shit, pee and garbage.
   Very occasionally a young woman came instead of him. She was pretty and saucy, smiled at everyone who met her eye, and would greet the telegraph poles if no one talked to her. She would ask for a drink and Achamma would give her a drink of conjee water, standing as far away from the woman as she could. I would dance around Ammamma and speak to the woman; she loved that. When I got married and left India in 1954, there was still no sewage system in Thalassery. It was only in the sixties that septic toilets became commonplace and the latrine-man became redundant.
   Thalassery was a small town in which, apart from two or three businessmen, who dealt in petrol or dry good,s everyone else was either poor or a notch above. 

   We bought a list of dry goods,-- rice, wheat and pulses -- and coconut oil, once a month -- it cost a glorious twenty-seven rupees. To get it in perspective, though, a doctor's home visit would cost five rupees, a gunny-bag of rice was eleven rupees and a yard of printed cotton was half a rupee onward. My college saris were between ten and fifteen rupees each of them. The fifteen rupee one was the precious khatau voile. I got six saris at the beginning of each year. Indeed, my wedding-sari was a breath-taking one hundred and five rupees. Six yards of Benares silk, generously decorated with gold thread for the present price of a man's vest.

   With lock-down time to spare, I have been taking a closer look at that time when we didn't consider a car an essential middle-class object, when plane travel was for the rich few, and nothing was made of plastic or nylon. Not long ago. I am talking about the early fifties when I was a young girl with limited aspirations, and life was perfect because I had three meals a day, and I knew every family who lived down our road. Without road-lights, I could see the entire night-sky on a rain-less day and a friend of my father's taught me to identify them by their constellations.

People of the World, Unite. Our leaders are Vile.

Look at the leader-list: Trump, Johnson, Modi, Bolsanaro...  A lying money-grubber; a lazy, lying, incompetent buffoon; a racist, Hindu fanatic, who ignores India's secular constitution; a tyrant who disposes of opponents in multiple, creative ways. Add Putin and you have a world in the throes of a blustering, mindless parade of leaders and parties, interested only in staying in power and self-aggrandizement. As for citizens, the devil take the hindmost.
   It is the buffoon that we in England have to suffer. I look at his disheveled, incompetent, glib comments, with that offensive smug smile on his face, whatever he is talking about, and I think --  that's it, it is a scarecrow he reminds me of. A straw thatch on top, a flat featureless countenance, which cannot show empathy; looking often as though he slept in yesterday's clothes and didn't have time to get clean before the cameras arrived.
   What is the hold that our very own Rasputin-Cummings have on our stammering, stuttering Prime Minister? Today I am listening to the Government's (Gove - Cummings Partnership) plans to get schools functioning completely in September. From the plans unveiled today, we can see the hands of people who have not been in a school for many, many years. Bubbles for six-year-olds? That will be something to watch. And how far will the teachers stand -- inside or outside the bubble -- from their charges, for whom they are, while in school, in loco parentis.  While the little ones sing 'ring-a-ring-a roses' gleefully, and collapse in a heap within the bubble, where is the teacher going to stand?
   At today's unexpected Downing Street briefing, Jenny Harris, the voice of government health said that 'schools are very important for children.' My, My MY... I didn't know that.
   With this silly government we are scuppered. Any ideas , teacher friends?  I am wondering how we stop teenagers wandering around, wherever. Just look in any park. I still cannot fathom the unholy haste to let the doors open on the lock-down.  Even the limited intelligence available in the Government must know we are in for another long, hard spike of the virus.
   Incidentally, I wonder -- can the Government really force parents to send children to school and fine them if they don't go??? Just a thought.
   Also, is it true that Gavin Williamson is going back to do his A levels?

Spilling out of Burrows

Today, suddenly, there is a quickening of eager life on the roads. On the residential road on which I live, along with many other oldish or middle aged families, the people are briskly about. On Brighton Road, which is fifteen minutes' walk downhill, the noise of traffic is getting back to its urgent hum. The road behind our house is pounding and rattling to the familiar, earth-shaking noise, of heavy duty vehicles. I am deeply, deeply concerned that we have learned nothing after the death of forty-thousand plus people. We seem to be ready to jump right back into our destructive lives.
   In the last ten weeks, there has been blessed peace in my back garden. The bees and moths are back, the birds are chattering away near my bird table, and from their nests, mother-birds warn me off when I go towards the trees on which they live. Or, perhaps, they are merely greeting me. How quickly they forgave us our trespasses. There is enough room for all of us on this planet, I think. Why do we threaten nature away?
   I am so grateful that the birds, moths and bees are willing to give us a second chance. They are such a benediction. We simply cannot afford to go back to our wanton ways.
   I consider what I, personally, can do, my little bit to avoid disastrous climate change. So, I shall, for a start, stop cooking beef in this house. This one's easy as we are not great meat eaters anyway. In winter, may be, we can keep the heating in the house a notch lower. Not easy for me, as I am the one with cold limbs. Instead of one pair of woolen socks, I shall have to wear two. An extra jumper would help too.
   As for the car, we have to consider it as a luxury, not an indulgence for those short trips to the local corner shop or park. The best way would be if families could share transport for school drop-offs and pick-ups. We tried that once, but evening activities in schools were all over the place. And, in the whole process, there was little or no goodwill. Yet, when I worked in Wickford and lived in Laindon, four of us teachers went to work in Bob Ashford's car, and paid him fifty pence a week for the privilege. Very civilised. Until public transport becomes safe it would be a good idea to share.
   Long distance flights are something we have taken for granted, with family in India, and friends all over Africa. That will have to stop. More Skype conversations, perhaps??
   We could all shop less, buy less. Indeed the whole idea of shopping as a desirable social or leisure activity, is one only affluent societies indulge in. In India, where prosperity has slowly advanced, middle-class folk still do not go shopping for fun. You go to the shops or market because you need something specific.
   Not buying more than we NEED, avoiding waste, is probably the first thing we can all consider. No one needs a wardrobe suffocating with tops and shirts and footwear overflowing.
   Here endeth my lesson for the day!!
 
 
   

A CLUSTER F--K OF U TURNS

What is the collective noun for U TURNS? There have been quite a few by the Boris herd -- we have to have a name for them. STRING OF U TURNS? AN EMBARRASSMENT OF U TURNS? A Cluster f..k of u turns?
   Actually I don't care how it came about -- bless Rashford -- but if the children get their meals I am on the side of whosoever provides them. Tax payer?
   Therese Coffey needs a few lessons on poverty, such as a definition of it, which works for her. Will, 'hungry but no food coming' work? In this respect I have no problems. Food poverty is crystal clear to me from the visual images of my childhood. It is unforgettable. I watched the refugees from Pakistan begging from house to house in my little town, Thalassery, in Kerala. Since they didn't know Malayalam, they touched their lips and stretched their cupped palms out, looking at us imploringly. Achamma (grandmother) saved Conjee water for them when she drained the rice daily, and dropped a handful of rice in it, to give it more substance. She kept half coconut shells handy to serve them.   The ragged children hid behind the mothers; no men in the beggar-stream. Where were the fathers? Now, there are no beggars to speak of in India.
   In the late forties, a young man from the neighborhood came to our house in the evenings to help me and my two cousins with our homework. His mother, who had eight boys to feed,  pleaded with Achamma to take him on -- -You don't need to pay him,' she said. 'Just give him an evening meal.' He was a bright young man, who rose to the highest echelons of the local civil service. The whole community was very proud of him.
   Hats off to Marcus Rashford. Pity he isn't playing for Liverpool.

 
   

Learn in Schools?

Learn in Schools?? Or are they convenient places to park children while we make money, gossip, quarrel, go shopping... Because I figure children will not learn the valuable things they need to learn by a 'social distancing' school environment. They'll learn no more than my granddaughter does by 'isolating' herself in her room with mobile phone, laptop, make-up stuff. mirror... And Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
   Children need to learn to negotiate their social environment, chatter, play, love, hug, shout, ask questions, make friends, quarrel, make up... Even criticise, question...   Every day, when my granddaughter proceeds to schools, her skirt just that half centimetre shorter than it should be, I don't say to her, 'Focus. Learn a lot.' Instead I say, 'Be happy, be kind.' And when she comes back in the evening with an avalanche of news, 'He said, she said, and she is like...' , I merely ask, 'And what did you do for someone else today?  She disdains to answer me; old people are so strange.
   And do these silly suits in office really believe children will be irreparably damaged by not going to school for a month, a half-year? My children, two boys and a girl were born in many countries, in some where schools started at eight years and boasted no reception classes. They are not exceptionally able or disciplined. And I certainly was not a demanding parent. Indeed I was not even around a great deal of the time, as I was teaching 'other people's children' in strange and distant places. My sons and daughter among themselves garnered four Masters degrees and a Ph.D, while somewhere along the way, I managed to do evening classes and an M A in Education. In spite of all that EDUCATION, we are extremely flawed individuals.
   Children have to be in places that other children gather and school is one of many places this can happen. We have to make that possible soon, but not while the two-metre rule applies.
   I know of at least two families who taught their children at home, and the children did as well or as badly in their GCSEs as anyone else. {Another blog some time on the monstrous imposition on parents and children called exams. What a way to calibrate a child as a functioning individual!)
   And, I hate to say this: so many teachers are damaged and weary by their every-day; I was one of them for many years.  We have no lien on knowledge of any kind, let alone child-rearing wisdom. There are some great individuals among teachers and children benefit hugely from their humanity, but they are very few. Most are like me -- chasing the material for the next lesson, catching up on marking homework from weeks ago, marking essays without consistency or objectivity...
   And now I will probably have a deluge of complaints from good teachers (whatever they are), so I shall go into hiding. SELF ISOLATION??

A Strange Childhood

I write these memories down because it is only with age that I realise how strange my childhood was -- strange, that is, in comparison with other Indian girls of my age. I think other girls in my school-year found me a little strange too: my reading marathons, my political views, (most of my friends had no views at age ten), my short, boyish hair, and my careless clothes and appearance.
   After Achan (father) went to jail in 1942 for being a local leader in the Independence battle, things went further downhill. I remember I was in a school concert in 1943 and I didn't have a dress suitable for the stage. The teachers produced a pink satin dress and Rukmini teacher took her gold necklace off and put it round my neck. She had borrowed the dress from another girl in my class; It helped that the girl had a mother. 
   My father did not notice little things like clothes anyway even when he was around. He checked my hair, clipped my nails with a '7 o'clock' second hand blade, which he had finished with, and taught me things like how to write the number eight. A bit of a battle that; I had trouble getting the loops to close, especially as my writing lessons were on sand spread on the parapet of our veranda.
   Achan had good reason to keep my hair short, however -- it was full of lice. Every weekend I had to spend time getting the lice and nit out, only for them to come back with a vengeance a week later. When I got married I was terrified the lice would migrate to the hair of my new husband. That would have been quite a scandal. At some point during my early married years, the lice left. I wonder, was there a message there?
   As for books, there was a small glass-fronted almirah in the narrow corridor that ran the length of my school block, one for each class. Except it was for children with only a moderate desire to read - if forced. I generally finished the almirah's stock of fairy tales (fairy tales from Greece, Rumania, every conceivable country in Europe) and moved on to the next almirah in a term. In my standard 9, I had travelled the entire corridor and was looking for another book-habitat. My father took me down to the Victoria Library in town, and enrolled me. It was a dark and musty room with hardly another visitor, still a necessary right of passage. And  - it stocked Malayalam books too.
   It was only when I joined the Brennen College at age fifteen, that I went ballistic. Here was a library with long alley-ways full of books. You could get lost in there. I visited so often that the librarian started saving new consignments for me before he stamped them. What a discovery that library was! By the time our lecturer started on Shakespeare's Julius Caesar,  in my first year at College, I had read it and knew Mark Antony's speech by heart. I stumbled upon 'The Tempest' next and realised how limited my understanding was.
   Today, I think--  why did my young,widowed father spend so much time doing his Professor Higgins act on me, when he should have been out at the Cosmopolitan Club having a good time with his friends? That club is a whole other story. 

Rituals and Culture

I am reminiscing, what old people normally do when they have been restrained in one living space. We have been discussing Harari's HOMO SAPIENCE and his legends:
   According to Harari, humans have taken refuge in many myths. Ideas of religion, God, even our international banking systems, he argued, are convenient constructs. These structures console us in bad times. give us sanctuary, and situate us in comfortable surrounds. We need them, so we accept them and suspend disbelief. For instance, we hand over our money to banks across national barriers, comfortable in our belief that when we want our money back, it will be swiftly returned to us. When banking systems collapse we forget that we built them up and gave them credibility, and we are outraged.
  So I have been thinking about elaborate cultural practices -- I was well-placed to examine them as I was a Hindu girl growing up surrounded by Muslim houses. Their children were my childhood playmates, their men ran our corner shop and their women exchanged gossip with us over the broken down compound wall.
  But, when it came to ceremonies and practices, the divergence was palpable. When Hindu girls got married, they left their homes for good and followed a strange man (if it was an arranged marriage) to his home, after shedding a few obligatory tears, or, as in my case, sobbing my heart out for leaving my Achan (father), who was the only person I loved in the whole world.
  Muslim girls had no such problems . When they got married, the bridegroom just turned up in the evenings, after supper, and left early in the morning. The girl now, would get an ara, a room of her own, where she would collect and display little tokens of her married life.
  Aliyumma lived across the gully from our back garden. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Flawless complexion and beautiful features, not to mention a smile to die for. Muslims in those days married early. Aliyumma had stopped hopping across the gully to play with me when she started menstruating. She had always worn a flimsy thattom,, an apology for a face cover. It was always a small thorthu (bath towel) twisted around and under her hair. She taught me how to secure it without pins or slides. Interestingly, she never wore a burqha, the full-length head-to-foot gown that is now common practice in parts of the world. And ugly beyond despair.
  Aliyumma also stopped going to school at about the same time. When I asked, her Umma (mothersaid she would soon get married. She was all of thirteen years old. Our world diverged, mine to college and exams, hers to visiting husband and babies. Her husband worked in the Indian Navy and he wasn't around very much. When I went to her ara she would show me the small bottles of attar in her display almirah, silk scarves, crockery that had been presented to her... And she would giggle, carrying secrets that an unmarried me could not guess.
  Sometime later I heard her husband died quite young. I had lost touch with her when I myself married and left India.
  On one of my recent visits to my hometown, Thalassery, I stopped off at a textile shop near the bus stand to buy dothis as a birthday gift for a favourite friend and relative, Balettan. I spoke in Malayalam to the owner when I reached the counter to pay.
  'You are from Thalassery, I can see, from your Malayalam accent,' the shopkeeper exclaimed.
   'Yes, I lived near those fields on Court Road. My father was a lawyer.'
  He was Muslim, this shopkeeper; so I asked whether he knew my friend, Aliyumma.
  ''She was my Umma,' he said. 'She died quite young.'
  I had married into a westernized Sri-Lankan family, went where I pleased, and worked as a teacher.
  Aliyumma did not stand a chance.