The LEADERS Larry, the No 10 cat, and eleven others are all hoping to be our P M. Couldn’t be more diverse. Men, women, Asian men, cat… All it needs is for Priti Toxic Patel to join the motley bunch of would-be-leaders. The Press don’t know what is really going on, how to separate the aspirants, where to show their power. Boris had been their man until they did a Mark Anthony on him. When you create a Frankenstein, you must expect it to turn on you. All the contestants have talked about tax cuts and not much else. The thought of money reigns supreme. There is no mention about the cost-of-living crisis, the pressure on the NHS or Ruanda. One must assume that all of them favour sending immigrants to Rwanda and keeping quiet about the Brexit disaster. If you don’t mention it, it might go away. Is this pervasive racism in the Country, or the obligatory racism to succeed in the party? True blue as a ‘Cruella’ supporter calls Braverman. And – Boris is hanging on as P M, the characteristic smirk absent. My worry is the appalling lack of talent, principles, or any real political intent beyond the acquisition of power. What’s Rishi Sunak got to offer anyone but himself? And he leads the pack, I understand. Liz Truss’s ignorance, Hunt’s opportunism… Who will rid us of this scurrilous lot?

The LEADERS Larry, the No 10 cat, and eleven others are all hoping to be our P M. Couldn’t be more diverse. Men, women, Asian men, cat… All it needs is for Priti Toxic Patel to join the motley bunch of would-be-leaders. The Press don’t know what is really going on, how to separate the aspirants, where to show their power. Boris had been their man until they did a Mark Anthony on him. When you create a Frankenstein, you must expect it to turn on you. All the contestants have talked about tax cuts and not much else. The thought of money reigns supreme. There is no mention about the cost-of-living crisis, the pressure on the NHS or Ruanda. One must assume that all of them favour sending immigrants to Rwanda and keeping quiet about the Brexit disaster. If you don’t mention it, it might go away. Is this pervasive racism in the Country, or the obligatory racism to succeed in the party? True blue as a ‘Cruella’ supporter calls Braverman. And – Boris is hanging on as P M, the characteristic smirk absent. My worry is the appalling lack of talent, principles, or any real political intent beyond the acquisition of power. What’s Rishi Sunak got to offer anyone but himself? And he leads the pack, I understand. Liz Truss’s ignorance, Hunt’s opportunism… Who will rid us of this scurrilous lot?

The Westminster Shenanigans I expect there are a great many people like me watching the soap-opera unfolding in Westminster today. We are still waiting for Johnson as he is getting his suit buttons restored, and his shirt ironed, before coming out to the podium, to resign. I just wish he had stayed till the next general election – he was the best argument Labour could have had for defeating the Tories. However, I suppose the Country is more important than the party. I have a huge confusion in my head – no, no, no – not due to age. I had this cerebral image in my head, long-standing, as I was forcibly fed this lie in History lessons in my schooldays in India. I blame the Sacred Heart. A Mother of Parliament, where democracy prevailed in its purest form. Jesus Wept! So, what do I think of a popinjay like Johnson? How did the Tories allow him to crawl into power? Why did they not get rid of him many months ago? There were so many occasions when he let the Country down – the Brexit debacle still being played out, Parytgate… Other unmentionable misdemeanours. They were all clinging to power while they looked away from the sleaze that was the Tory parliamentary party. They are all complicit and should be booted out. WE NEED A GENERAL ELECTION – NOW I say this with some pride – I am a die-hard Socialist. Left of left. I believe wealth needs to be redistributed and the foodbanks are a disgrace to the United Kingdom. I hope Labour, when it comes into power has the backbone to do this.

The Galle Face Beach There was a routine in my husband’s home. Every evening, after coming home from work, Balan (my just-unwrapped husband) would take his parents to the Galle Face beach and park the car alongside all the other cars lined up, descanting families greedy for the evening air. He would then guide his father to the edge of the beach and the old man would walk the length of the beach and return to the car. Balan would accompany him on his slow walk while my mother-in-law stayed in the car. He is a good man, I would say to myself, about this stranger whom I had married. Balan insisted that I accompanied the threesome in the evenings; so I would sit in the back of the car with the mother and look at the crowds on the beach. Far away and across from us, the limousines drew up in the grand portico of the Galle Face hotel. Behind us the traffic speeded towards the Fort, the shopping enclave of the rich in the city. I begged out of the daily Galle Face parade after a few days, much to the consternation of my husband I started searching for reading matter. An addiction was waiting to be fed. In desperation at finding nothing, I went up to the disused storeroom at the top of our home. There was a Dutch almirah there with a glass front; I opened it and the silverfish ran about frantically, as old books with yellowed pages tumbled out. All on religion, but I had reached a point of no return. I had to find reading material. I grabbed a copy of the translation of Bhagawath Geetha in English, blew away the dust on it and took it down. Next day, my sister-in-law came by to tempt me to a dance. She saw the book I was reading and had a good laugh. ‘On your honeymoon and you are reading Geetha,’ she chortled. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that honey and moon would not be enough for me. I was addicted to the printed word. And I did go for that dance where fell in love with the joyous rhythms of the Singhalese Byela.

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.

My Ancestral Village

My Ancestral Village We, my Achan and I, lived in Thalasseri, only four miles from the houses where my father and my mother were born, themselves only ten minutes' walk away from each other. As I grew up, I visited these villages – Kodiyeri and Moozikkara, about once a year, when my mother’s family came on annual leave (my grandfather was a guard in the South India Railways, posted to Thamabaram in the outskirts of Madras, now called Chennai.) There was no electricity in the villages, and I was scared of the dark in the compounds. I didn’t really know my mother’s siblings very well though they were roughly my age l; in any case they looked too smart for me – they had pretty school uniforms and were self-sufficient in a way I was not, at seven years of age. The fact that they spoke with a slight Tamil accent some of the time did not help. I would spend two days with them and go home to my lighted-up, Court Road, with buses lumbering past, and fishermen bringing fresh catch to our backdoor. Clearly, I missed the noise and bustle. Later, much later, I would walk straight from college to my aunt’s house. At the edge of our town, you stepped suddenly into a vast green expanse of banana and tapioca plantations that went on – and on – and on. My aunt’s home had a huge compound with a pool in one corner. She had cows and calves and lived off the land. Lunch would often be red spinach and cucumber straight off her vegetable patch. Supper may be jack fruit mash. The food was alien but the moong dhal and rice were familiar. And her unhusked rice fresh off her fields was slightly pink in colour and delicious. The evenings started early with the sound of children in the neighbourhood chanting evening prayers. The dark, when it came, on moonless nights was total and the silence deafening. Before the town bus service started in Thalassery in the early fifties, we walked on the narrow bunds between the paddy fields to reach my aunt’s house. When the new shoots were planted, with the start of the rainy season, you saw miles of tender green stretches floating in pink water. I wanted to grow up quickly and find the words to describe that village. I am still trying.