with another distraction: Satchin showed me how to open the catch of the chicken coop so they would all run freely on the compound and Amin, the hand, had to go and catch them all. Amin would panic at seeing the chickens everywhere and we would watch him jump up and down, running around chasing them. The driver only helped if he wasn’t too busy combing his hair in the car mirror or sitting in the front seat admiring his newly acquired decorations. When he did help, we would jump into the front seat of the car, lock the doors and begin playing with the horn.
‘Sahib will be very upset with you,’ he shouted through the side window.
Sahib was what he called my Achan but Achan was never upset with us. He got upset with other people, sometimes he shouted at them fiercely, like when the guard kept him waiting at the gate and didn’t open it quickly enough, but he never said anything to us. If anything, when he was there he let us do things that even Ammamma wouldn’t let us do.
This was because Achan was away a lot and so he really missed us. When he came back, he brought us many gifts from faraway places. Dolls for me and normally aeroplanes for Satchin and presents for Amma, too. We weren’t allowed to play with all our toys; some of the really special ones Achan kept locked in a glass cabinet in the sitting room so when visitors came they could see what we had. On these days, Amma also wore the clothes and jewellery bought for her. If it was a special occasion, we could take our toys out, one at a time, but we had to promise that we wouldn’t lose them, break them or take them outside.
Then Achan stopped buying us things because he went to a place called London. Before he went, he gave me a little golden Labrador. Satchin and I fought over the puppy because I was sure that Achan said it was for me. ‘Mol, this is especially for you because I am going to miss you very much. He’s called Tikko and he will look after you,’ he said, handing me the puppy. Amma explained that it was for sharing but that is not what I heard. I thought Achan would come home soon to sort it out but he was away for ages and we didn’t see him for what seemed to be a very, very long time.
When my Achan went away, Amma and Ammamma did strange things and were particularly busy making bundles of food which they sent somewhere with the driver. The house was also always full of people. One day it got particularly busy and there was much activity going on; banana leaves were collected, the veranda was decorated with flower petals, and it felt like the whole town had come to visit us. Ammamma said it was to celebrate Onam, a festival to give thanks for the harvest.
This Onam thing confused me because it kept changing; sometimes it was in August, sometimes in September, but Ammamma said that was because the calendar went according to the phases of the moon and then she began yet another story, this time about a king, but because she told me so many, I couldn’t remember it. The servants, their families and the neighbours didn’t care much about that king story either because they were busy polishing off the food, but they nodded fervently with their mouths full as she was trying to explain it to them.
Other times, the neighbours came with their elderly parents and their children who also finished off all of the food, every crumb, so even the red ants had nothing to fight over. Occasionally, a vada would unwittingly fall out of someone’s pocket as they said their goodbyes and made their way back home. At that moment, every conceivable life form made its way towards the food but normally Tikko got it first. The crows would screech with disappointment and attempt their fourth or fifth assault on the rice that lay in the sun but Aya was too quick for them and she waved them away with her palm switch. The polecat looked disappointed and took her eye from the crows and moved swiftly onto the chickens, just in case one of them escaped from the coop. Often, the polecat had to settle for a lazy lizard that couldn’t be bothered to move quickly enough in the hot sun and if this was the case, the polecat gobbled him up. Ammamma said you had to always be observant, even with nature, because predators were always about, waiting for an opportunity to descend on the vulnerable. She reminded me about the predator every time we went out of the enclave and as the only time we did this was when we went to the beach, I took the predator to mean the sea.
It was a long ride to the beach on a bumpy rickshaw. Ammamma shouted at the driver to avoid the potholes but he never took any notice and so we bounced up and down on the seat. On the way there we saw lots of rickshaws and taxis lined up like an army of yellowback beetles who had suddenly escaped from wherever they were trapped. It was like a race for them all to be first to get to where they were going and they left behind trails of smoke. Once we were at the beach, Ammamma would run into the waves and urge me to follow, but I was scared, the sea was a predator after all, so I dipped my toes in whilst she ran in with all her clothes on. We then sat together on the rocks to wait for her clothes to dry. ‘The sea has many answers, Mol, just sit and listen to it and it will bring back the pace.’ She described ‘the pace’ as a universal pulse. If you felt the pace, you could see the signs but the difficulty wasn’t really in seeing the signs but interpreting them. ‘Feel it, Mol, breathe it, listen to the waves and you’ll hear all the answers.’ The only answer I wanted to hear was her say yes to the balloon seller who often came up to us as we sat there. I was desperate for her to buy me one of his long balloons that he had twisted into an animal shape, but she never did. Other children rallied around him, fascinated by the shapes he had twisted, but knowing they could never have one, not unless he gave them away and this was highly unlikely. Ammamma said that they didn’t have Achans or Ammas who could buy one for them and that is why they looked sad and scruffy. ‘But we can do things for them, we can make them feel that someone is listening to their prayers and that magic exists,’ she said. So every time we went, we buried rupees and paisas along the beach. ‘All anyone needs is a little hope so that they are able to trust, and from trust, amazing things can happen,’ she informed me as we dug the money into the sand. What we did on the beach was our secret and I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone that, not even Achan when he came back, or, she said, she would be upset.
Ammamma hardly ever got upset and she only shouted at us once when Satchin and I kicked over the mountain of colourful spices that she had left out to dry. It went everywhere, staining the white walls with bright yellows, oranges, reds and browns. Nobody could clean it off, not even the dhobi, but that was hardly surprising as Ammamma said she wasn’t very good at removing stains. She said she was sorry she shouted at us but it wasn’t because of the mess we had made, but the lack of respect we showed for the spices. ‘You have to treat them with respect because they can do magical things,’ she explained. We didn’t see what magical things they did but we said we were sorry and that we would help Amin whitewash the walls. Ammamma said that we had done enough. The walls would have been whitewashed the next day had the postman not arrived with a telegram.
Amma tipped the postman, took the telegram and said that it was from England. Ammamma looked nervously at her.
‘He wants us to go and join him there as soon as we can,’ she said to Ammamma sadly. ‘It will only be for a short while, a year. He says he desperately misses the children and me. I am also to sell the house as soon as I can.’
Ammamma nodded.
‘Ma, I don’t want to go to England. If we have to go, you’ll come with us, won’t you?’
Ammamma didn’t say anything.
‘Come, we need you, the children need you,’ she pleaded.
Ammamma looked at her, looked down at me, and then back at her.
‘He’s left a number to call him. I’ll sort it all out and arrange it, Ma, you’ll see.’
I ran to find Satchin to tell him that we were going to England to be with our Achan. He was helping Amin collect coconuts and dumped the basket on the floor, running to find Amma. ‘Is it true, Amma? Is it true that we are going to England on an aeroplane? Is it?’
‘Yes, Monu,’ she said, but she looked very disappointed.
That is how I remember it. The telegram came and then time went at an exaggerated pace, like the hour hand decided to become the second hand so that it could make up for the things we had missed with Achan. Amma frantically began to sell the furniture and found the servants other positions in the town. Our dog Tikko sensed the chaos and left home so he didn’t have to say goodbye. Sellers were turned