sleeping in Jack’s little office at the Theosophical Society where he’s doing his research. People are generous. The Y kept my backpack in the luggage room. I kept on using their bathroom too and they turned a blind eye, so whenever I saw Louise I always had wet hair and smelt of soap, although my clothes needed a wash. I was hoping Sherry wouldn’t get upset by my dirty clothes and want to start washing again, but she was over that.
Louise and I talked a bit about Sherry. I reckon, if it wasn’t the antimalarials, it was the harassment from the men. Louise and I said goodbye again.
I’m back home. It’s bloody freezing. Sherry’s home with her family up north but I can’t visit, not just yet. There’s the email. My dissertation’s growing on the computer. I shouldn’t be writing this. But you know what Louise told me seems true, here I am writing this and the dissertation is coming along. I’ve shown some chapters to my supervisor, who says it’s fine. Louise was right. And anyway I know the dyslexia clears. It’s a miracle.
I got an email from Louise. ‘Send me your chapters as you do them. I’ll suggest changes if any are needed. Probably won’t be any. But I’d love to read it. Such great research!’ As enthusiastic as ever. I haven’t replied. All that India stuff is getting more remote by the minute.
I remember Louise’s recycling story, the earthenware throw-away cups she says tea is served in up north in the trains. The local potter spins them on his wheel, the chai is served in them, then they’re smashed on the station platform, back to the earth.
Box Wallah
We escaped from Kolkata and met Romesh, our Box Wallah. It’s hard to write about Romesh, even though so much time has passed.
How crazy it seems now, a family holiday to India. There were only four of us, my adored son, my only child, Martin, his partner Ursula, my husband Gerard and me. We might have chosen India because Ursula’s always looking for ideas. She’s a screen writer. In my work I deal with fabrics but not much comes from India. I’m not sure it was Ursula’s idea but if so I most likely egged her on. You’d think Gerard, who was a painter, would have strong ideas on the subject, but he was a very non-committal kind of person.
We hadn’t travelled with Martin since our trip to Europe when he was sixteen. And now, just a year ago, Martin’s wedding. His wife Ursula walked up the aisle, and Martin waited, so proud. White flowers hung from every pew, vases on the altar and at the back of the church, the heavy scent of Oriental lilies—I had done the flowers myself, including Ursula’s bouquet, and felt satisfied with my contribution to the celebrations.
A family holiday for our slightly enlarged family, and an opportunity to get to know Ursula better.
We arrived in Kolkata, but stayed there no time at all. Terrible. We were soon exhausted.
The English ‘Madam’ of our hotel, blonde and sixty, had decorated the bedrooms with chintz and wicker armchairs, the public rooms with Raj memorabilia. The solid roasts with three veg, English curries, trifles and so forth were served by waiters wearing many-coloured Rajasthani turbans and white gloves. We rather liked it mind you, even though we hadn’t come to India to take refuge in an English seaside bed and breakfast with exotic overtones. The hotel wasn’t the problem.
The problem was leaving the jasmine scented garden. The street waited, with its beggars, young mothers with a baby wrapped in the corner of the sari, legless boys on skateboards and taxi drivers soliciting our custom, ‘Come, I take you City of Joy’—we knew these were the worst slums in Kolkata—how voyeuristic were we expected to be? We tried to do all the proper visits, Victoria Memorial, the Nehru Children’s Museum, Tagore House. Here’s not the place to recount our audience with Mother Teresa.
We didn’t take to Kolkata.
After a particularly trying day including a lunch at ‘the best’ seafood restaurant with view of the entire city from where we could see nothing because of the pollution, our ‘Madam’ said we needed a rest at a seaside resort. We needed a holiday from our holiday. She suggested we go south a short way to Puri. But really it was Gerard’s recent affliction, asthma, that drove us away from Kolkata. Gerard’s always been a sensitive soul, even without asthma.
Puri. Martin and Ursula let us know that Kolkata had been expensive for them and they were going to stay in budget accommodation. Gerard and I need comfort so we selected a rather gloomy converted palace overlooking the beach. We spent time arranging meetings with Martin and Ursula. Puri was better than Kolkata—well, Gerard nearly died at the beach, but not from the Kolkata type of pollution. Maybe he’d expected a tropical paradise, but by now, I had adopted a bottom-end approach to the whole of India, anything pleasant and easy was a bonus, the rest local colour. Local colour in the form of the stink on the beach—caused by the beach being used as a public lavatory and for the gutting of the fisherman’s catch—nearly caused Gerard to have a nervous breakdown, let alone an asthma attack.
‘You brought me here, woman!’ he shouted, exasperated, as if it were all my fault.
He and Martin later discovered that a fifteen minute walk past the fishing village led one to a cleaner less frequented part of the beach that extended miles to the east. Gerard calmed down, though sometimes he complained about the direction of the wind. He found a safe swimming area—currents on this beach could be treacherous, we were warned.
We settled into holiday mode. Reading books on India and novels to distract us from it, trying veg and non-veg eating places in the temple area, sniffing the air for all those unfamiliar spices and perfumes.
We formed the habit of meeting Martin and Ursula at their scruffy English villa where they had a nice verandah. It was here we met Romesh.
Romesh Mehta became our friend immediately. We sat on the verandah in ill-assorted chairs with sharp bits attacking our buttocks, or perched on the verandah edge with feet on the grass and backs supported by verandah posts. Gerard had bought, duty free, a two pint bottle of gin and a litre of whisky (I’m only describing what the labels said) and in the end he left the bottles in Martin’s room. We were all so comfortable passing time, chatting and drinking gin and tonic (Gerard) whisky soda (Romesh and me) on the verandah. The young ones often ordered lassis from the little restaurant next door. I did warn them that alcohol was safer in India.
We talked first with Romesh about our experience of Calcutta—Romesh never referred to his city in any other way.
‘If only I had met you earlier, I would have greeted you, settled you into a good hotel with good food. All right, your hotel looks quite fine, it has its place. But more important, I would have introduced you to my Calcutta, the parts that only its true sons can reveal.’
I own to a personal leaning towards Indians with dark skins, maybe I feel they are the true India, but I didn’t mind that Romesh had a light complexion as no one could have been more authentic than Romesh. He still had a full head of hair, now white, and his unlined face was youthful, although we judged him to be between sixty and seventy. Gerard was sixty-five. Romesh had only a slight bulge under his white Nehru shirt. His brown lace-ups were highly polished.
‘In the old days, I always wore a grey suit, when I worked for ICC. We had tailors in Calcutta equal to Saville Row tailors in London. Some of them were reputed to have done apprenticeships in Saville Row. Their names were well known within the firm. English gentlemen did not order their suits from them but they recognised these Calcutta tailors as excellent.’ Romesh smiled at me. ‘I still have a good grey suit, old but good enough. These days I wear it to Film Society first nights.’
Sometimes Romesh and I sat alone on the verandah, when Gerard and Martin were out for a walk, and Ursie was reading in her room. It was on these occasions that little by little he told me the story of his life. He never referred to himself as a box wallah, I think I learnt that term later.
He said certain British-owned companies offered advantages which were prized by Indians. Good salaries, company cars and furnished apartments. His was the ICC, known as the Imperial Cotton Company in the early days.
‘The essential was a good education