Palace of Clouds

by Rajyashree Kumari Bikaner

  By 1976, our little house in Edgware was getting a bit small for our requirements. Anupama was growing up fast and my parents, when they came to London in the summer, wanted to stay with us rather than a hotel, which was reasonable. We decided to find a larger house, and this time decided to move somewhat closer to town and picked the Hampstead area which was conveniently accessible to central London and yet, retained its countrified feel. We asked the local estate agents to find us a house with about four bedrooms and in the process saw many beautiful homes as well as some very strange ones. Once we were taken to a very large and somewhat spooky house that was once a convent. It had a veritable maze of small rooms where I expect the nuns must have lived- the house was so large that it could have accommodated a sizable school; it was far too large for us and we moved on.

  Another time we went to see a house on Reddington Road close to Hampstead heath. A couple of elderly sisters lived there. They were at first put out by the fact that we were a young couple in our twenties, and refused to take us seriously; I understood their anxiety. Often, when a house comes on to the market, a very strange group of people emerge who make it their hobby to go and look at all the latest offerings from the estate agents without any inclination whatsoever of buying one. It is virtually an impossible task to weed the serious ones from the voyeurs. I expect the sisters thought that we were far too young to be able to afford the house and were probably there to waste their time.

  Normally, I must admit I am not in the least bit sensitive to atmosphere in homes or other locations, but in this particular case it was very palpable: one of the sisters very reluctantly showed us around the house and I was feeling more uncomfortable by the minute, it was quite eerie and it was almost as though we were going to discover a dead body lying in the bath at any moment. Of course that did not happen; however, as soon as we politely could, we made our excuses and left soon after. Once outside MJ and I shared our growing anxiety at the atmosphere in that house, we had both felt it quite clearly. We could not leave the premises soon enough.

  The only other time that I experienced a similar eerie sensation was when I was visiting Egypt with a group from the British Museum. Our accompanying lecturer from the museum was Carol Andrews who was an expert on Egyptology and had written several books on the subject. It was the collective opinion of the group that Carol was only interested in people who had been dead for several thousand years and definitely not in the living! Among the many breathtaking museums, temples and pyramids we visited, one of them was a trip to the temple at Dendera. Situated on the west bank of the Nile, Dendera is a small town virtually on the edge of the desert. It is famous for its Greco-Roman temple complex dedicated to the Goddess Hathor, this temple complex is considered to be one of the best preserved among all such temples in Egypt. The Goddess Hathor was considered one of the most important in the pantheon of ancient Egyptian Gods. She was often depicted on the walls of the tombs of important aristocrats and was normally depicted as the Goddess of Death who welcomed the soul of the dead into the afterlife. Hathor represented the sky, love, beauty, motherhood and fertility among many other aspects.

  In ancient times in Dendera, the idol of Hathor was situated on the terrace of the temple in a small shrine. The practise was that on certain days- perhaps coinciding with the solstice- the priests used to carry the image down the staircase and bring it to the temple entrance so that the people could worship there and the various rituals and offerings were carried out. On both sides of the staircase were carved in bas relief, the images of priests with shaven heads and wearing leopard skin kilts about their waists. As we went up the stairs, it was quite dark and I had the strangest feeling as though the priests were not merely carvings but were actually there in spirit if not in flesh and were walking up with us.

  At the time when I visited Egypt in 2003, my friends Mona and Gehad Madi were posted in Cairo. Gehad who had several years ago been the Ambassador for Egypt in India, had at that point of time been given a home posting; they were a most popular couple in Delhi in the Embassy circuit and remained in touch with many of their Indian friends long after leaving New Delhi. They kindly invited me to their lovely home for dinner one evening, and Mona asked me if there was anyone I would like to invite. I immediately asked if she could please ask my friend and guide from a previous trip to Egypt, Marwa Afifi, which she did. We had a lovely evening and a delicious dinner. When I was discussing the strange atmosphere I had experienced at the temple, Marwa told me that Dendera had a reputation of being haunted and she said that not even the guards wanted to remain there after dark. That would pretty much explain the very strange atmosphere that I had encountered there.

  Meanwhile, in Hampstead, after a great deal of house hunting we finally settled on a large Georgian house very close to the heath. One of our neighbours was a Jewish lady called Mrs. Cohn. She took one look at us and assumed that we were Arabs and was quite hostile to us in the beginning till she found out that we were really Indians and meant her no harm. She thawed a little then and was really quite kind to me. Sometimes she even invited me over to her house for coffee. She even agreed to share her gardener Jim Crick with us. He was invaluable: he was an old school gentleman, he must have fought in the Second World War and dressed impeccably in a tie and jacket at all times and had lovely old- fashioned manners. He was a delight and all through the time that we were fortunate enough to have him working at our home I never once had to tell him what to do, it all happened as though by magic—the planting of seasonal flowers and bulbs, the pruning of fruit trees and the mowing of the lawn. He used to write down a list of essentials needed for the garden and hand it to our local nursery which would shortly deliver the order to our house. We were very lucky to have had a dedicated and wise man like him to tend our garden, and everything that I now know about plants and gardens, I learned from him.

  Mrs. Cohn’s husband had died shortly before we moved into our new house; he had apparently been a business man. One day Mrs. Cohn decided to conduct a massive clear out of all her husband’s old paperwork and files. She hired a man who came along in a large van and spent most of the day throwing down masses of dusty old files and documents from the attic into her garden and then once he had completed this Herculean task, carted them all off in the van. Mrs. Cohn told me that she had to pay him a considerable amount of money to cart away the paperwork; it taught me a good lesson never to collect clutter and unwanted items. Mrs. Cohn was an interesting lady and she once told me that in her generation there were many ladies, some of whom were her personal friends who were completely ignorant about the business activities of their husbands to the extent that they were not even aware if the house was in their names or that of the company or if there was a mortgage or loan against it. This was simply too bad she told me: in many cases the husband died only for the widow to learn later that the house they were living in was not theirs in the first place and more often than not, there was a huge loan or mortgage pledged against it. There was then, the shock of losing one’s life partner on one hand and the roof over one’s head on the other.

  Such ladies, Mrs. Cohn told me, then had to dramatically downsize their lives and start afresh with considerably less financial resources that they had been used to during their husband’s lifetime. It was wise advice and I always kept it at the back of my mind. Eventually, Mrs. Cohn decided that it was impractical for her to be living on her own in such a large house and her two sons bought her a small apartment in St. John’s Wood. In turn she gave them the house which they sold soon after and an Iranian family moved in next door. I always meant to visit Mrs. Cohn but it never happened and I was sad to learn from Jim Crick, our gardener that she had died of cancer not long after moving to her new apartment.

  Our other immediate neighbours were the Fijian High Commission. Like all Foreign Service staff they changed every few years but they were all extremely polite and friendly and I recall they often held large barbeque parties in their large back garden. One particular
High Commissioner and his wife went on to become close personal friends of ours and they used to come over to our house quite often for coffee and she took a lot of interest in the children. Once, they asked us over to their house for the Fijian National day and we were offered a traditional welcome drink in a small coconut shell. I took a sip and was taken aback at how absolutely vile it was in taste, sharp and peppery. However, good manners dictated that we drink it all up—after all, Queen Elizabeth drank the same foul liquid when she visited Fiji and so we obediently swallowed it and I had a burning sensation in my throat for the rest of the evening.

  When my parents were visiting one summer, I invited both the High Commissioner and his charming wife for a drink, and due to some misunderstanding they assumed that it extended to dinner thereafter. We continued making polite conversation all evening long and they showed absolutely no desire to leave. Eventually, it dawned on us that they were expecting dinner. I was at a complete loss as to what to do as we had not prepared a meal for visiting guests that day. MJ came to the rescue by rushing off to the Hampstead High Street and came back with some delicious take away food and piping hot dinner was served, and no one except us was wiser of how close we had come to having an absolute disaster on our hands.

  The house that we had bought proved to be far larger than we had planned. It occupied four floors, with an attic and a coal cellar. The house was sold by a family whose children had grown up and moved away and they were downsizing by selling this house and moving to a smaller apartment in St. John’s Wood. The house had been unoccupied for quite some time and as a result it was occupied by squatters—they were a great menace in those days—these young people who were either homeless or simply too lazy to set up home for themselves used to regularly scout homes for sale and then if they could easily do it, make their way in and set up camp. It was a huge hazard, especially in the more salubrious residential areas in London. Evicting them was not easy as the rules forbade forcible eviction; it meant that a lengthy court battle had to follow to remove them. Fortunately, the squatters had been evicted by the time we moved house but we found this very elegant house in quite a sorry state.

  Shortly after we moved in, so did a firm of builders, as the house was in desperate need of repairs and restoration. Keith Ayres who had a local hardware store and his partner Allan took on this massive job and though they were pleasant and accommodating people nonetheless I would never recommend having builders in the house with the occupants living there at the same time. It was an absolute nightmare as they were all over the place making massive noise and raising clouds of dust and plaster. Eventually, when after almost four months of constant work and furniture being moved all over the house, they completed the refurbishment and left us alone to enjoy our new home, it was a great relief. We lived there for almost twenty years.

  Champa Bai, came into the employment of my mother when I was just six months old. She was a widow with no children of her own. Ever since she joined the service of our family, she was given the responsibility of caring for me and over the years she has looked upon me and my children like her own family. I cannot express how grateful I am to her for not only bringing me up, but giving me good values in life and then later in helping me bring up both my children and run a big busy house in London, which I could not have possibly managed without her. It was enormously brave of her to agree to accompany me to London in 1974 after my baby was born.

  When I look back at the time that we lived in Hampstead and it was almost twenty years before we sold the house, I am amazed at how well Champa Nani coped. It was a huge house yet she managed to keep it spic and span at all times, looked after a family of four, made sure that our meals were ready on time, the sheets laundered and pressed and looked after the two dogs Trap and Skeet, a Yorkshire terrier and a cocker spaniel. I am aware of many friends who have far smaller homes in London and their live- in staff demand extra help and refuse to do all the work themselves. How did Nani do it all? I expect that at the time I was so busy organising my own life that I did not consider for even a minute that she was truly a miracle worker and how fortunate we were as a family to have her with us.

  After my divorce Nani remained with me for a further year and a half in Golders Green where I had relocated after my move from Hampstead. She then decided to retire and live in India. The amazing thing here is that she had spent some twenty three years in London with my family but when she finally departed for India she left nothing behind expect a clean and tidy bedroom. She never asked me for anything: it was of course my responsibility to settle her in her retirement years which I naturally did. Nani now lives in Bikaner with her family, but continues to visit me regularly whenever I am in residence in Bikaner; she looks after my pugs and the house and helps me keep things tidy and orderly. I cannot express how terribly grateful I am to her; she is the epitome of loyalty and devotion. In fact, she is more like a second mother to me rather than a member of staff.

  London in the late sixties and early seventies was an unsafe place and the members of the Provisional IRA were very active and many IRA bombings took place regularly in mainland Britain. One of the most infamous one was the one at Harrods that took place on 17 December, 1983. Harrods is the Mecca of shoppers in London: thousands gravitate there daily and many tourists do not consider their visit to London complete unless they visit Harrods and perhaps buy some item from the world famous food hall. Members of the Provisional IRA planted a bomb in a car outside Harrods, and though some form of warning was given, it seems that no one took it seriously and when the terrible blast took place it killed three policemen on duty, and three civilians and injured close to a hundred people. It was too close for comfort- after all, I and my family often shopped at Harrods, the toy section being one of my son’s favourite places when he was a little boy. It goes without saying that London still remains a target for terror long after the IRA ended their campaign.

  In 1984, my father-in-law Sir Jay Gohel was attending the annual Conservative Party Conference at Brighton as he did most years. In the early hours of the morning of 12 October a huge bomb blast occurred at the Grand Hotel; the plot by the IRA was to assassinate the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and most of her cabinet members. The Prime Minister was still hard at work on her papers till 2.54 AM, when the bomb that had been planted by Patrick Magee went off; most of the front of the hotel was damaged. Margaret Thatcher was very fortunate as she happened to be in her bedroom at the time; her bathroom however, was totally demolished. In the chaos and confusion that occurred directly after this terrible incident the injured were brought out and taken to hospital. Five people died in the blast and some thirty one were badly injured, including the wife of the Minister Norman Tebbit.

  We were naturally very worried when we heard the news first thing in the morning but fortunately my father-in-law was not staying at the Grand Hotel and he was perfectly safe. The damage to the hotel could have been much worse had it not been for the solid Victorian walls that held against the blast. Margaret Thatcher declared that this incident would not deter her or her cabinet in any way whatsoever and that the Conference would go on as usual. This showed great courage and fortitude in the face of such a tragedy. The local Marks and Spencer store was persuaded to open early the following morning so that those who had lost their clothes and possessions in the incident were able to buy new ones and face the day. It was a shocking incident, one in which not only the Prime Minister but almost all her cabinet could have very easily been wiped out.

  I recall that during the days of the IRA bombings once when in the early hours of the morning, a bomb went off near our Hampstead home at Staples Corner. The Staples Corner junction is an important and busy one, connecting to the A406 and the A5 the Edgware road. On 11 April, 1992 a van full of explosives was blown up, causing serious damage to nearby buildings and roads. Fortunately there were no casualties, perhaps because the incident took place in the early hours of the morning. It was quite dreadful and the noise w
as such that I felt it vibrate right through my body even though it was some distance away. I turned on the television and sure enough shortly afterwards it was announced that a bomb had gone off at Staples Corner. But every Londoner knows that it is the price that they pay for living in a city which seems to be the eye of the storm on occasions, just as the citizens of Los Angeles live with the ever present danger of a major earthquake. It comes with the territory, as they say.

  In 2005, the year that London was awarded the Olympics and the whole city erupted in great joy and celebrations, there was a series of bombings on street buses and underground stations. One of the blasts took place at the Edgware Road tube station which was very close to the apartment where I was living at the time. My nephew, Raisinh, phoned me from India to ask me if I was alright. I was surprised since I had not heard the news that morning and had no idea of what a dreadful incident had occurred so close to my home. It was a terrible shock to everyone in Britain. I recall that a taxi driver at the time said to me, ‘I cannot understand how people who are born and brought up in this country can possibly commit such a heinous act.’ I think he spoke for all the British, who simply cannot understand home grown terrorism.

  Soon after, when I was passing by a hairdressing salon in Knightsbridge I noticed that they were closed for the day and there was a sign in the window announcing that their workers were away attending the funeral of one of their colleagues who had been killed in the blasts. Seeing that sign made me pause and think that what had happened was a deeply personal tragedy for many people such as the staff at the hairdressers who had lost a loved colleague, he was not merely another statistic that one reads about in the newspapers.

  My father-in-law was very involved with the Conservative Party activities and absolutely devoted to Margaret Thatcher and he was entirely responsible for encouraging ties between prominent Indian businessmen and Thatcher’s government. Through him we also got to meet many interesting British politicians, some of whom dined at our house in Hampstead. One such Member of Parliament was Bernard Weatherill, a charming and suave man who came over many times for dinner with his wife, and daughter Virginia, who became a good friend of mine. Bernard was affectionately called Jack by all his friends and I believe that his twin sister balanced the see-saw with the nickname, Jill. Bernard once told me that his family used to be upmarket drapers and tailors. Bernard’s father gave him a tape measure and told him to always keep it in his pocket: ‘Anytime I feel too big for my boots, I put my hand in my pocket and find the tape measure.’ He said, ‘It is meant to remind me of my roots so that I don’t get pompous about my achievements.’ I was very impressed with this story and it has stuck with me from then on. I wish more of our Indian politicians felt the same way rather than throwing their weight about as they are often won’t to do.