Black British

by Hebe de Souza

  Anna must have been extraordinarily clever. What I learnt by industry and application she appeared to acquire almost by intuition. When I struggled with idiotic mathematical concepts, she drew them in with the air she breathed. History came alive when she related events to novels we’d read, films we’d seen, concerts we performed.

  She went on to study education at a tertiary level and taught secondary school science for seven years, keeping her distance from Convent institutions. During that time she saved enough money, and with no ambitions towards upward mobility, supported herself through medical school. She never married, never had children, claiming she had a profession to nurture. But I often speculate about the invisible mental scars she must have carried and wonder if she trusted herself to be a caring parent, given the role models that had paraded before her all her school life.

  The nuns, of course, claimed Anna’s achievements for their own, often touting with pride her rags-to-riches story as though their impact on her school life was the sole reason for her success. They claimed to have inspired in her the grim determination required to overcome adversity.

  What they didn’t do, what no one wanted to do, was ask a vital question. Not a family of raucous questions where the truth is obscured by noisy rhetoric. Not questions like what, when, which and how. But the sole, singular, solitary question: “why”.

  Why did the nuns have to compound Anna’s existing hardships with abusive and insulting behaviour? Privations must be easier to bear when they are God-made, without the added burden of human malicious intent. If Anna had been blind, deaf or missing another of her functions, the issue would have been between her and a tenuous concept – her God. But nasty human intervention that adds to already harsh conditions leaves painful scars on the psyche. The more powerless a person the more painful the scar. Scars that are difficult to obliterate, that live on in an obscure corner of a mind, ready to leap to the forefront whenever vulnerability raises its head.

  The nuns appeared to live in blissful ignorance of the wounds left behind on Anna and, vicariously, on Lorraine, Lily and me, and perhaps many others.

  Sanjeeva Verma, another one in the nuns’ firing line, had a short, dumpy frame with a pale, flattish face, snub nose and lips that were so thin they were almost nonexistent. She also had a defensive manner. Where a confident person might add How are you? to a salutation, Sanjeeva had the unfortunate habit of attaching “I haven’t done anything…” whenever a nun greeted her. She’d shrink into herself to be as small as possible and escape notice.

  She was so cowed by the nuns’ constant, rancid accusations that no amount of counselling against this frightened response had any effect. Though she could see the logic of a non-provocative stance, when the time arrived her nerve and good sense failed and she was back to square one.

  Of course, that was like a red rag to a bull for many of the nuns, most of whom screamed, “A guilty conscience! You’ve got a guilty conscience!” It was beyond their ability to see that their repeated allegations against her whenever anything was deemed to be wrong, whether the fault lay with her or not, had conditioned Sanjeeva to an expectation of blame. Immediate defence became her reflex action.

  I never knew why the nuns chose to vent their spleen on Sanjeeva. She was unattractive in general appearance but so what? Few of us resemble the Mona Lisa.

  Perhaps she had inadvertently upset a senior nun and all the others felt they had to “join the gang” and support bullying behaviour. Maybe their own survival depended on espousing groupthink while they were confined within the convent walls. It takes courage to stand up to a crown; individual opinions can be too dangerous.

  Or was it simply a blatant abuse of power? Were they so insignificant, so unnoticed in their earlier lives that the first taste of power – the power to control other’s lives – drove out all other human emotions, including compassion and empathy?

  Sanjeeva appeared to hero-worship me. She followed me around, cleaned my desk without being asked, laughed uproariously at my unfunny jokes and generally championed me.

  Being totally unequal to the task of standing up for herself, she admired my ability to answer back. Lacking the maturity to understand her own feelings and the language to articulate them, she showed her appreciation of my behaviour the only way she knew how, in gentler, more subtle ways.

  Like many others, she also recognised that while the nuns were occupied with me they left her alone. My being in hot water was her reprieve.

  A few of the nuns showed infinite patience. It was never noted as incongruous that German nuns were teaching Indian girls to speak and write grammatically correct English.

  “The pronunciation is gov’ment not gov-er-ment,” said Sister Ignatius to Amita. “Try saying it with the letters e, r and n silent.”

  “Gov-er-ment,” said Amita obediently, happily, delighted at her accomplishment.

  “No, dear!” corrected Sister Ignatius, “Gov’ment. Say gov, gov, gov,” and she snapped her fingers in rhythm.

  “Gov, gov, gov,” came the smiling response, accompanied by spectacularly uncoordinated hand gestures.

  “Good! Good. You are clever. Now say “ment, ment, ment.” More finger snapping.

  “Ment. Ment. Ment.”

  “That’s good. Really good. Now say the whole word. Government.”

  “Gov-er-ment.”

  It didn’t matter what Sister Ignatius tried, she never managed to convince some of the Indian girls that the English language included the absurd concept of silent letters.

  “Why have a letter if it’s not pronounced. It’s pointless. If I were a letter I’d refuse to be silent,” was my opinion.

  “It’s a pity you’re never silent,” came the acid rejoinder that wasn’t praise.

  Silent letters are futile. They serve no purpose other than to makes a language difficult to master. It must be an elite innovation, simply another tool to persuade oneself of one’s superiority.

  The other word that came under fire was “film”.

  “It’s pronounced ‘film. F-i-l-m.’ Not ‘filum’. There is no ‘u’ in the word.”

  Somehow Ignatius never lost her cool. She persevered with a dogged determination.

  “What does it matter?” I was irritated beyond words. “We all know what she means so why does it matter?”

  “If you speak well you will always be able to hold your head high. People will respect you. Doors will open.” And since Ignatius sincerely believed this dictum she persisted in her endeavours to promote correct pronunciation, albeit with a German flavour.

  These occasional bouts of leniency did little to mitigate mental scars, though my sisters and I got off lightly. We had the security of a comfortable, supportive home to cushion us from the worst of blows. However, witnessing regular discriminating and aggressive, sometimes passive-aggressive, behaviour left its own mark on us.

  As the meal progressed that evening, my father continued, “All three of you have the advantages of a privileged background. You live in a big house that your family has lived in for generations. That in itself gives you confidence and a high sense of entitlement. You see respect as a birthright. Not everyone is so lucky.”

  I stopped listening. I’d heard the privileged so be thankful speech so many times I could recite it. Besides, the atmosphere was abruptly burdened with what I knew Lorraine and Lily were thinking as silence replaced words that were too hard to say. We knew the fundamentals that made up who we were, our language, culture, religion, were incompatible with the emerging society that was the new India. From listening to conversation between our parents we knew the economic progress of the nation didn’t match the population so there were not enough jobs for everyone. We also knew the time would come when dwindling fortunes would prevent us from maintaining our home, that forcible takeovers and imminent land ceiling laws would grind us into inconceivable poverty. Given the hostility of the local people our vulnerability was unimaginable. We knew the time was near when we’d have t
o leave Kanpur and our home that we loved so much.

  It was another one of those things that was implied, never verbalised so never questioned or understood. But it hung around on the fringes of our minds, ever-present, like dust in a dark corner. Sometimes, like that evening, it spread its threatening tentacles like a dark monsoon cloud and overshadowed every thought, every word and every deed.

  PART III

  Christmas Time

  CHAPTER 8

  CHILD LABOUR

  “Joy to the World!” Unconsciously I sing out loud as the tune wafts towards me from the church. Then I stop, embarrassed. They’re singing different words.

  “That’s Konkani,” says my companion. “The choir is practising for Midnight Mass.”

  I follow the tune singing the English words in my mind and Christmases past come flooding back.

  “Christmas comes but once a year / And when it does it brings good cheer / And when it goes it leaves us here / So what shall we do for the rest of the year?” Like weeds in a manicured lawn, the old rhyme popped unbidden into my mind and with a will of its own, pushed its way out, over and over and over again. It was determined to be noticed and irritate.

  With heroic self-control and barely concealed patience my mother suggested, “Can you find another rhyme?”

  “Can you chant a bit softer?” from my father, with love and hopeless hope.

  “Can you chant not at all?” in exasperated unison from my sisters. “In fact. Shut. Up!”

  But I couldn’t. I loved the rhythm of the rhyme. I loved the rhythm and the rhyme. I was powerless within a force more powerful than anything I had accumulated in my thirteen years. I was as excited as a child at Christmas. Probably because Christmas was under two months away.

  The smell was in the air so I knew the first steps had been taken to commence the business of the festive season. Succeeding months would see the pace quicken, strengthen, become more determined, more definite, more urgent.

  That morning I’d woken quivering with excitement, knowing I’d felt the same anticipation the previous year and the year before that, and probably the year before even that. As my conscious mind caught up I knew the first fruit for the Christmas cake had been delivered and was now stored in the pantry. In the stillness of the night its perfume had hitched a free ride on the air and invaded the entire house. By morning it ruled my brain.

  Our pantry, different from other houses, was more than just a food storage cupboard. It was a large, airy room with big windows, built-in cement shelves and a gas stove. A small wooden door led to a galley way and the three kitchens for the khansama’s use. Before the advent of electricity and air-conditioning, in hot climates kitchens were always built a little distance from the house to stop the smell and heat of the cooking food from pervading the living accommodation. It was, unquestionably, quite acceptable for servants to breathe in raw chilli fumes and spice-laden air but it wouldn’t do for the family to have skin and clothes stinking of pungent odours.

  Tightly sealed metal dabbas that stood on the pantry floor were lined with greaseproof paper and used to store the Christmas fruit. The operative words in this arrangement were tightly, sealed and metal. We all knew the story of my mother’s first Christmas in Kanpur. Being a new bride she was supremely aware of her inexperience at her “job” of managing a complex household. At the back of her mind was the suspicion that the critical eyes of her in-laws were watching her every move, ready to pounce. So to protect herself she took a politically savvy action and sought friendly advice from her mother-in-law.

  Among the tips she was given was to ensure food containers were firmly secured to keep vermin at bay. Imagine her horror when, on going to the pantry to start breakfast one morning, she was surprised by a well fed rat scurrying across the floor. Its ample proportions didn’t prevent it from escaping under the external door before my mother could do more than gasp. Further investigations revealed a trail of rat droppings that led back to the dabbas.

  The greedy and clever rat had managed to squeeze behind the fruit boxes, chew a hole through the tin and help itself to an expensive gourmet meal. What was worse, if anything could be, was five tiny, blind, wriggling rat pups nestled in the fruit.

  My mother’s initial reaction of horror and disbelief was dwarfed by her fear that once the story got around she would be labelled a lazy wife who ran a dirty, pest-infected house. Once a reputation had been created by a malicious third party, the no smoke without fire attitude would prevail, tainting everything about her, including her children. It took all my father’s tact and affection to persuade her it could happen to anyone and to chalk it up to experience.

  Whether she hadn’t been told or had missed the point, my mother could never decide. She realised though, that communication, even when people speak the same language, can be fraught with difficulties. What may be blindingly obvious to one person can easily be missed by another, resulting in a tsunami of misunderstandings. What one person assumes is common knowledge and therefore not worth mentioning, can be totally outside another person’s experience.

  In subsequent years my mother stored all the Christmas fruit in containers that stood in splendid isolation from each other and the wall.

  The Christmas cake recipe was a treasured heirloom handed down from mother to daughter. Most women strictly adhered to it as they would to the letter of a law. But by the time I was thirteen my mother had grown her confidence and demonstrated a mind of her own. Speaking aloud as though she were in conversation with an invisible person, when all she was actually doing was convincing herself of what she wanted to believe, she said, “I didn’t like the orange peel last year. Hmmm. Perhaps we won’t use it,” and orange peel was consigned to history.

  And, “We didn’t get enough rain this year so the almonds will be bitter. We’ll use cashew nuts instead.” And that year cashew farmers grew richer.

  Some changes were adventurous, experimental. “I wonder what the taste will be if we substitute lemon peel with lime rind?” But fortunately she never followed the example of Louisa May Alcott’s Jo March and exchanged sugar for that other white condiment found in all kitchens.

  “The aunts will taste the difference,” Lorraine, Lily and I teased in a singsong chant “and you know what’ll happen then!” But my mother waved dissension aside, thereby role-modelling to us that being controlled by other people’s opinion is merely a form of voluntary slavery. “If they don’t like my cake they don’t have to eat it!”

  In spite of these ad hoc, untested embellishments, our Christmas cakes always looked and tasted marvellous so the secret component must have been in the making – which in itself was an industry. Indeed, the whole paraphernalia of Christmas added up to a production, planned and executed with military precision, field-marshalled by my mother. Long before there were project plans and Gantt Charts my mother had her preparations down to a fine art.

  Every year the house kitchens produced eight cakes, each weighing two pounds, almost a kilo. Since the vast amount of ingredients were not common fare, shopkeepers had to be allowed enough time to source them. It was a matter of timing and, as always, attunement with the weather. Though planning began in late October, the fruit was never received until the third week of November when we could be confident the storage area in the pantry would be cool throughout the day.

  “Why does it matter when it arrives?” I asked, irritated at the continued attention to such miniscule detail. “It’ll still taste the same.” But my mother was afraid that warm days would cause the fruit to ferment and we’d all get tipsy on Christmas cake.

  Preparing ingredients for the cake was an enormous task so my mother wasn’t above using unpaid child labour.

  Ours.

  From the time each of us was old enough to help, the first few mornings of our winter holidays were devoted to preparing fruit for the Christmas cake. Collecting under the garden umbrella we were each handed a loaded tray with instructions. “Make sure you pull the stalks off and take
the seeds out of the raisins, sultanas and currants. Crack open the almonds and cashew nuts and check for worms. Make sure the fruit peel hasn’t grown any mould.”

  Sometimes acerbic words were added: “Eat as much as you like – but if you make yourself sick, you’ll have to look after yourself. I don’t have time for silly girls.”

  Being ill meant everyone, but everyone, would know we’d been greedy. That was deterrent enough. And of course as soon as the element of forbidden fruit was removed, the attraction vanished.

  Except for the odd digression.

  One year, as a very young child I squawked out loud, “Mummy! Lily’s just eaten a fistful of raisins.” But before I could elaborate my mother jumped in with pretend-concern in her voice. “Is that tittle-tattle in your mouth, I wonder? Perhaps you need to see a doctor.” Subsequent years I kept my mouth shut. I had learnt the futility of indulging in punitive behaviour.

  Recognising that the work was repetitive, mindless, similar to a factory hand’s at a conveyor belt and not something in which young girls would willing participate, my mother was astute enough to make it fun. While our hands were busy she engaged our minds. We played word games.

  “I spy something with my little brown eye, something beginning with ‘t’.” Lily glowed with triumph every year as she pointed an accusatory finger at me and shouted, “Tittle-tattler!” She had a long memory.

  “That’s not a real word.” As I grew older I was ready to argue but the referee stepped in and allocated a turn to Lorraine, eliciting a groan from Lily and I. We knew from experience that Lorraine would introduce a level of intricacy to the game and come up with words like “b” for “blade of grass” or, if we guessed that, for “brown eyes”.