Those Happy Days of My Childhood by Esther Lyons

I was born in 1955, nearly ten years after the independence of India. I was told that things had changed tremendously for all Anglo-Indians since the British had left India. Personally I knew nothing about what it was like living as an Anglo-Indian during the British times. All I remember was that we lived in a bungalow near the cemented tennis court.

My father told me once -- “Every evenings and during the weekends, there used to be tennis competitions on this tennis court, which used to be great fun.”

But the cemented tennis court was always empty from the time I could remember. There were no tennis games or any other social programs held there at all. Very often Ronnie, our neighbour’s ten years old son played cricket with the chokra boys on the tennis court. The chokra boys were generally the low caste Hindu boys, sons of the servants and the sweepers that lived in the adjacent, filthy slums down the road from us. They wore torn grubby clothes and walked bare feet. Swarthy in complexion they looked dirty and hungry most of the time. Ronnie and a few other Anglo-Indian boys from around found them good to play with and bully to get jobs done. The chokra boys never questioned Robbie Baba if and when he cheated at their games. Nor could they complain about any of the other Anglo-Indian boys. They always showed their respects and did as they were told to. It was considered an honour for them to be playing with the Sahib sons, or the baba sahibs as they commonly called them.

“I know you are cheating Ronnie Baba, but I cannot say anything because Sahib will be angry and besides my father will beat me.” Jaggu, the sweeper’s son would say. Ronnie could bash him up, but he would never retaliate because he was petrified of Ronnie’s father, the sahib who employed his father as the sweeper in their house.

I watched them play many different games, like the goolie danda, kick the cans, marbles and rounders. These were of course the boys games. I played seven tiles, oranges and lemon, Ring a Ring o Roses, hop scotch and ball against the wall or Eights as it was called. Later we also played with skipping ropes and the hoola hoops. Suzie and Janet from the neighbourhood were my regular partners in these games. Our ayah’s daughter or the chowkri, was always busy helping at home with younger brothers and sisters. The acted as mothers and older sisters right from the time they got to the age of reasoning. There was no time for them to join our childhood games, there mothers strictly never allowed it. I watched little chowkris carrying buckets of water for us in the house, or collecting cow dung in a basket to make it into cow-dung pats, which was later, used as fuel for cooking in their poor little hovels. They also used it for plastering the mud walls and the floors of their little huts. They were not so free as the chokras, since a different measure was used between a girl and a boy.

Nanna always kept an eye on us when we played out in the sun. “Karen, it is getting very hot, come home and rest,” She would admonish us loudly. “It is too hot my girl, to play outside. You will get a heat stroke. Get inside and play with your dolls.”

I often tried not to listen to her, as it was more fun running around outside. Then Nanna would send the ayah to get me. “Come on baby, mem sahib wants you in the house. It is very hot now, and you will definitely get sick in this heat.” She would say.

“Come and play with me in the house Janet,” I would invite my friends home during the holidays. “We can play with the dolls or the carom board.”

“Can I come too?” Ronnie would often ask. He liked playing a game of carom or nosier games with cards. He was a few years older than me. We usually played indoor games during the hot summer afternoons when the schools finished at 1.00 pm, as per the summer timings.

Ronnie’s mother worked as a secretary with my mother and they were good friends too. Ronnie was the eldest child but he had three brothers and two sisters younger than him. His father was also without job very often. He came home drunk frequently and found fault with his mother to bash her mercilessly. His mother never complained, she did not have any parents of her own, nor did Ronnie’s father. I believe one day Ronnie got fed up of his father beating his mother. He snatched the hockey stick from his father’s hands and said, “Dad that is enough. I am fed up of all your fighting and abuse. You are going to stop beating Mum, or else I will thrash you with the same stick you have used on my mother.” I was told that his father was so embarrassed that he disappeared from home for a couple of days. He went to see the parish priest and cried bitterly, feeling ashamed of himself. When he returned home, he was a different man. He took up a small job at the parish and never touched liquor again.

“He is a very fine boy,” Nanna said when she heard about Ronnie. I too felt proud to be his friend although Mum was not happy at all. “Karen, you are a girl and you must play with the girls, not Ronnie who is a hoodlum. I don’t want you to become a tom-boy!”

Of course my parents also fought and argued often. At times dad lost his temper and beat Mum quite severely, especially when he was drunk, but I never had the courage to interfere, nor did Nanna. My sister and I would sit quietly in our room. I would cover my ears to shut out the sound and pray that it was over soon, or we sat with Nanna in her room waiting for them to finish fighting. Although I felt very angry with my father for hitting Mum, I could not speak rudely to him. I loved my dad dearly, infact I loved both my parents because they were very caring and loving towards us both. Unlike Ronnie’s father, my dad would take us out for long walks and would often spend time with us playing carom or reading short stories to us. He was a good and loving father in spite of his deficiencies. Dad was also a good husband to our mother, except when he was drunk, then it seemed he lost complete control of his faculties and did not know what he was doing.

Mr and Mrs Roberts lived down our road. They had a fifteen-year-old son, Jonathan who could neither walk or talk. Jonathan had a big head and small body. His legs and hands were very thin and he was grotesquely malformed. I felt an immense pity for him as he always lay in the bed. Mr and Mrs Roberts fed him dressed him and washed him with a lot of patience and love. They had to do everything for him like they would to a baby. Both Mr and Mrs Roberts loved him very much; they seemed to love him more than their healthy daughters, Suzie and Jane. Jonathan was never taken out of the house, he just lay there on the bed and Mr and Mrs Roberts took turns to be in the house taking care of him all the time. When Mr Roberts’ mother was living she would give them a hand with the boy but after her demise the parents took over completely.

Our house was not far from the posh Cantonment area where all the sahibs lived in splendid bungalows. During the British Raj times the British officers occupied those bungalows, I was told, now the Indian and Anglo-Indians sahibs lived in them. There were many other Anglo-Indian families living around us, and their daughters went to the same convent as my sister and myself. We all caught the same school bus daily. The bus belonged to the school and a nun always travelled in the bus to collect the students from all over the town. She kept a watchful eye on our behaviour all through the bus ride to school.

There was just one English-speaking convent in the town and all the Anglo-Indians girls went to it. The boys went to the Catholic collegiate next door but they did not have a bus, they either walked or went by public transport or rickshaw.

We were just very few Anglo-Indians in the school, most of the girls were Indians of different religions, mainly Hindu I think. They came from rich families and paid full fees while we were given concession on our fees and books. The rich Indian girls got their lunch brought to them in Tiffin carriers by their servants, while we carried our lunches in small Tiffin boxes and had to eat them cold and tasteless. There were no canteens in any of the schools around at the time. Of course there were Indian schools all around the town, but only two Catholic run schools, which were in great demand.

During the lunch break we played, I-Spy, Hopscotch, Eights, or Rounders or sat in our little groups and chatted. Most of the time I sat with my little group of Anglo-Indians from our class. The Indian girls preferred to be in their own groups and chat away in vernacular. I did make friends with a Hindu girl, Manju, for a little while. We used to sit together and chat about films and songs. She was a clever little girl as were most of them, since they seemed to have tutors to help them with the homework. Manju was ever ready to help me with any work I could not finish at home. Her other Indian friends did not include me in the games when they asked her to play with them.

“She is okay,” Manju would sometimes try to get me in their tight group, “Karen thinks like us and is quite a nice girl to play with.”

“Look at her, she is so thin, may be she has some disease.” I once heard her friend, Tanuja say. “My mother says that these Christian girls eat dirty beef meat and are never clean. I definitely do not want to play with her.”

Their conversations would upset me, and I would rather keep away to myself than listen to their nasty taunts. I did tell my Nanna about her though and her angered response bolstered my battered ego.

“What cheek! How dare she speak like that about you!” Nanna said. “ Of course we do not have servants all the time to heat up the water for bath twenty four hours of the day, and we do like eating meat, so what? How does that make us dirty? I must complain to the teacher about her, such a stupid Hindu child.”

“Oh no Nanna! I was just joking. I don’t want to play with any of them myself. I think they are snobs and not worth a second glance.” I said immediately because I did not want her to carry it to the teacher, it would only make matters worst for me in the class.

“Well my dear,” Nanna said again, “She would not have dared to speak like that when the British were ruling. We ate what we liked and drank whatever we wanted, and these very Indians respected us for the way we were. Things were so different then.”

Whenever Nanna went on that way I found it best to disappear because I could never understand her ‘those days’ that she spoke about. They were like the fantasies for me, of a time when things were much easier for us Anglo-Indians.

My mother’s friend, Aunty Margaret, also spoke like that but she said she enjoyed life just the same even today. She went out with her Indian boyfriends from the office every evening. She was once married but had run out on her husband since he was ‘too boring’ she said. Of course he died a couple of years later because of too much drinking and smoking. I think he was very lonely and depressed. He could not get any job too since he the time he lost his job on the railways. “That blooming man was always crying poverty! I miss all those days of the British Raj when my parents used to give us the best. In my young days I enjoyed all the luxuries and went to all the parties and shows in town. It was great fun. I thought my husband would be able to provide me with the same but he could not. Nor could he take me to England, our true home, when the British were leaving.” She ranted on, “ The ridiculous man could not prove any British connection. Neither could I. Anyway, I enjoy myself at the clubs and restaurants with our dear babus. The poor things are so bored with their shy and straight laced Indian wives pressured by their in-laws to conform.”

Aunt Margaret was very pretty specially when she was painted with all the face makeup and had her hair done at the local parlour! She was always happy and full of wit. But I felt shocked when she kept changing her boyfriends. Fortunately she did not have any children. I heard our other Anglo-Indian friends calling her the “merry widow” of the colony. I thanked God that although my parents fought often, they still lived together and cared for us. I loved my Nanna, and, I also had my mother’s parents, grandpa and grandma.

We visited them sometimes when there was extra money to travel and dad allowed us. I loved them very much because they cared for us a lot. Grandma was a perfect lady; she never spoke any bad words. She was very protective about grandpa and looked after him as though he was her baby!

In the months of hot summer and the monsoons we had long two months summer holidays. Most of the rich Indians went to the hills for the vacation. Nanna said that when she was a child she too went up to Naini Tal, a hill station with a big lake in the centre of the mall. “My parents thought it was too hot for us to stay in the plain so we went up with other British and Anglo-Indian families. We went yacht racing and horse riding. They had big shows at the clubs in Mussorie and Naini Tal. I remember once I nearly won the beauty contest in Naini Tal when I was about eighteen years of age.”

My family could not afford to go to hill stations but I read about them with great interest in the newspapers. We used to stay indoors during the hot season, and under the punkah fan to keep cool and ward off prickly heat. We had ceiling fan only in our bedrooms.

Sometimes we enjoyed listening to the radio. It had just come in the market and Mum was able to buy it for us by taking a loan from her office. It was very enjoyable listening to the many Indian songs aired everyday. Sometimes we could listen to the English ones too. Dad listened to the world news every morning. We still had our old Gramophone and the stacks of records that went with it.

Nanna would buy small mangoes for us and I loved them. Perhaps the mangoes and the jamuns were the best treats we children enjoyed in the summer months. We sat and sucked the juice of the small mangoes after our lunch at the table, letting the sweet juice dribble down our wrists onto the table. In winter I enjoyed the guava and the guava cheese and jelly brought around by the baker. The baker, a Muslim man, would also bring small packets of home made butter saved in a container of ice blocks. He carried a tin box on his bicycles with the bread, buns, cakes, butter and guava cheese and jelly. He also brought eggs and made his delivery every second or third day of the week. Of course the meat man would deliver us mutton, mostly goat meat. But a Muslim butcher sold the beef meat and it was always buffalo meat. He would come in the middle of the day, to avoid being noticed by the Hindu neighbours around. Nanna bought it for the roast and salt meat. “Some British found the buffalo meat too strong for them and came out in rash!” She once commented. “But it does not bother me, I love the taste of it.”

The man who sold pork meat was a Hindu man. He had no problem coming any day of the week and at any time. He sold good pork meat and Mum made pork roast and Vindaloo curry with it. I enjoyed my Vindaloo and yellow rice as much as mutton ball curry and yellow rice with Masoor ka dal. Always the ayah made the chapattis for us in the evenings and kept them in a lined box to keep pliable and warm.

“We never ate these rotis,” Nanna would say, “we ate our European dishes with bread and butter. But now the bread is too expensive to have everyday. It is better to buy flour and have roti or chapattis made instead.”

But Manju and the other Indian girls brought hot and freshly made chapattis and parathas for their lunch with some vegetables and dal, and of course the achar or pickle. They did not eat so much meat as we Anglo-Indians did. I could not think of a meal without meat. Nanna said all the Europeans loved meat. “Our cook used to make very delicious, kabab meat, specially the shammi kabab, just as much as he made the Irish white stew.”

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