A Family Celebration

 98 not out!

The Baker and McMullin families
Putney, June 18th 2017

It is March 8th, 2023 and we are in Putney, south west London.  My aunt, Eve, reclines on a sofa, a blanket across her knees.  The room is full of vases of cut flowers.  Cards are arranged on the mantelpiece and on the table.  A large fish tank contains a silent chorus of colour, choreographed to spell out Happy Birthday in the imagination.  The television lights a corner by the fireplace, subtitles misspelling the news.  My cousin, Nick, brings a telephone to his mother: “It’s Mark….”  Eve listens and speaks.  Another cousin, Sarah, explains to me that this was Isobel (her long-departed sister)’s partner, who regularly keeps in touch. 

Eve at 98

 

My aunt, Eve, was born on March 8^th 1925, in a bungalow on Arnakal tea estate, at Vanderperiyar, 3,000 feet up in the Cardamon Hills in Kerala, southern India.  She was the third child of the family, my mother, Anna, being the second, just two years older.  Robert had been the firstborn, in 1921, and Peter was to be the last, in 1927.

Eve and Peter with their father, Major Robert McMullin
Arnakal, India, 1933

 

Of these four, Eve is the survivor; all the others, including their partners, with the exception of Adrienne, Robert’s wife, who was born in 1934 and who lives in Toronto, Canada, have now passed on.

 

Peter and Eve, Arnakal

None of this will matter to anyone outside our family circle.  Indeed, it doesn’t matter much at all, but I am happy my aunt survives and I celebrate the warmth of relationships.  If we turn our back on our nearest, then how can we care for others? And this human world is bad enough without any further loss of love.

 

Eve’s life is to be celebrated.  It isn’t over, yet, but it has run a fine course, bringing light and life to others.  And it is remarkable how alive some of Eve’s memories still are.  In the course of my brief stay that morning we talked about her mother, who I did just know when I was little, and about coming to England as a child, and going to school, with her sister, my mother.  She even recalled the name of the school, Storrington, in Eastbourne, where the two of them were boarders.  

Eve and Anna, c 1938?

 

After their father had brought the family home from India, he set up a Silver Fox farm at Robertsbridge, in Sussex, and the two girls would make their way by train to the school in Essex.  On the way through London, Eve still recalls, they might pass a little time at the newsreel cinema (I think I remember them as Jaceys, showing Pathe News) in one of the rail termini in the city.  I know this to be true as my mother also told me this years ago, but it is remarkable that such experience is still there to be related in Eve’s mind, and she cannot have been much more than eleven at the time, some 85 years ago. 

Eve at Pean's Farm

 

Eve wasn’t very happy at school as she was homesick and missed the gardens and the house at Arnakal where she had spent the first nine years of her life. In later life she wrote a book, The Tea Planter’s Children, all about her experiences there, which is still available. In her introduction to this she wrote that, All four of us, the Tea Planter’s Children, have always looked back on our life at Arnakal as a time of great happiness, and tranquillity. For our parents, too, it was the happiest time of their lives.

 

Peter and Eve, c 1941

Yes, Eve was literate, and an integral part of her life was a writers’ group, which she organised, and she was an artist, and became an excellent potter, producing beautiful glazed ceramic plates, cups, jugs and bowls some of which are still among my treasured possessions.  For years she exhibited annually with a friend and had her own kiln.

One of Eve's creations

For all her immediate family, the Second World War interrupted their lives and the four young people served in various ways. Although she was only 14 when the war broke out, Eve spent time after leaving school (which she remembers was evacuated to Devon) in the WAAF, as my mother did.  Then, after the war was over, she met Wilfred Baker, a friend of her brother Peter from University, and in the summer of 1951, they married.

Eve and their lovely Tansy
c late '50s

 

Wilfred was a businessman, and developed an import/export business in optical equipment.  For many years this was successful and their life together moved from a modest house (whose basement rooms flooded in heavy rain) in Holland Park, to a more substantial house near Portobello Road, to a fine big house in Putney, where I joined the family for a while as their interior decorator.  They also had a holiday cottage in Mayo, not far from a branch of our Irish family who lived in Westport (the McMullin family had had property in Sligo, but this is now lost).

Eve and Wilfred on their Golden Wedding, 2016

 

There were five children, three girls and two boys, and there was always a buzz about the place.  I had grown up with two brothers, and I enjoyed staying with my cousins.  I also enjoyed going for drinks with Wilfred, sometimes at the Grapes near Aldgate, where he had an office, sometimes at Gordon’s Wine Bar near Embankment Gardens, and more often at the Spread Eagle in Wandsworth.  Wilfred was excellent company, even though he quite often forgot to carry cash....

 

The house was alive, and there were always people coming and going.  The children had their talents, with Isobel taking after her father as a serious pianist.  Chris was a fine artist, and was for a time one of the original puppet makers for Spitting Image.  Sarah went from a teaching degree to work for the National Theatre, before moving to Italy as a professional artist.  Jenny was, and is, a great cook and Nick developed his skills as a carpenter.

 

Unfortunately, however, Wilfred’s business partner let him down, and they had to downsize, twice, over the years when he should have been able to retire comfortably.  Separately he developed Vascular Dementia, and at his death in 2017, Eve had to manage some difficult finances, but, as ever, she carried on, keeping her head, as she had done earlier when Isobel died, and later when Chris passed away.  

 

Taking in lodgers, and keeping a tight hold on the purse strings, Eve came through, and she was always warm and welcoming whenever I visited her.  And she was full of reminiscences and her bright memory shone to illuminate my interests in family history.  Even now, today, her 98th birthday, she remembers her mother, who was private secretary to Anna Pavlova in London before her marriage, and corrects me on details from a lifetime ago.

Eve and Anna's last meeting

 

Although she is weak and thin now, and depends on social workers, family and lodgers a great deal, her voice is still clear, with an unaffected accent that I believe carries a hint of Ireland and a touch of India and which breaks into a smiling laugh every now and then.  Old age can be a terrible thing, but Eve is weathering that storm, for now, and she gives hope to those who feel old before their time.  She engages with people and with life and always has done.  I left as Lauren, one of her eight grandchildren, arrived to pay her respects (and there are also three great grandchildren, so far....)  

Succeeding generations will remember Eve with great affection, love and gratitude for the part she has played in all our lives.  She did need to be reminded that it was her 98th birthday, and then she chuckled as if she didn’t quite believe it......

 

 

 

Sri Lanka - Paradise Lost #2?

Don't save a prayer for me now 

Save it til the morning after

Sri Lanka’s iconic landmark, The Galle Face Hotel, is situated in the heart of Colombo, along the seafront and facing the famous Galle Face Green. 

This was the hotel where, almost exactly 100 years ago, my maternal grandparents held their wedding reception.....

One of the oldest hotels east of the Suez, The Galle Face Hotel embraces its rich history and legendary traditions, utilizing them to create engaging, immersive experiences that resonate with old and new generations of travelers alike. No visit to Sri Lanka is complete without staying at this majestic hotel, built in 1864 and recently restored back to its former glory.

Well.... in 1988, when I chanced by, it hadn't been restored to any former glory, but it was still a fine place for a peg or two.....

Ceylon was a British crown colony until February 4th 1948.  I travelled to Sri Lanka, as Ceylon had become in 1972, and fumbled my way around, trying to avoid conflict with the Tamil Tigers, who were, at the time, a force to be reckoned with in the North and North East.  A civil war was waged for 26 years until 2009.

In 2018, The Guardian reported that, it is nearly a decade since the civil war in Sri Lanka ended, but for many families the long struggle will never be over. During the conflict, many thousands of people from the minority Tamil community in the north of the country were “disappeared”. Amnesty International estimates that there are at least 60,000 of these “missing” people, perhaps as many as 100,000. Their families do not know if they were killed or imprisoned by the government forces. Many were teenagers or young adults when they were lost.

I travelled in a shroud of ignorance and innocence - neither of them an acceptable excuse, I know. I had been to Kerala, where my mother had been born on a tea plantation, and I had visited Cape Cormorin, and stood at the Vivekananda Rock Memorial looking south, and I wanted to see the fabled island jewel across the oceans......

I made this trip with a colleague.  We had just got back from taking a heterogenous party of pupils to the strange world of London (Rome was our home at the time) and a 'foreign' holiday was needed.

I used Pentax MX SLR cameras at the time, and have rescued some of the slides I took (though without sophisticated digital scanning), so these if these pics seem a little odd, please blame their years, not their creator.....

I also kept a diary, scribbled with superficialities, as we moved around.  Forgive me if I recount certain details.....  Our flight out was delayed from 5.30 to midnight. We were given a voucher for a meal which didn't go down very well.  

In fact it came up again, as I recorded in the diary:  After interminable taxiing I suddenly get cold sweats and sickness... I faint, twice, and have to be carried into business class [you expect me to believe this? Ed] my legs raised by a doctor and his girlfriend.... 

It wasn't a heart attack.  

Probably something I ate.

So, grounded in Colombo we check into the Hotel Taprobane (the Ancient Greek name for the island) and have a cup of tea before wandering down to the Galle Face Hotel for a luxurious Pimms.......

My diary is sketchy at this point, but I note that I lay in bed on Sunday morning reading Evelyn Waugh's Unconditional Surrender before breakfast.  [Travel broadens the mind?  Ed]

We then took a two and a half hour train ride to Galle, where we move into the New Oriental Hotel.  We have a vast corner suite, showers, and Sri Lankan cocktails before a fish curry supper and beer....

The Hotel, now rechristened, Amangalla,  is still there, though, I suspect, much transformed.  Here is what it says of itself on the interweb today:

Colonial grande dame 

In the historic port of Galle, Amangalla lies within the ramparts of Sri Lanka’s 17th-century Galle Fort, a Unesco World Heritage Site. Offering views of the Fort and harbour on one side and the hotel’s lush gardens and swimming pool on the other, the graceful residence presents 30 rooms and suites, the two-storey, free-standing Garden House and the tranquil spa complex, The Spa and Baths. Named after the Sanskrit-derived word for ‘peace’, and galla, the Sinhalese word for the town of Galle, Amangalla reveals the Fort’s daily activities and rich legacy, its narrow streets lined with buildings from the Dutch and British colonial eras. Beyond the old-world bustle of this remarkable citadel lie emerald-green rice paddies, tranquil temples, serene beaches and the exhilarating prospect of whale-spotting from November to March.

I cannot claim to have any connection with Duran Duran.  I believe they may have been popular recording artists of the 1980s, belonging to something called the 'new wave.' 

As with Mrs Thatcher, and Only Fools and Horses, these were treats I missed by living in the Italian third world, a pleasing backwater managed by corrupt politicians and well-meaning mafiosi....

However, it was somehow extraordinary that this band of romantic youths had pitched up here at this very hotel to record videos.  How could they have foreseen that subsequently I would be there too?  The hotel staff were immensely proud of the connection..... (Especially when I told them I had been to Birmingham.....)

My diary records: We walked round old fort, beautiful place, surrounded by shallow coral sea, and pockets of stilt-fishers etc.....

And then into beautiful hotel pool amidst the most glorious tropical garden; hibiscus, frangipane, cannas and everything green (coconuts) and birds here and there (hummingbirds, flycatchers, etc) and also, later, a couple of mongoose [mongeese? Ed]

Lazy.  Read Waugh.  Have sandwiches and gin and limes, and then start Golding's Close Quarters.

You can see the depth of my enquiry into the socio-economic plight of the world around me. With the benefit of hindsight I would also claim to have foreseen the devastation of Galle by the tsunami on Boxing Day, 2004, which completely destroyed the international cricket stadium, among other essential facilities..... (The tsunami killed over 35,000 people in Sr Lanka, and I recall pictures of the devastation at the time. Fortunately, perhaps, the New Oriental was protected by the walls of the Dutch defences....)

It is hard to see what difference I have ever made to the world, but I like to think that wherever I go I pay my dues, and perhaps my contribution to the local coffers was not a negative.....

Then sunset walk round the fort again and sit on terrace drinking Sri Lankan cocktails.....

I offer the following extract from the diary not as a confession of absolute decadence, but somehow as an homage to the New Romanticism I seem to have caught from previous guests in this particular corner of paradise....

Tuesday: breakfast, bank and then taxi to Umawatuna beach where we snorkel, frizzle and lunch on, rather small, lobsters.....  [Times must be hard when you complain about the size of lobsters....! Ed]

In the evening we had arrack cocktails, write postcards, (remember them?) dine on springhopper biriani and chicken curry and have a very interesting chat with the owner's son and his wife.  [So interesting, note, that you neglected to record a word of it..... Ed]

From Galle, we moved on to Matara, and then to the Tangalle Rest House.....  A little swim, a little walk around, and then a couple of gin, lime and sodas in earshot of a German, and a Californian girl and Texas boy having heady discussion of deepest naïveté [You can talk? Ed]..... ("superficially, on the surface, one can get to know Sri Lankans really well, but, I don't know, it seems difficult to get really close to them!" - "I know a lot of people back home, but I can probably number real friends on ONE HAND!")

We seem to wander a little for a day or two, seeing giant Buddhist sculptures, and swimming with barracudas, but then on Saturday:

Up early and breakfast and walk to train..... Scenery very fine, with views down tea gardens and across the hill country, even to the extraordinary triangle of Adam's peak.....

Our aim was Nuwara Eliya (at 1,868 metres above sea level) where we check in to the Alpen Guest House, a fairly grotty establishment in the biggest deadsville in Sri Lanka.  It is a town of 26,000+ and its nick name is "Little England." My diary records (and please forgive me, these are things my earlier self observed and recorded over thirty years ago....) Every fat, greasy, rich bastard in the country is gathering here for a New Year holiday of blaring disco music, the most inflated prices and the most ghastly weather.  It rains, as we take a seat in the Hill Club Reading Room, hushed atmosphere and month old Daily Telegraphs.....

Later we have an awful chicken curry with drain-smelling rice etc and then back to the crazy Alpen for a belt of Arrack, the same news as earlier, and a fairly chilly, mosquito-ridden night.

At least it doesn't rain in the morning, and after breakfast we walk for three hours, completely circumambulating the hill station, finding (eventually) the slightly gothic (black corrugated iron roof, fresh white-washed walls) Anglican Church, the mock brickwork Post Office, the nicely flowering Victoria Park, the grey, Caledonian-style St Andrew's Hotel and the pukka wallies on the golf course.  To complete our tour we drop in to the ridiculous race course to see the 10.15, rather more like the sands at Weston than Ascot, with some riders in silks and others in jeans, some with saddles, others without, and all (even ten-year-old lads) long on the dwarf bloodstock.....

Then back to the Alpen for coffee and sandwiches while we wait for the car, and a total prat Brit turns up, who didn't accept a ride on an elephant because he hadn't brought his insurance. "Funny old world, innit?" he philosophised, while sitting in an old British bungalow with pictures of the village smithy, sheep in snow, and lots of antlers on the walls.....  We are very glad to get away.

It is raining hard when we arrive in Kandy,  the second largest city of Sri Lanka, at 500 metres above sea level, and so we check into the Hotel Suisse, and stay there for supper and sleep.

Monday: Lovely morning, after initial mists.... walk round lake to Railway Station (pelicans in the trees, Temple of the Tooth gleaming in the sun) and buy tickets to Colombo tomorrow, then wandering out, we are approached nicely by a bearded taxi driver.  After brief negotiations we agree a price of 300Rps and set off, in the front of his minibus, for the Elephant Orphanage, some 30 miles away.....

It is an interesting drive, down the road to Colombo, through villages, towns, and superb scenery, and our driver is very informative.  He's been a taxi driver for ten years, has a wife and four kids, is one of twelve children himself, 33 years old and has set up an association of taxi drivers (a sort of union though that is illegal) in Kandy.

The Elephant orphanage is delightful and the elephants are all bathing in the river, swollen and red after the rains.  The two or three mahouts don't bother us and for a while we are there with a dozen or so elephants, playing with the little ones (some just three months old) and it is really lovely.  There are also three little ones back in the camp which haven't been allowed in the river today, and we have our pictures taken with them.....

Afterwards we are taken to a spice garden, where we buy a load of spices, and get the recipe for Sri Lankan curry:

1 tsp curry powder

1 tsp chilli powder

1 tsp saffron

ten seeds coriander

ten seeds anis

sen seeds cumin

ten seeds dill

ten seeds black pepper

ten red chilli beans

2 cups cool water

25 minutes cook

1 kilo rice

1 drop almond essence

[Or words to that effect....]

Later, as it is not raining, we walk round the lake in Kandy and meet a charming chap who wants us to meet the high priest, and who waits outside while we have a couple of drinks in the seedy, crumbling Queen's Hotel, and then conducts us to the monastery, shows us some Buddhas before taking us to meet the arch monk of Sri Lanka, a 92 year old serenity who sits in a pleasant ante room of the monks' quarters, with a couple of dogs for company and a nice chaise longue.

Through the interpreter we tell him of our journey and he tell us other places we should go, then we are instructed to make a donation (50Rps seems enough though it doesn't seem to over-impress his holiness) and we are ushered away. [Today I wonder whether we really did meet his supreme holiness, or whether this was just some ancient monk on duty to fleece unsuspecting tourists? I must admit to disappointment both at the time and now.  I studied Indian Religion at University under the great Ninian Smart, and philosophically and spiritually have empathy with Buddhism.  But this was not an epiphany....]

Tuesday: Our man calls for us at 8.30 and we go off on a 'Temple Crawl' first to a modest little Buddhist one then a combined Buddhist/Hindu one and then an ancient Hindu one with interesting carvings and a small Buddhist cubicle.  All are in village settings, surrounded by forests and paddy fields, water buffalo ploughing the mud, and working elephants shifting logs.

Then, as a rare honour, our driver takes us to his father's house to have tea and local sweets and to meet some of his family, including one younger brother who worked as a cook on Midway island for three years.  It's a very friendly, quiet house, with lots of people in it.  Father, 72, has twelve children most of whom are married.

On the way back we see a brother-in-law staggering up the road having had too much arrack.  It's 11.30 am on New Year's Day and everybody is happy....

I was really impressed with our driver, and he gave me his address:

[Later on, home again, I recommended him to friends who were aiming to visit, and I wrote to him, promising to return, but the trail ended there.  I do hope his Union activity didn't get him into trouble, and that he is still living a happy family life....]

The train rattles us down the hills to Colombo through the rain and flooded paddy fields.  My friend claims to have seen a snake eating a crocodile's intestines from within, during a torrential downpour in a flooded paddy.  I humour him.  Poor chap's getting on and it's been very trying for him to have the gout.....

It's still raining in Colombo so we get a taxi to the Mount Lavinia Hotel, on the beach to the south....

Wednesday: .... a wonderful day, reading and resting on the private, Paradise beach.  Later we have dry martinis to a superb sunset, with fireworks celebrating the Tamil/Sinhala New Year down the coast and a big electric storm building up black overhead.

On our last morning we get talked to by some oddballs, including a very funny RC priest on a motorbike who insists on us photographing him.  

It is very quiet and apparently has been since '83  and the troubles.  One man we talk to used to be a barman at a good hotel up the beach, but that is closed now, and he is just a waiter in a run down government rest house.  

Late (at 10.15) the taxi takes us to the airport....  Elaborate checking in takes hours, with to-ing and fr0-ing to change money to pay airport tax etc, and boring waiting, but we eventually get off......

And that's where the diary ends, some thirty years ago....

*     *     *     *

“Hungry Like the Wolf” is one of Duran Duran’s biggest hits. The band has said that the video is like an Indiana Jones movie, but he’s looking for a girl for the night. Seventeen seconds into the video, we see Simon Le Bon sitting in an exotic café wearing a hat and glacier glasses. A bottle of liquor sits on the table while he shoos away a vendor with a monkey. The camera angle switches to the front, and he stands up in slow motion flipping the table dramatically, as we’ve seen in so many 80s videos. That scene was shot in the capital city, Colombo, in the Pagoda Tea Room. The Pagoda Tea Room is still open. It’s since been refurbished and now has a bland, white paint scheme with plastic tables and chairs. Still exotic, it’s located at 105 Chatham Street in the old area of Colombo called Fort. The final reunion scene of the video is shot here as well. Next Simon Le Bon walks through a bazaar. This was shot in the old market in the town of Galle. The market has since been redone and is not recognizable from the video. There is a short segment in the video where the band members are in a bar, elegantly dressed, and standing by a staircase. That scene was shot in the Amangalla Hotel in Galle (formerly the New Oriental Hotel). Most of the other scenes in the video are shot in the jungle or on the streets, not places that are easily recognizable or can be found.

“So you’re looking for the thrill, and you know just what it takes and where to go.” ~ Save a Prayer

FOLLOWING IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF DURAN DURAN IN SRI LANKA

by Marc Weitz

*     *     *     *

Strut on a line, it's discord and rhyme

I'm on the hunt, I'm after you

Mouth is alive with juices like wine

And I'm hungry like the wolf

Hungry Like the Wolf

Duran Duran

*     *     *     *

Me miserable! which way shall I flie

Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire?

Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;

And in the lowest deep a lower deep

Still threatning to devour me opens wide,

To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.

Paradise Lost

John Milton

Kerala

Arnakal - a Journey into the past

The bungalow at Arnakal - built by my Grandfather

Scotch Air

[As used by James Joyce in "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man."] 

Oft, in the stilly night, 

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, 

Fond Memory brings the light 

Of other days around me;

My maternal grandmother, Marjorie McMullin, typed two small booklets of her "Fond Memories" and illustrated them with photographs of her children and the few short years they lived on the Arnakal (Elephant Rock) Tea Plantation just outside Vandiperiyar, high in the Cardomom Hills of the Idukki District of Kerala, Southern India. She prefaced the first with these words (above) from "National Airs" by Thomas Moore.

The First Page of my grandmother's "Fond Memories"

My mother, Anna, was the second of four children born on the plantation in the 1920s, while my grandfather, after service in the army in the First World War, was manager. Robert, the eldest, was about two years older than my mother.  Eve and Geoffrey Peter came a little later.

My grandfather, grandmother, mother (in arms) and Robert, her elder brother

It is a very touching account of a strange, isolated, existence.  She describes walking up a grassy hill from where, "on clear days one could see a great distance right far out over the jungle valleys and hills to a faint line of sea some thirty or forty miles away by the Malabar Coast."

It is from there, by the sea, that I set out to visit the past. 

The Coast at Malabar

The second of the two booklets by my grandmother is prefaced with the following quotation from Ralph Waldo Emerson's Spiritual Laws:

When the act of reflection takes place in the mind, when we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms, as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible, are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory. . .

My experience on the Malabar Coast was not quite "embosomed in beauty", though the islands and harbour of Kochi (Cochin) are fascinating and attractive.  I stayed in the Deva Lodge in Ernakulam, a kind of truck drivers' boarding house not far from the Bus Station, and had a miserable night.  Supper consisted of a beer in one sleazy bar and then an omelet in a different joint on the waterfront - it seemed impossible to get beer and food together.  The night then was sweltering and mosquito plagued, and I breakfasted on anti-malarial pills.

Lakshmi - Goddess of Wealth and Beauty

The bus to Vandiperiyar was due to leave at 6.00am but didn't.  Although dubbed an express it took five hours to climb the Ghats, winding through scruffy habitations at low altitude then stopping for half an hour at Khottayam (to replace a tyre) before the 100 kilometre haul up the Cardomom hills through villages and rubber plantations, tropical jungle and endless roadworks, negotiating the road with descending herds of cattle (cows and buffaloes), being driven by vegetarian Hindus in Tamil Nadu to sell to omnivorous Christians in Kerala.

Goats in the market

At about two and a half thousand feet however the country becomes delicious -  a dark green jig saw of tea bushes on rolling hills, peppered with tall shade trees and interspersed with patches of coffee and spices. These hills, a lush part of the Idukki District, include Thekkady and one of the best wildlife sanctuaries in India.  This used to be the Thekkady Tiger Park, but is now the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary.  Beyond this, the terrain rises towards the Nilgiri Hills, or slips down towards the southern tip of India, where the oceans meet.

Eventually we roll across a bridge over the wide, almost empty Periyar river, into a crowded shanty town along a dusty main street and we shudder to a halt.  This is Vandiperiyar, where my uncle used to ride to the store; where my aunt was christened.

One of Vanderperiyar's Bars

Unfortunately the Periyar View Hotel says it is full, though how or why is something of a puzzle, but I get a room at the Central Lodge, which is really a hardware shop with a few cribs behind it.  My "room" has no daylight, a rough board ceiling, a concrete floor with a groove through the middle, a wooden bed with no sheets, all of which is infused with the smell of urine.  I guess it'll do?  I need to pay my respects to my mother's birthplace.

After a quick lunch of hot cross bun I set off to walk to the factory.  I have grown up with images of this place in my mind, as pictures in the family albums and reminiscences are all part of growing up.  I barely knew my grandmother as she died when I was little (and grandfather Robert died in 1937) but ours is a warm family and I have been close to my aunt and uncles all my life.  It is, however, with a confused anticipation that I climb the hill out of the village.  The red soil contrasts with the deep green of the tea.  The hills rise and fall into the distance, some forested and others clipped like a box hedge.  On one side there is the muddy river where women slap their washing on rocks, on the other the teams of pickers work through the bushes with the measuring sticks.

The washing of clothes

My companion and I cause considerable interest with everyone we meet. English is barely spoken (or understood) and it seems that Europeans are a rarity here. The pickers wave excitedly; the workers on the way down to the village want to pose for pictures. 

Tea plantation workers - bemused by the first European visitor in generations

Eventually we are mobbed by a group of children who want to act as guides.  We are led up to the Arnakal Estate, where the communist flag flies above the great corrugated iron factory.  Cottages crown a rounded hilltop and we see people everywhere.  Strangely I had never thought of it in this way - the community of workers, though several generations on, must have always been here and yet my mother's first few years were spent in relative isolation.  As my grandmother wrote:  It was on Xmas day when Robert was nearly four and Ann nearly two that they went to their first party..... They had had little company but each others, and were not at all used to other children....

  

Eventually we reach the manager's bungalow. a large low house with a well kept and nicely shaded garden, splashed with Canna lilies. The manager is out, but we peek through the windows.  Cane furniture; servants; it could be the 1920s....  I take a photo. 

My Aunt's account of her childhood in Kerala

My photo turns out to be very like one taken almost ninety years ago now which illustrates the cover of my aunt's book about her childhood.  Only mine does not show a man with two children.  The wheels of time, the juggernaut, have rolled on and yet there is so much here which touches me.  This is the house my grandfather built.  My grandmother wrote of the morning after Eve was born: Looking out into the sunny garden, I saw the grey green leaves of the grevillias with the sun playing on them as they swayed gently in the faint breeze.  I could see the reddish leaves of a tall begonia that grew in a tub on the verandah.  A beautiful large cobweb between one of the pillars and the roof was made to sparkle in the sunlight....

It is still very beautiful here, at least to a visitor.  I can understand the love of place that comes from my grandmother's writing.  I can imagine the microcosm that hung here between world wars.

The wheels of a Juggernaut

But India is a foreign country.  They do things differently there, now.  It is hard to imagine, now, my grandfather having an appendectomy on the verandah with only a bottle of whisky for anesthesia.  It is hard to imagine, now, my mother falling ill with malaria when she was, not quite four.  As Marjorie wrote, At the time that my fourth little baby was born, Ann had a temperature of 103 and was very miserable....I can see her as she was then.  She started with horrible ague, so that her teeth chattered and she could not get warm.  As my mother now shivers in the depth of English winter, it is a different ague; another age.

Within a month both Robert and Ann were taken up to Kodaikanal to board at a convent school.  The kindergarten room where some thirty children are taught and kept amused is provided with all manner of the latest means of instruction.....  A very charming sister does the teaching, and all the children are kept so happy.  I am sure Robert and Ann will love it all before long..... 

Perhaps it is not surprising that it was not quite so easy, after all.  The following morning parents and children met to say their goodbyes.  Little Ann had a pale sad little face, and Robert with such a woe begone expression, and sad wistful eyes.....  They sobbed and clung to me, and it tore at my heart so that I could not help crying too.  Partings are not sweet sorrow - they are often greatly painful.  But all must part, some time, some where.  

We move on.  But before I leave the area I visit a church, perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps just by chance.  I am glad I visited Arnakal; I am glad I have seen the place.  I realise how isolated an upbringing it must have been and how desperately my grandmother must have loved her children and missed them when they left.  She did what she thought best - placing my mother at the convent was to avoid malaria - but the separation must have hurt deeply.

My aunt's account continues the story of mother and children, though my mother was brought to boarding school in England in 1930 by her parents who were on leave.  Eve and Peter stayed on in India with their parents until they all came to England in 1934.

Before I leave I visit a church; an Anglican Church.  The graveyard is full of stories of lives that ended far from home, sometimes ending early.  The gravestones here take their place in the pictures of my memory.  It is a different world now.  But the traces remain.  I come away with traces on my heart.  I come away with a different understanding of a certain kind of love and, perhaps, a stronger sense of the world I inhabit.  This could be sentimentality.  But then it could be true fondness.  Fond, though sad, memories.

The Anglican Churchyard at Ootacamund

When I remember all

The friends, so link'd together,

I've seen around me fall

Like leaves in wintry weather;

I feel like one,

Who treads alone

Some banquet-hall deserted,

Whose lights are fled,

Whose garlands dead,

And all but he departed!

Thus, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain hath bound me,

Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

Thomas Moore

Means of Transport

The Tea Planter's Children

by Eve Baker, is published by AuthorHouse,

ISBN 1-4208-9629-6

Now also available is:

Available in paperback and as an e-book from Amazon

Published by: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (4 April 2014)

ISBN-10: 1495971538

ISBN-13: 978-1495971532

http://www.idukki.nic.in/thekkady.htm

http://www.periyartigerreserve.org/home.php

Also recommended are:

On a Shoestring to Coorg, by Dervla Murphy 

and

The God of Small Things, by Arundathi Roy