Amazon Best Selling Novel “Malabar A Flame” in Lima World Library
29. The ignorant
1980 saw large number of people from Australia, New
Zealand, Ireland, South Africa and India migrating to Britain.
Among the Indians were sizable number of Malayaees
mostly married to nurses. They had been spread out but they
were living mostly in parts of Southall and East Ham. There
were Indian stores specially opened to cater to the Indian
community. They sold spices and condiments of every kind
and ready-made clothes including saries and ‘nighties’ of
every hue and make.
While reading newspaper accounts of the influx of ethnic
groups like Malayalees from the South of India, Antony
glanced at the clock. Time to go for taking Malayalam classes
to the children of the immigrants, a task he had undertaken
ever since he retired from the British Railways. Antony was
a pensioner at 65. That was how he had taken up teaching.
Two hour each on every weekend at a room in an East Ham
school. It was not a vocation for him but a service to the
community.
Growing vegetables in his backyard was one of his other
pastimes. Some times, Mary joined him in watering, manuring
and mulching the garden. They grew beans, tomato, potato,
brinjal, capsicum and cabbage. The snail-savvy soil would
not permit other varieties to grow. Snails avoid potato leaves.They relish on other leaves. Snails ravage at night.
Antony will get out with a torch. Snails do not dread
the torch-light at all. Salt is the weapon to get rid of them.
Sprinkle salt on the black miniscule horns. Would wriggle
in it. Froth and white lather would come out and they die.
They also have pots of roses around the vegetable garden.
Roses of all colors, white, yellow, pink and blood red. Winter
is the best time for blood red roses. But they do not have the
heavenly fragrance roses emanate in the temperate climate
of his native land in India.
Now it is winter. No leaves will sprout. All will dry up and
wither.
Even in his school days Antony had a penchant for
farming. He used to cultivate plantain trees in his family
property. In between banana trees he used to grow beans,
bitter gourd and snake gourd and his father let him have the
earning as his pocket money. After the death of his father
the earning from his passionate farming coupled with the
income from the coconut grove he maintained stood him in
good stead to marry two of his sisters to good families. He
continued his devotion to his sisters whose daughters have
been brought to Briton as nurses. One was in Manchester and
the other in Dundee in Scotland. Well settled with children.
Antony was a man for all seasons to in his neighborhood.
Morning and evening he would escort school children
and help them cross the roads. Wearing a colorful, easily
recognizable petty coat, he would raise a placard with ‘stop’
sign to stop vehicles and clear passage for young children.
He did this every morning and evening on all week days. Hewould be home in the company of his grand children. Mary
would be waiting at the gates. She would take hold of the
children’s bags and order them, “Go and wash your hands
and come for tea and snacks<” she would command them.
Weekends are very busy time. On Saturdays, Antony goes
for his Malayalam classes in the morning. Evenings are park
time. They walk the grand children to the nearby park where
all kinds of toys are at hand. Children run, jump, make merry
go round, ride on toy horses, mini cars, mini trains and what
not. When they are a bit tired, grand parents take them, to
the ice cream kiosks where they are served with their favorite
flavors.
At times, Antony and Mary will go back in time and think
of their young days back home in India. There were no ice
cream or cream biscuits in those days. But they had plenty
of mouth-watering mangos, anjili fruits, gooseberry and
jack fruit at home. Mothers and grandmothers used to hide
jackfruit cakes in Cheena Bharanees (Chinese terracotta
containers) for them to relish in rainy days. Cakes made of
mango pulp mixed with jiggery was another favorite item.
Antony and Mary dreamed of a day when they would take
their grand children for a tour of the land of their ancestral
home of milk and honey. But there won’t be any grand pa or
grand ma to tickle them with honey and milk or mango and
jackfruit cakes! When they come home after school, they ask a
number of questions on topics that they learnt in schools, of
India, China Asia, Africa, Egypt, Nile, Suez Canal,etc. They
would be wonder stuck when told that in their neighborhood
in India, they had a family that had a dozen elephants undertheir care and in a temple town called Thrissur, they had an
annual festival of Pooram where a hundred elephants are
paraded!
Mary plays the role of grandma beautifully. Sara’s
daughter Angel is her dearest. At times she perch on Mary’s
shoulder and do pranks with her foamy white hair. Angel
would unwind it and try to make plaits out of the strands.
Finally they would rewind them and make a tuft of it on top
of her head and roar, ”Look grandma, how nice you look!
Isn’t it grand pa?,” she would ask. Mary well past sixty had her
hair tuned white but no wrinkles on her face. She was agile
enough to hold Angel like that for a hour’ By then, Jimmy,
Danny’s young son would run up to Mary for his turn. But
Angel would not budge. It is with great difficulty that Mary
would dislodge Angel and sit like an elephant so that Jimmy
can mount on her back.
Danny’s wife and Jimmy’s mother Rachel was the gem of
a person. Soon after arriving in London, she did a course to
supplement what she learnt in pharmacy back in India. Soon
after she became proficient in English language from native
English men and women, she found it easy to land in a good
job, of a pharmacist in the Department of Pharmaceutical
Sciences in the Bartholomew Medical College under Queen
Mary’s University, not far from East Ham where she was
living.
Though she became the mother of two beautiful kids,
one son and a daughter, she helped her mother-in-law in
cooking and tending children. She dreamed of doing a
PhD in pharmaceutical sciences so that she would one day
join her department as an assistant professor. Meanwhile
Danny became the manger of a division in his office. Sara
did a Masters in Diabetic Science and thereafter took a PhD
in the same area to finally become Dr. Sara Antony Rajan.
She jumped from her hospital job to a teaching one. Nimmi
is Superior in her ward. Sara and Nimmi bought their own
homes in their parents neighborhood in East Ham. Danny
and Rachel did not even think of moving from their parental
home.
Alihaji’s fortunes also brightened. He was made a
member of the Islamic Board in Britain. He tried to bring all
Islamic faithfuls under one umbrella and wanted to contest
in the national elections to the parliament. But Shia diehards
shattered his poll dream. It is said that his own son Abu
distributed leaflets against him throughout the constituency.
Relatives of Alihaji in Kashmir threatened Abu over phone.
“We would finish you and dump you in Thames” they
threatened. Abu retorted in the same tone. Nimmi’s relatives
came in support of Abu. But Antony kept his distance from
both.
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