A town from the past

"Time is an endless lane/ And Life a little mile without a bend...Behind us what? Before us, if we ran,/ Might we not be in time to seek the Grail?" Morton, In search of England

It was a small and safe town, and the place I stayed between '79 to very early '83 was 157, Cliff Gardens. It was located in what was then known as South Humberside. The house I stayed was bang opposite to the Scunthorpe General Hospital. The hospital looked huge back then and very grand – made of brown brick – and yet when I checked in on google images on a whim – it doesn’t look that huge any longer. The whole street view feels very strange to see…and I’ve never, ever wished to go back into my own past, and I’m not exactly sure why or how I’ve been tempted to write the following. Maybe it has to do with reading a book in sudden and very drawn out shifts or maybe they are old memories simply rearing like ghostly horses upon being jogged by different essays I've been reading and the conversations I've been having, and they almost feel like they happened to somebody else... 

There were not a few families with children living on the same street, and my memories while they are not linear – I do remember playing with them, and I would walk the three or four blocks on some early afternoons and mornings to go play with the kids. On one occasion three of us ventured out of the back gate in their garden after some days of wondering of what lay beyond – a space which was covered with grass and had trees and looked like a little forest grove. I remember holding the youngest child’s hand in mine as we set forth for our adventure one fine day. I don’t remember any longer how long the walk was or whether there was even a path but eventually somehow or the other we made our way into concrete and tarmac actually and I remember looking at the building that we could see rising in front of us. As we walked all around it we realized we had reached nothing but the front of the hospital building. Another day while sitting in the back yard I saw a helicopter in the air for the very first time in my life. I waved and waved and yelled but the chopper after hovering around for some long minutes flew off. The front garden and I had a relationship going. I planted some orange pits and something of a strawberry once, and watered the plants regularly but sadly enough never got any fruits for my labours. There was a sweet shop cum general store a little way off but I don’t remember what I got from there apart from lozenges for which I showed a great fondness. Those days the tinkling musical ice-cream van with its friendly man, on Sundays was a regular feature. I don’t think we got ice-creams every Sunday but certainly every now and then. I showed a penchant for only ice lollies in garish colours and sometimes in a ‘cola’ flavor and none for the creamy stuff.

There was a library close enough. It was a circular in shape from what I remember and  had a few broad stairs, and every week there were 3 books that I got. I don’t remember getting to learn English, and I don’t remember when I started to read on my own. I remember reading lots of ladybird books for children, a mix of different books for  kids, the Mr. Men series, Paddington Bear, encyclopaedias of space and geography books filled with pictures and  a mishmash of different kinds of general knowledge books with lovely pictures, and then an Enid Blyton – only I didn’t know she was the Enid Blyton until later.  Never read a Dr.Seuss until I was in my late teens. I remember there being a small book-shop inside the hospital. I used to go to the hospital every now and while ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ had been a birthday present, ‘Heidi’ was a general gift. Both were in comic book form, and by the same publisher with black and white sketches. ‘Heidi’ I read much later but the unabridged ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ I never could read. The kids’ version gave me the chills.

I joined St. Augustine Webster Primary school – meant for kids between 3-ish and 12-ish – and after I showed an overwhelming reluctance to go to a pre-school for toddlers. These are the only bus trips I remember. Otherwise all the places I went to in the town were on foot. I remember the school years and the teachers and a few incidents rather vividly, and the kids in school. Alison Kent – a tiny sprinter and a fast friend, Francesca Ristangio – the Italian, Cecelia, Fiona, Anne-Marie, Sarah, Sarah’s friend Alison Brader, and the dark long haired Natalina whom I may have forgotten…, and other girls whom I vaguely remember. I didn’t get along with the boys in my own class but have fond memories of a younger boy and a few of the older ones. I remember Miss Queen who was the loveliest, very cheerful, and youngest teacher I had and she used to laugh a lot apart from one day when she was in a crying fit and a temper and had scolded us when one child had spilt a bottle of milk. Every school child used to get a glass bottle of milk before lunch hours. I hated the milk. I don’t remember what I did with it but one day I feigned illness after finishing my class work just so as to not drink the bottle of milk. That was the last year that they gave us milk in school. Alison and I were such fast buddies that Mrs. Joan Miller whom we had in class 4 declared on the first day of class 5 that while the circular seating arrangement in the class with a girl seated next to a boy would apparently mean fewer noisy conversations in class, she didn’t have the heart to separate Alison and me even if we were noisy. So we gloated in the class with angel wings sprouting from our heads although I wouldn’t have minded exactly being seated with a  nice enough boy on either side... Fate had different ideas however. Not within minutes of settling down, the Headmaster, Sir Paul Ibbotson (who was always in his Mr. Chips garb) walked in and called out my name. I stood up and walked out of the class with him, and I still remember thinking that it was a funny day to be having an impromptu reading test. But they were always lovely and one got to be with the Headmaster for some glorious minutes in his idyllic office and he answered different questions  about the pictures that graced his office and one could even sit in an armchair for a few minutes after the reading test – and if one performed well one got a toffee (now I think everybody did but one still felt mighty special). I traipsed along with him that day and was almost sure about turning the corner in the corridor when he was talking about this and that and said that I was to do classes in class 6 and not in 5. That happened often enough – jumping a year (I don’t think it had anything to do with being smart or clever – I think there was some age factor too playing in the equation). I was not happy about it and I don’t remember what he said but he gently herded me into class 6. The best thing about that was that the Headmaster used to take our special science classes and that’s the first time I knew what “gravity” on the earth as compared to the moon meant because the Headmaster did a pretend moonwalk in the class. There were prayer services which I quietly adored, ‘best effort’ competitions which involved drawing and colouring but I don’t remember any writing competitions apart from the regular classwork and homework, and there were no exams on a regular basis at that age. I remember learning the multiplication tables till 4 at home. I learnt the five times table from Alison’s stopwatch, and that was my one moment of glory for the rest of my life as far as Maths was concerned.

Christmas was a beautiful time. I remember getting a few gifts every year, and I opened them on Christmas morning with great excitement. I loved the carols and knew all about Jesus and the timeless tale of the baby born in the manger in Bethlehem, and the places of Nazareth and Galilee I used to roll around with my tongue, and the inarticulate deep feeling for the spirit of Christmas and for Jesus have stayed with me, and have probably grown deeper if different through the last decade... There were not a few dinners with a mix of guests at different points of the year – and that’s how I tasted wine and alcohol and had a go at cigarettes and cigars before I turned 8. I remember the fireworks from one year, and it was the same year when I first got a very long stick of pink peppermint candy, which I saved like a miser. The fondness for peppermint and mint have stayed.

There was a park somewhere – the name of which I have clean forgotten. The park, I did not visit alone but I had the habit of brushing my fingers along the trees and bushes on the way to the park which was along a hilly road, and every time I would come back with what I now know are painful nettles. I liked the hilly park and yet I didn’t learn how to swing on my own till I was 8 and so I had to wait to be pushed on the swing unless I romped around. It was in that same park that a big dog had chased a neighbourhood friend and I had looked on aghast. I don’t think the excited dog had any real intentions of biting him because the dog pranced away after some seconds once his master called him but the huge brown-black barking dog with a  wild face running after the friend is something that had terrified me.

The bridge connecting South and North Humberside wasn’t built till ‘81 apparently and I was there in that town till  very early ’83, I think. I remember a few trips to that bridge and also eating take-away fish and chips wrapped in newspaper in a strange place off the bridge with little seats and on a cold day. I don’t know whether it was the same day or another like it but on one occasion I stared for long minutes at a horse which was wandering around in a grassy field with lots of trees. It was probably somebody’s house with a space of a small field. The horse was simply wandering around and did not take much of an interest in me, as far as I remember, but I was fascinated by it, and insisted for the first time that a picture be taken with that dark brown horse and me. Everybody tried to convince me that the horse was not a particularly fine horse as horses go, and that it was all angles and bony and most likely unwell but I couldn’t care less. That picture is still around somewhere but not with me but I remember the horse and my stubborn face which shows up on the picture.

I used to watch a fair lot of TV too. I must have watched children’s shows as well but don’t remember them too well. But I watched Panorama on TV and the old James Bond movies with the incomparable Sean Connery, Casablanca, Guns of Navarone (I remember liking ‘Force 10’ better when I watched both a decade later) whether I understood much or nothing - and other movies which I don’t remember. It’s from TV that I got to know about the Falklands War and Jack the Ripper, and the race riots that used to break out in parts of England, and God knows what else. I heard and saw a lot of music on TV too. That’s how I got to hear ABBA, The Beatles, Cliff Richard, Julio Iglesias Sr., Tight Fit, Modern English, The Cure. …Shakin Stevens was probably my long-distance first infatuation but I won’t bet on it. I watched ‘The Sound of Music’, and ‘Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang’ (supercalifragilestiexpialidocious!) and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate factory’ and ‘Pygmalion’ during the Christmas special film telecasts on TV, and I heard the songs and also a few other pieces from the old records that were purchased and played on a record player.

I was also with not a few bizarre fixations...I wanted seven brothers and a maybe a few sisters and all of us would have bunk beds and talk a lot and be great friends. It was one of my fondest fantasies. I fell ill once, and for the longest time I believed that I had seen the doctor drawing out some spinal fluid with a huge needle. Only many years later did I realize that it was a false memory because the doctors and nurses would not have put up a mirror on the ceiling for my benefit simply because I preferred seeing what was being prodded into me. I had one sudden infatuation when about 7-ish: he was a friendly, communicative, red-haired (!), tall, and lanky bus driver whose name I remember, and I remember feeling the pangs while singing songs during prayer service when in school, and at some point I had a quiet crush on an older boy named Steven, and very badly wanted to talk with him but never did. For the years there in that town I was rather boisterous and noisy and adventurous in some ways, and also quiet and fairly precocious and sometimes silly, I think and yet I remember feeling the feeling that life lay somewhere else and I missed a deep part of me, and one day when I knew I was coming/going back to India (and I’d known that India was the land where I came from) I was equally excited about the prospect of returning. I carry the smells at the then Heathrow Airport and on Scandinavian Airlines, and I remember nothing else about the return journey. There are other strange memories which kind of rise in the mind and yes, there was the weather in that town in England – but this is more than enough for now...

I know I missed toast once back in India and I used to get quietly enraged when people didn’t know what the hell I was saying or would laugh about my pronunciation and everybody around me would join in on the joke whether I was speaking in Bengali and even in English, and yet I couldn’t blame them so I would feign a quiet indifference at the beginning. Some two decades later I got to know that there had been a much older boy back then who had defended my pronunciation in my absence, but I hadn't heard of him or seen him back then when I was 8.

On the matter of children and oath taking

I’ve been thinking of children because of the blogposts I’ve been reading and essays and conversations I’ve been reflecting over, and the furrows on my head have grown deeper, and for different reasons. 

This post sort of takes off from the “Lemmings…” post for which Suvro da posted a link and in connection to the particular matter of oath taking and Girl Guides.

The leader of the Girl Guides in an effort to be “relevant” took the old oath about “being true to God, Queen, and country” and changed it to “being true to myself, and my beliefs”. What made me laugh one early morning was that I started thinking about children – the real children that I’ve known (including myself), heard about, read about, and thought about. Children, I think, normally know better than to trust their batty beliefs and they don’t entertain too many fancy notions about their changing “self”. I’m not sentimental about children, and I know 5 or 6 year-olds or even younger children and certainly older ones can be viciously cruel or hurtful or malicious or spiteful or just plain dumb or just vain or silly - both from personal experience and having known myself. But children can also be imaginative and curious and are more engaged in living and investigating and experimenting and can, I know play for hours with a little string or a thread or in a sandpit or with a colourful piece of paper or make a tent with a bed-sheet apart from engaging in reading and writing or thinking provided that there are a few of the external factors in place and no immediately repressive inhibitors and some active encouragement (from teachers in school and/or parents). They can also be stubborn and also very unreasonable but also sharp. And comic strip writers especially and children’s writers and writers writing upon children have pointed out that children can also be intelligent. Calvin knows better – that’s why he speaks with and listens to Hobbes. Dennis (whom I sadly ignored rather often) may not explicitly have a friend he speaks to, but he speaks of a “conscience” with cookie eating. Zooey in ‘Franny and Zooey’ speaks to Jesus. The Little Prince has his Rose. The very real little child in ‘The Selfish Giant’ makes the ogre-ish giant come alive with his love, and the child is no other than the little boy Jesus, and he’s there when the Giant passes away. The girl in a story called “A little bit of Sorcery” has an omnipresent friend when she finds herself most disillusioned and depressed whom she could then call upon. So many children talk to some other part of their Self – a deeper Self, and so do grown-ups….I have talked about this earlier in old posts. 

So to take that original oath of “being true to God, Queen, and country”: I think young children if left to their own devices within the framework of a given culture may prefer talking and arguing and seeing the world with God, Jesus, maybe Lucifer, story book characters or conjure up somebody else with whom they can exchange stuff while the world and the adults around them comes across as confusing and disturbing or just muddled or disgusting or plain hypocritical. In fact, after some more thought on the matter, I say it’s better to talk with the Queen. At least a child’s version of what the Queen implies and what the Queen might or might not say gives the child company to sort out what she sees in the outside world. The whole deal of the oath is that the child knows that there is somebody else within to keep one company…even country makes sense. Being true to one’s country is a deep oath and there is nothing frivolous or inane about it even if one cannot talk with one’s country so to speak in the same way as one would talk with the Queen…. The writer of the "Lemmings..." article was not overrun with sentiment to believe that the original oath of “being true to God, Queen, and country” would make brilliant little thoughtful girls who would go on to do incredible things with their lives. Even with the oath the writer knows that maybe, just maybe one or two or three of the little Girl Guides may be shaken out from their states of sleepy self-satisfaction.

So to go back to the “true to myself and my beliefs” bit. It brought to my mind a story I’d read in my first Enid Blyton (Ruby story book), from which I remember two tales and one was titled, “Because my mother does….”. It had made a very strong impression on me. I won’t go through the whole story but to provide a synopsis from what I remember: thunder and lightning and a storm breaks out while the primary school kids are in the middle of a class, and a couple of very young kids hide under their table and one kid shakes with fright and a couple run to the window to admire the storm, and the teacher asks the two frightened kids why they are hiding under the table. The children shaking with terror say, “because my mother does.” Why did the two kids run to the window? "Because our mother does." And the teacher starts asking the other kids in class about why they do some of the things they do, and don’t do some of the things they don’t and it turns out that all the kids do what they do, “because my mother does…”. A little extreme, maybe, but Blyton transmits her point with a sharp nudge – with the teacher talking with the children, and getting the children to enjoy storms and hold little frogs and some such other stuff, and takes them to the farm to see some cows – and she points out that children tend to do what their mothers do but that there is nothing automatically good or reasonable or noble about doing everything or not doing everything their mothers do. The children are also rather quick on the uptake, and they realize that they are somewhat silly for being scared of so many different things simply because their mothers are. Of course these days such a story would probably be banned on the grounds of being sexist but let me not get into all that. 

To go back to the oath then with the ‘be true to myself, and my beliefs’ . With no God or Queen or country in the proceedings – who are little Girl Guides going to be true to? They might not want to trust their batty beliefs in entirety but the little girls can now be true to their mothers and their mother’s beliefs, and be little clones of their mothers. Or else they can have the whole of society in their minds  – and be true to that society with all its concomitant sicknesses, and do exactly and only what society tells them is alright or any dogmatic tradition of beliefs that manages to wheedle itself into minds which have forgotten or which have never known what is good and beautiful or have only faintly wondered about meaning and purpose in life, and why these elements matter. The same idea, if one thinks about it raises its ugly and evil head in ‘Harry Potter  and The chamber of Secrets’. Ginny, the lonely child who has nobody else starts writing in a diary which starts writing back, and Riddle is able to control her for his own demented purposes, and yet Ginny being essentially good is able to fight back. There are other examples that I can think of – but this is sufficient, for now....

This is not a matter limited to little girls. 
And people in their teens, mid twenties and older and older still – the grand middle class in the world is converging towards some unspeakable and mindless and horrifying mean; conforming to the standards that have been laid down by the consumerist culture and the accompanying bombarding ubiquitous messages – buy, splurge, booze, eat, shop, preen in public, go with what titillates the senses but nothing more, and make sure you have the cash to throw out. And that’s what we have…an increasingly mindless planet in which the masses cannot distinguish at all amongst what is shallow and filthy and crude and disgusting or mind-numbing and what lies in the middle and what is the true and the good and the beautiful. It makes me go back to my original rant that little children need to be taught what is good and beautiful and what is ugly, among other things...And what can I say about the great majority of sociologists who ignore the matter of "values" altogether or imagine that values are too "fuzzy" to talk about as sociologists or don't want to investigate why it is that we are becoming so mindless that "50 shades" becomes a best-seller and the "gangnam style" video gets million hits and is applauded by VIPs around the world...maybe for more than most it is a matter of "living in glass houses" when they aren't in their academic towers or maybe we are happy taking pot-shots at the "culture industry" and the media, and maybe many haven't ever articulated what values they themselves live by. While being prodded into being reminded of "A Brave New World", I was reminded of Orwell’s "1984", and there is a very interesting comparison between the two books on Wikipedia ("Anthem" is a book I'd place in the same category but as a mirror image). 

What I do wonder about is why people who when young and have the opportunity to learn a little from someone who is better don't try harder. 

I know how easy it is to feel unnervingly lonely or be swept away or to feel horrified and this in spite the fact that I've always been, as far as I can remember, a thinking & feeling being more than anything else, I think, and I know I've been deucedly lucky and blessed in a couple of ways, which makes me wonder all the more at times. 

 So I still hope because...And I stick to the hope because of the because... More, later.