Book Extract: A life of many colours from a town called Dehra

Grandfather Clerke had built a small bungalow on Old Survey Road in 1900, the year the first train came puffing into Dehra, and had settled there in 1905. It was a typical railwayman’s bungalow, very basic, tidy and compact, with verandas front and back, and a kitchen separate from the main building. The only distinctive thing about it was that instead of the customary red bricks, Grandfather had used the smooth rounded stones from a local riverbed. Through my childhood this was the only home that gave me some feeling of permanence, even if I wasn’t entirely happy here.

To me, it was always ‘Granny’s house’, because Grandfather had died the year I was born, and all those stories I was to write about him one day were made up by me or based on hearsay. I have often wished I had known him; from the stories I heard about him, he appeared to be a gently eccentric man—he would disguise himself as a vegetable vendor or a juggler and wander around in the bazaars. He was also in the habit of bringing home unusual pets—owls, frogs, chameleons and, on one occasion, a hyena, which chewed up the boots in the house and had to be released back into the forest very quickly…

Granny lived alone, with a black pariah dog called Crazy, but her married daughters and a happily vagrant son (Uncle Ken) would come to stay in the house now and then. She wasn’t a typical granny; I made her more homely in my stories. She was heavy-set, heavy-jowled, and a stern woman, not given to expressing emotion. She preferred her own company; in the evenings, even if there were others in the house, she sat by herself playing patience, a card game which does not require another player.

She didn’t seem to like small boys—or it was small boys with buck teeth that she did not like. ‘Little boys should speak only when spoken to,’ was one of her maxims, and I was discouraged from joining in the conversation at the dining table. I was also discouraged from taking ‘second helpings’ of any dish, with the result that I made sure my first helping was large enough.

Her disapproval did not extend to my cousins, whom she always praised in my presence, and I think her discomfort with me may have been due to the fact that she was not sure if I was legitimate or not. Being of strict Victorian and evangelical upbringing, she would have been horrified at the thought of harbouring a bastard child in her home. My parents’ marriage had been sudden and unexpected. Why had my mother married an older man? And why had they gone to Kasauli for my arrival? I did not understand any of this at the time, and I felt a little bewildered and resentful. I suppose she did love me, to the extent that she could love anyone and show it, but I was used to being the centre of attention, and now I was expected to make myself invisible. Sometimes I looked around for my mother, wanting to ask her if we could live somewhere else, but I rarely found her in the house. She was always going away somewhere, returning late at night.

Already, I was missing my father, who was posted in New Delhi, at Air Headquarters. He was over forty when he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF); he may have bluffed his age, or maybe one could enlist in one’s forties during the war. He had been given the rank of Pilot Officer and was working in the Codes and Cyphers section. He must have been good at his job, because he was soon a Flying Officer. But it was to be about a year before I would see him again…

An old photograph of Granny’s house shows a strange-looking object hanging on the veranda wall. There is no other decoration on that wall, and I can’t help feeling it was placed there to terrorise me. This was an enema can with a rubber tube ending in a metal nozzle. It was Granny’s remedy for a variety of children’s ailments, ranging from constipation to indigestion to bad behaviour. A solution of soapy water—good old Lifebuoy soap—was poured into the can, the nozzle and the tube were then inserted into the victim’s rectum, and the solution would be allowed to travel up one’s lower intestine. After several minutes of this torture, the tube would be removed, and a little later the ravished victim would be rushing to the nearest bathroom to relieve the pressure.

I say ‘victim’ rather than patient, because I could not help feeling that my ultra-critical grandmother always singled me out for the enema cure. Even if I was suffering from diarrhoea, I would get the enema. ‘This will clean you out,’ Granny would say. ‘Down with your knickers!’ My modesty outraged, I would have to submit to the indignity of having this nozzle shoved up my backside at least once a month. My cousin Edith was exempted from this treatment, either because she was a girl or because she was never constipated.

My fear of the enema resulted in an aversion to being touched by anyone except my parents, and this aversion lasted until my prep school days in Shimla, when I was quite pleasantly cured of it in the rowdy public baths.

To escape Granny’s enemas, and her stern orders to behave like ‘a well-bred young gentleman’, I looked for a place where I could hide, and I found it in an old banyan tree behind the house. Its large, spreading branches hung to the ground and took root again, and they were covered with thick green leaves. Here, I was very well concealed, and I would sit propped up against the bole of the tree, to read a comic, or watch the world below, on the road outside the compound wall…

If Granny saw me when I had just emerged from my hideaway, I would be sent off for a bath. I had to learn to bathe myself. Gone were the soft hands of my Jamnagar Ayah; gone were the days of playing ‘rucktions’ in the bathtub with my father; or of lingering in the bath to float a paper boat or create soap bubbles. Into the hot water I went—no matter how hot!—and out again in two minutes flat. If I took any longer, Granny would walk in grim-faced, speaking not a word, and give me a good, rough scrub down. And if the soap got in my eyes, well then, it served me right for not shutting them properly.

Granny was a strong woman, and once in her grip there was no escape. In a faded old photo she appears to be a foot taller than Grandfather, who stands possessively beside her, rather like a hunter who has trapped a large tiger or gorilla and brought it back alive. I think Grandfather liked well-built women. His first wife had been a Boer from South Africa, who had trekked across the African Veldt, braving Zulu spears and British bullets (on separate occasions), finally ending up in India in a camp for Boer prisoners-of-war. Or so the story went.

Excerpt taken with permission from Speaking Tiger.

Pages 277; Rs 599