Saturday, 29 October 2016
So...it has been a long time since I have been with you. What's new? Well, not much.
Still depressed and anxious, still helping out the blind neighbour. He can't get out any more so I do the shopping and cook his supper every night. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning. So it goes....
I still live in sense of permanent nostalgia and longing for Calcutta and my days in the sun. I long for hazy sunny days when the heat was oppressive and time seemed to stand still. Can't quite believe that I am 61. Still feel like a teenager.
Getting this laptop has been a boon. It came from a local charity who ate trying to get the older generation online. If you ever have doubts about the efficacy of charities take my word for it - they do help and help a lot!
During my time away Mother Theresa became a saint and I was reminded of days spent a Shishu Bhavan and hours sp0ent folding little paper envelopes for medicines. My father was Mother's doctor and would periodically put her into Woodlands for a much needed rest. He was one of the few people she would listen to. She was extraordinary, small and hunched and full of power. She burned with a mission that compelled attention. Desmond wrote a wonderful book about her. By the end of it he was a convert- if not to faith then to belief in her strength and power of belief.
My parents were very friendly with Brother Andrew - Mother T's male counterpart and
Dad used to go and treat many of the children in his care. It was Andrew that recognised the need for some kind of drug treatment and he set up a house at Dum Dum.
One Good Friday we got a call that there was a naked European outside my Dad's surgery at Lord Sinha Road.. My mother and I went down and sure enough there was naked man lying on the doorstep claiming to be Jesus. He was Australian and clearly in trouble. We contacted a friend, Doug Sturkey, the Australian High Commissioner and he suggested we tried to see if we could use the Missionaries of Charity new facility. Things moved quickly and the young man was put into the High Commissioner's car and taken out to Dum Dum.
I went to my friend John Brinand and asked for his help as it was clear that the man was on some kind trip and I thought, perhaps naively, that John would be able to talk him down. We went out ot Dum Dum together and found David (that was his name) still naked, on the floor and still tripping. John was amazing with him and managed to calm him and we committed to come back the next day.
It turned out that David had fallen in with a nasty piece of work who had befriended him, given him a four way hit of acid and stolen his passport and money. We were able to arrange anew passport through Doug and also got him repatriated to Australia. Not a typical Mother Theresa story perhaps but an example of how for her influence and that of the Missionaries of Charity extended beyond the destitute and dying and orphans of Calcutta.
Still depressed and anxious, still helping out the blind neighbour. He can't get out any more so I do the shopping and cook his supper every night. It gives me a reason to get up in the morning. So it goes....
I still live in sense of permanent nostalgia and longing for Calcutta and my days in the sun. I long for hazy sunny days when the heat was oppressive and time seemed to stand still. Can't quite believe that I am 61. Still feel like a teenager.
Getting this laptop has been a boon. It came from a local charity who ate trying to get the older generation online. If you ever have doubts about the efficacy of charities take my word for it - they do help and help a lot!
During my time away Mother Theresa became a saint and I was reminded of days spent a Shishu Bhavan and hours sp0ent folding little paper envelopes for medicines. My father was Mother's doctor and would periodically put her into Woodlands for a much needed rest. He was one of the few people she would listen to. She was extraordinary, small and hunched and full of power. She burned with a mission that compelled attention. Desmond wrote a wonderful book about her. By the end of it he was a convert- if not to faith then to belief in her strength and power of belief.
My parents were very friendly with Brother Andrew - Mother T's male counterpart and
Dad used to go and treat many of the children in his care. It was Andrew that recognised the need for some kind of drug treatment and he set up a house at Dum Dum.
One Good Friday we got a call that there was a naked European outside my Dad's surgery at Lord Sinha Road.. My mother and I went down and sure enough there was naked man lying on the doorstep claiming to be Jesus. He was Australian and clearly in trouble. We contacted a friend, Doug Sturkey, the Australian High Commissioner and he suggested we tried to see if we could use the Missionaries of Charity new facility. Things moved quickly and the young man was put into the High Commissioner's car and taken out to Dum Dum.
I went to my friend John Brinand and asked for his help as it was clear that the man was on some kind trip and I thought, perhaps naively, that John would be able to talk him down. We went out ot Dum Dum together and found David (that was his name) still naked, on the floor and still tripping. John was amazing with him and managed to calm him and we committed to come back the next day.
It turned out that David had fallen in with a nasty piece of work who had befriended him, given him a four way hit of acid and stolen his passport and money. We were able to arrange anew passport through Doug and also got him repatriated to Australia. Not a typical Mother Theresa story perhaps but an example of how for her influence and that of the Missionaries of Charity extended beyond the destitute and dying and orphans of Calcutta.
Saturday, 24 March 2012
The Fortight from Hell
Two days later it was back together with the latest state of the art operating system - Lion - I believe.
Then the sodding dingle wouldn't work. I was stranded, out of reach of my friends - this was the computer nerd's nightmare scenario. turned out I needed a new zippier dongle - £40.00 pounds later I had it but it still didn't work!!!!
This was getting serious - I was getting text messages from friends of friends wanting to know if I
was aright. So - back to the Apple Store I went. Turned out the sim card in the dongle hadn't been inserted properly.
So there you are - I am back.
Oh yes and Peter the blind neighbour almost died form a bad attack of Crones so that's a two bus journey every day to keep and eye on him and make sure they don't just forget about him. The National Health service is wonderful but they neglect the more vulnerable if they think there is no one who care. But I do so all is well.
Oh - how I long for Calcutta at times like these - just to get away from what Tom Paine called. "the times that try men's souls".
Saturday, 24 December 2011
Happy sadness, dark light
It is that saddest of times and that happiest of times: to be child is to make this night almost unbearably slow with the certain knowledge that joy would follow in the morning. To be an adult alone it is almost unbearably sad to know that no joy comes in the morning -simply another day to be endured like so many others, only on this day there is premium for us lonely people to pay - we must smile and look like we are enjoying the season. I suppose faith might help but having little time for organised religion it looks a doubtful lifesaver.
Last year as many of you know I offended my sister with my 'humorous' remarks. I have seen her three times this year. She drives me mad but I miss her.
I have been fighting the demon voices this last week -the ones that say no-one will miss you, the world would be an easier place without you in it, you're a waste of space of oxygen of state money. And - it is all true. And it is all true except when I come to the blog and 16,000 of you have read it and that 16,000 people know I am alive and find some worth in what I write and so for tonight the angels win.
Depression is lonely, hard to explain and fight. Christmas is not a time to be depressed and it is harder to fight now that at any other time of the year. So I hope your Yuletide is happy and bright and that 2012 brings us all the hope and happiness we all deserve. "God bless us everyone" , as Tiny Tim would say.
Friday, 16 December 2011
A Puri holiday
When we first went to Puri we went by train. We had a whole carriage for ourselves and Joe and Mary. There was no airconditioning in those early days so we slid the carriage doors open and with our legs dangling over the side of the train as we rolled through West Bengal, Bihar and finally Puri.
Joe was in charge of provisions for the trip and he had come prepared - with a chula! ( For those of you that don't know; a chula is an improvised barbecue and hot plate. It runs on wood and dried cow dung.) The carriage filled with acrid smoke very quickly but before we knew plates of curry, rice and parathas - and it was the food of the gods. Joe had worked his masmorojin and the smoke cleared eventually, although I do remember something about a hole in the middle of the floor!
Later trips were by car and always set off in the very early morning. They always started with violent rows between my mother and my father and then it was time to shoehorn ourselves into the cars. My parents deciding to travel separately - thank God!
In our car there George to drive, Abdul for a holiday and then me, Mum and Janie (unless her boyfriend came too in which case she would disown us and regally waved as they passed us by. The first pit stop was at a Sikh roadside restaurant where the made the best alloo parathas ever. By now West Bengal was behind us and we were about leave Bihar for Orrissa. Once into Orrissa the landscape began to change, the were forests of trees, still lagoons of water and once - on a special day twelve sadhus riding elephants on their way to a mela.
My parents had settles into an uneasy truce and kept sniping at one another every time we stopped - when we saw the elephants Mum wanted to stop and talk to the sadhus about where they going and why on elephants. Dad fumed silently and then got into his car and pushed off leaving us behind.
That last part of the journey was the hardest - we passed Bhubaneshwar, then Pipli and then only 30 miles left to Puri. The journey felt as if it would never end but it did and there was the sea and the sand and the promise of a holiday only India could provide.
To be continued....
Joe was in charge of provisions for the trip and he had come prepared - with a chula! ( For those of you that don't know; a chula is an improvised barbecue and hot plate. It runs on wood and dried cow dung.) The carriage filled with acrid smoke very quickly but before we knew plates of curry, rice and parathas - and it was the food of the gods. Joe had worked his masmorojin and the smoke cleared eventually, although I do remember something about a hole in the middle of the floor!
Later trips were by car and always set off in the very early morning. They always started with violent rows between my mother and my father and then it was time to shoehorn ourselves into the cars. My parents deciding to travel separately - thank God!
In our car there George to drive, Abdul for a holiday and then me, Mum and Janie (unless her boyfriend came too in which case she would disown us and regally waved as they passed us by. The first pit stop was at a Sikh roadside restaurant where the made the best alloo parathas ever. By now West Bengal was behind us and we were about leave Bihar for Orrissa. Once into Orrissa the landscape began to change, the were forests of trees, still lagoons of water and once - on a special day twelve sadhus riding elephants on their way to a mela.
My parents had settles into an uneasy truce and kept sniping at one another every time we stopped - when we saw the elephants Mum wanted to stop and talk to the sadhus about where they going and why on elephants. Dad fumed silently and then got into his car and pushed off leaving us behind.
That last part of the journey was the hardest - we passed Bhubaneshwar, then Pipli and then only 30 miles left to Puri. The journey felt as if it would never end but it did and there was the sea and the sand and the promise of a holiday only India could provide.
To be continued....
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
Aya Toofan
Imagine this - early morning, about 5.30. A mist rolls in from the river making everything chilled and for those of us just coming home a little cold in our finery. In the centre of the maidan, the Victoria Memorial stands to the right of the racecourse: the reason for all of us being there so early. This was in my jockey days and I was often coming from a sleepless night of passion to watch the latest inamorata ride out as the horses came to the track for their early morning workouts and gallops.
I would sit , yawning and sated, lazily looking around me as the obsessed fiddled, cursing with binoculars as they peered through the mist to see who was working well, how much the jockey had kept in hand on his gallop, My mother would rarely have her horses do more than an eight anna gallop - she felt the horse left the race behind him on the track and needed to be fit for Saturday,
Recaffinanted I would go home and bathe and then set out to meet the others - on a Wednesday the handicaps came out and we would go to Flurys, drink hot chocolate and plot and plan the betting that would take place over the weekend. If it was Tolly race time my parents would inevitably fall into a row where my mother would accuse my father of not having a clue how to handicap and him telling her she had no idea how to run one. They really didn't speak to each other again until Friday.
If it was RCTC time I was in love with my jockey, who was married with a wife in England, far enough away to make it seem OK. Of course it wasn't but he was special and I loved him so a few months for two years were better than nothing at all.
From the small baba who had believed that racing was about the exit form the starting gate I had arrived as a seasoned race goer. I bet and sometimes won. My best ever bet was on a horse called Aya Toofan, which roughly translates to Here Comes the Storm. It was monsoon and the sky was black - I had a hundred rupees left and I put it all to win on the horse. Everyone in our box and the box next door laughed at me.
The race started as the storm started, black clouds emptying their rain like sheets of bullets, thunder rolling around the track and forked lightening finding its way into ground all around us. A great cheer went up form the crowd - "Aya Toofan!"- as he splashed past the winning post some two lengths clear of everything else in the race. The price - 50/1. Not bad for no sentiment in racing.
There was a party that night as we danced the night away until the wee small hours and then rubbing our eyes headed back to the track.
I would sit , yawning and sated, lazily looking around me as the obsessed fiddled, cursing with binoculars as they peered through the mist to see who was working well, how much the jockey had kept in hand on his gallop, My mother would rarely have her horses do more than an eight anna gallop - she felt the horse left the race behind him on the track and needed to be fit for Saturday,
Recaffinanted I would go home and bathe and then set out to meet the others - on a Wednesday the handicaps came out and we would go to Flurys, drink hot chocolate and plot and plan the betting that would take place over the weekend. If it was Tolly race time my parents would inevitably fall into a row where my mother would accuse my father of not having a clue how to handicap and him telling her she had no idea how to run one. They really didn't speak to each other again until Friday.
If it was RCTC time I was in love with my jockey, who was married with a wife in England, far enough away to make it seem OK. Of course it wasn't but he was special and I loved him so a few months for two years were better than nothing at all.
From the small baba who had believed that racing was about the exit form the starting gate I had arrived as a seasoned race goer. I bet and sometimes won. My best ever bet was on a horse called Aya Toofan, which roughly translates to Here Comes the Storm. It was monsoon and the sky was black - I had a hundred rupees left and I put it all to win on the horse. Everyone in our box and the box next door laughed at me.
The race started as the storm started, black clouds emptying their rain like sheets of bullets, thunder rolling around the track and forked lightening finding its way into ground all around us. A great cheer went up form the crowd - "Aya Toofan!"- as he splashed past the winning post some two lengths clear of everything else in the race. The price - 50/1. Not bad for no sentiment in racing.
There was a party that night as we danced the night away until the wee small hours and then rubbing our eyes headed back to the track.
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