As some of you may have noticed I have been a little bilious of late; things are improving and having these lovely old books at my fingertips has played a part in this. Yesterday, I noticed a new/old book from the Rare Book Society called the Singing Caravan: A Sufi Tale and, as usual got the PDF to read later - I do love what technology does, it is only when it goes wrong that I become a Luddite. Anyway, later came and I started flick through my downloads, found the book and thought this looks familiar. Then I started to read it. Just be grateful that I am not Proust. we could be looking at three volumes if I was.
Centuries ago when I was still the small baba, my mother began to develop her passion for antiques. Where better than Calcutta at that time? The big overseas dealers hadn't realised what was there and the local dealers had some idea, but still there were bargains to be had, For her there was no greater heaven than a morning in Chore Bazaar followed by days of sanding and polishing and refurbishing to reveal the hidden treasure. The climate meant that Calcutta was not kind to antiques, so amny books and pictures had the fine bloom of mold on them from the constant humidity. Her two great loves were wood and porcelain. She collected blue and white, Staffordshire and anything Chinese she could lay her hands on. When it came to wood she had a gift of seeing below the surface to reveal something extraordinary so that dusty old drawers reappeared as beautiful campaign chests and chairs covered in paint were revealed to be gentle Regency aristocrats waiting to be loved again.
She was absolutely not alone in this and her greatest pleasure would come from beating one of her friends to the treasure. She and Annabel's mother Maureen had many a tustle over different pieces and I think in the end the honours were about even. Then she discovered, out in Garden Reach (sorry to digress, but what a name) a lady called Mary Demetrios whose husband had just died and who was selling up many of his pieces before leaving India for Greece. It was like Aladdin's cave, a house that was frozen in moment in time, full of 'wonderful things'.
MUm bought what she could but money was never unlimited and sometimesI think we went simly for her to touch and stroke the objects of desire. She took Chogyal and Hopela when they came down from Gangtok and was livid when Hope then introduced her antiques dealer, Malcolm Sookias, to Mary. Suddenly the slow progress of things leaving that house became a flood and all too soon the cave of wonders began to look very empty.
There were two pieces that my mother wanted: a three fold screen that was inset with pot lids, all hand painted in the potteries and then shipped out to India as lids ot potted meat and Gentlemen's Relish. It was a thing of beauty and looked lovely in the palace in Gangtok. The other piece was a classic famille vert Chinese pot with a dragon and a phoenix chasing each each other in an eternal dance through an airy chrysanthemum garden that ebbed and flowed around its bulbous sides. It must have originally been part of a pair but its partner had long been consigned to someone else's history and it stood lonely and rather majestic waiting for its new home.
Partly, I think, in thanks for the stream of buyers that had passed through the old house Mum was allowed to buy the pot on instalments. She somehow rigged the cookbook (and if you are not sure what that was - it is whole other blog, believe me) and was able to pay every fortnight. I seem to remember a lot of Macaroni Cheese about this time.
The time came for Mrs Demetrios to leave and for my mother to make our final trip out to Garden Reach and, having made the final payment, collect her pot. We were made very welcome and soon both women were chatting away and looking at the last things that were being shipped either to Gangtok or, by Malcolm, to London and New York. How passing strange that these objects should cross the seas to India for the delectation and delight of the Raj and now be returned to Europe for another generation of wealthy collectors. It seemed almost a metaphor for the Impact of British India on the subcontinent; such a short time of attempted assimilation in the long time line that dated back to Mohenjo Daro and the Indus Valley civiisations. India had behaved like a lady, she had been plundered but did not plunder in return, rather returned the remnants of her lovers' goods with courtesy and a faint disdain.
My small baba's mind was probably not making such a coherent point but something similar was going through it as I kicked the pebbles around the hot and dusty garden and wondered balefully why there was all this fuss about 'stuff' that, my beloved Miss Jagtiani had told me, was but a brief smudge upon the glory and longevity of Indian art and culture. I was too young to see that history is a river that rises and falls, sometimes in flood and sometimes in drought but continuous and eternal from the mountains of yesterday to the sea of tomorrow.
As we were finally about to leave and I was receiving my farewell 'auntie' kiss Mrs Demtrios handed me a package. A book. It was, she said, one her son Johnnie had loved as a child. It was called The Singing Caravan: A Sufi Tale.
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