The Tek (please let know if I am spelling it wrong - I just have a memory of it scrawled on the wall) was a sort of round mud shed in the backyard of a guy called Errol. He did very little except provide a convivial space for the local musicians and their hangers on to hang out. He had a wife, Val, and two beautiful daughters. Val worked for one of the big international companies as a top secretary and earned the money that clothed and fed her children and her husband. Their flat was two rooms, one divided by a curtain to make their bedroom and one so tiny that the little girls shared one bed that had to be climbed into from the door.
This was a time of great political unrest in Calcutta, the terrifying Naxalites were rampant, killing seemingly with impunity. They shot the secretary of Tollygunge Club in his office. There were days when golf could not be played because the eighteenth green was soaked with blood of the victims of the night before. It sounds oddly 'outraged of Tunbridge Wells': "Dashed bad show, what. Couldn't finish the game because those damn Maoists shot some chappies on the eighteenth.
There two sets of stables at Tolly; one by the carparks and one at the very rear of the club just outside its boundaries. This one was older, more dilapidated and cheaper, so many of the gymknana race horses down from Meerut and Lucknow for the season were kept there. One night the Naxalites set the thatch alight and although some, very few, horses were saved, many more perished in their bamboo and straw thatched stalls.
All terrible things, hideous. But the drive to Tolly went from the air-conditioned flat, to the driver waiting to drive you , through New Alipore with its pretentions of modernity, past driver George's hijra lawyer using the local tea shop as his office; nearly always in full sari and jewellery but on court days in a robe carrying his wig, past the shops, the women making cow dung patties on the walls of their houses, the tired lying on their charpoys by the side of the road trying to catch a moment's breeze. Over nullah bridges where one had to breathe deeply through the mouth to escape the acrid smell of raw sewage as it pumped into the water. And everywhere, buses, trams, bullock carts, cars, scooters and rickshaws. Then to compound the chaos, the street vendors, barbers squatting giving what looked like lethal shaves with rusty cuthroat razors, chaat sellers, pikri wallas and anything that could be be sold was hawked and vended by the side of the road as well as on it. And in between all this children running playing as children do every where.
Then, through double gates and into the green and tranquil space that was Tolly. Originally an indigo plantation it had the of Tara. I was told that when the trees were planted no tow shades of green were allowed. Tea on the lawn, a swim, racing, golf and tennis. I supect 'Outraged of Naxalbari': would have said: 'Look at what they have and we do not. It is not right. This is not British India and the old ways must be destroyed."
So you see these two contrasts of life were every day and yet to a stranger's eye shocking and even more shocking that nature of our oxymoronic life disturbed us not at all.
But I learned my lesson the Atticus way. The point of all the talk of the Naxalites and terror at the beginning was that very often we would have a hartal, a general strike, fiercely enforced. Oh those days you stayed at home, because to ask anyone to take you out would be to put them in danger. Being a wicked teenager I hatched a cunning plan; I would tell my mother that I was spending the night with a friend in Park Street and after the hartal was over we would go to school together the next day. Andree's mum ran two nightclubs on Park Street and as long as her own daughter was safe she wouldn't check to see if my mother knew I was off to a party in Elliot Road. Andree agreed to cover for me and I would be back in time for us to spend the day together.
The party actually started in Second Lane - a name so notorious in my household that my mother would have had apoplexy had she known I was there. The reason I was so determined to be there was that it was Peter Yeti's birthday and I had had a shirt made for him as a present and wanted to give it to him myself. I went alone and soon felt quite uncomfortable,then Peter arrived, loved the shirt and put it on straight away. We spent the whole evening together and I missed the midnight deadline to get back to Andree's. Peter suggested we went to the Tek and, when everyone had left, we could crash there. I think I thought all my Chrismasses and birthdays had come at once. /we walked from 2nd Lane to Elliot Road holding hands and he kissed me, the one and only time, and it was the sweetest kiss that still makes me smile when I remember.When we got there , there was a fire roaring in the middle of the room and the air was heavy withe the smell of hashish and playing loudly on the stereo 'Riders on the Storm', we sat down and then in came Val and for the first time that night I realised I was the only girl in the group. Errol and Peter were called outside. The next thing I knew I was in their flat , Errol was carrying two sleepy little girls into his and Val's bed and and I was put to bed by Val in her daughter's room.
The next morning the Atticus moment - for my stupid pride and schoolgirl crush I had disturbed a whole family as if it was my right and , as I sat on their steps drinking tea, with peter singing 'Old Stewball" I knew I could go home but for them this was it and I had not understood or shown it the proper respect. Rather like Tolly.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
TS Eliot 'Little Gidding', The Four Quartets
No comments:
Post a Comment