Uncles, Aunts and Elephants Read online

  Uncle Ken was one of those people who went through life without having to do much, although a great deal seemed to happen around him. He acted as a sort of catalyst for events that involved the family, friends, neighbours, the town itself. He believed in the fruits of hard work: other people’s hard work.

  Ken was good-looking as a boy, and his sisters doted on him. He took full advantage of their devotion, and, as the girls grew up and married, Ken took it for granted that they and their husbands would continue to look after his welfare. You could say he was the originator of the welfare state; his own.

  I’ll say this for Uncle Ken, he had a large fund of curiosity in his nature, and he loved to explore the town we lived in, and any other town or city where he might happen to find himself. With one sister settled in Lucknow, another in Ranchi, a third in Bhopal, a fourth in Pondicherry and a fifth in Barrackpore, Uncle Ken managed to see a cross section of India by dividing his time between all his sisters and their long-suffering husbands.

  Uncle Ken liked to walk. Occasionally he borrowed my bicycle, but he had a tendency to veer off the main road and into ditches and other obstacles after a collision with a bullock cart, in which he tore his trousers and damaged the handlebar of my bicycle, Uncle Ken concluded that walking was the best way of getting around Dehra.

  Uncle Ken dressed quite smartly for a man of no particular occupation. He had a blue-striped blazer and a red-striped blazer; he usually wore white or off-white trousers, immaculately pressed (by Granny). He was the delight of shoeshine boys, for he was always having his shoes polished. Summers he wore a straw hat, telling everyone he had worn it for the Varsity Boat Race, while rowing for Oxford (he hadn’t been to England, let alone Oxford); winters, he wore one of Grandfather’s old felt hats. He seldom went bareheaded. At thirty he was almost completely bald, prompting Aunt Mabel to remark: ‘Well, Ken, you must be grateful for small mercies. At least you’ll never have bats getting entangled in your hair.’

  Thanks to all his walking Uncle Ken had a good digestion, which kept pace with a hearty appetite. Our walks would be punctuated by short stops at chaat shops, sweet shops, fruit stalls, confectioners, small bakeries and other eateries.

  ‘Have you brought any pocket money along?’ he would ask, for he was usually broke.

  ‘Granny gave me five rupees.’

  ‘We’ll try some rasgullas, then.’

  And the rasgullas would be followed by gulab jamuns until my five rupees was finished. Uncle Ken received a small allowance from Granny, but he ferreted it away to spend on clothes, preferring to spend my pocket money on perishables such as ice creams, kulfis and Indian sweets.

  On one occasion, when neither of us had any money, Uncle Ken decided to venture into a sugarcane field on the outskirts of the town. He had broken off a stick of cane, and was busy chewing on it, when the owner of the field spotted us and let out a volley of imprecations. We fled from the field with the irate farmer giving chase. I could run faster than Uncle Ken, and did so. The farmer would have caught up with Uncle Ken if the latter’s hat hadn’t blown off, causing a diversion. The farmer picked up the hat, examined it, seemed to fancy it, and put it on. Several small boys clapped and cheered. The farmer marched off, wearing the hat, and Uncle Ken wisely decided against making any attempt to retrieve it.

  ‘I’ll get another one,’ he said philosophically.

  He wore a pith helmet, or sola topee, for the next few days, as he thought it would protect him from sticks and stones. For a while he harboured a paranoia that all the sugarcane farmers in the valley were looking for him, to avenge his foray into their fields. But after some time he discarded the topee because, according to him, it interfered with his good looks.

  *

  Granny grew the best sweet peas in Dehra. But she never entered them at the Annual Flower Show, held every year in the second week of March. She did not grow flowers to win prizes, she said; she grew them to please the spirit of Grandfather, who still hovered about the house and grounds he’d built thirty years earlier.

  Miss Kellner, Granny’s crippled but valued tenant, said the flowers were grown to attract beautiful butterflies, and she was right. In early summer, swarms of butterflies flitted about the garden.

  Uncle Ken had no compunction about winning prizes, even though he did nothing to deserve them. Without telling anyone, he submitted a large display of Granny’s sweet peas for the flower show, and when the prizes were announced, lo and behold! Kenneth Clerke had been awarded first prize for his magnificent display of sweet peas.

  Granny refused to speak to him for several days.

  Uncle Ken had been hoping for a cash prize, but they gave him a flower vase. He told me it was a Ming vase. But it looked more like Meerut to me. He offered it to Granny, hoping to propitiate her; but, still displeased with him, she gave it to Mr Khastgir, the artist next door, who kept his paintbrushes in it.

  Although I was sometimes a stubborn and unruly boy (my hero was Richmal Crompton’s ‘William’), I got on well with old ladies, especially those who, like Miss Kellner, were fond of offering me chocolates, marzipans, soft nankattai biscuits (made at Yusuf’s bakery in the Dilaram Bazaar), and pieces of crystallized ginger. Miss Kellner couldn’t walk — had never walked — and so she could only admire the garden from a distance, but it was from her that I learnt the names of many flowers, trees, birds and even butterflies.

  Uncle Ken wasn’t any good at names, but he wanted to catch a rare butterfly. He said he could make a fortune if he caught a leaf butterfly called the Purple Emperor. He equipped himself with a butterfly net, a bottle of ether and a cabinet for mounting his trophies; he then prowled all over the grounds, making frequent forays at anything that flew. He caught several common species — Red Admirals, a Tortoiseshell, a Painted Lady, even the occasional dragonfly — but the high-flying Purple Emperor and other exotics eluded him, as did the fortune he was always aspiring to make.

  Eventually he caught an angry wasp, which stung him through the netting. Chased by its fellow wasps, he took refuge in the lily pond and emerged sometime later draped in lilies and water weeds.

  After this, Uncle Ken retired from the butterfly business, insisting that tiger hunting was safer.

  In Search of the Perfect Window

  Those who advertise rooms or flats to let often describe them as ‘room with bath’ or ‘room with tea and coffee-making facilities’. A more attractive proposition would be ‘room with window’, for without a view a room is hardly a living place — merely a place of transit.

  As an itinerant young writer, I lived in many single-room apartments, or ‘bedsitters’ as they were called, and I have to admit that the quality of my life was certainly enhanced if any window looked out on something a little more inspiring than a factory wall or someone’s backyard.

  We cherish a romantic image of a starving, young poet living in a garret and writing odes to skylarks, but, believe me, garrets don’t help. For six months in London I lived in a small attic room that had no view at all, except for the roofs of other houses — an endless vista of gray tiles and blackened chimneys, without so much as a proverbial cat to relieve the monotony. I did not write a single ode, for no self-respecting nightingale or lark ever found its way up there.

  My next room, somewhere near Clapham Junction, had a ‘view of the railway’, but you couldn’t actually see the railway lines because of the rows of washing that were hung out to dry behind the building.

  It was a working-class area, and there were no laundries around the corner. But if you couldn’t see the railway, you could certainly hear it. Every time a train thundered past, the building shuddered, and ornaments, crockery and dishes rattled and rocked as though an earthquake were in progress. It was impossible to hang a picture on the wall; the nail (and with it the picture) fell out after a couple of days. But it reminded me a bit of my Uncle Fred’s railway quarters just near Delhi’s main railway station, and I managed to write a couple of train stories while living i
n this particular room.

  Train windows, naturally, have no equal when it comes to views, especially in India, where there’s an ever-changing panorama of mountain, forest, desert, village, town, and city — along with the colourful crowds at every railway station.

  But good, personal windows — windows to live with — these were to prove elusive for several years. Even after returning to India, I had some difficulty finding the ideal window.

  Moving briefly to a small town in northern India, I was directed to the Park View lodging house. There did happen to be a park in the vicinity, but no view of it could be had from my room or, indeed, from any room in the house. But I found, to my surprise, that the bathroom window actually looked out on the park. It provided a fine view! However, there is a limit to the length of time one can spend in the bath, gazing out at palm fronds waving in the distance. So I moved on again.

  After a couple of claustrophobic years in New Delhi, I escaped to the hills, fully expecting that I would immediately find rooms or a cottage with windows facing the eternal snows. But it was not to be!

  To see the snows I had to walk four miles from my lodgings to the highest point in the hill station. My window looked out on a high stone rampart, built to prevent the steep hillside from collapsing. True, a number of wild things grew in the wall — bunches of red sorrel, dandelions, tough weeds of various kinds, and, at the base, a large clump of nettles. Now I am sure there are people who can grow ecstatic over nettles, but I am not one of them. I find that nettles sting me at the first opportunity. So I gave my nettles a wide berth.

  And then, at last, persistence was rewarded. I found my present abode, a windswept, rather shaky, old house on the edge of a spur. My bedroom window opened on to blue skies, mountains striding away into the far distance, winding rivers in the valley below, and, just to bring me down to earth, the local television tower. Like the Red Shadow in The Desert Song, I could stand at my window and sing ‘Blue heaven, and You and I’, even if the only listener was a startled policeman.

  The window was so positioned that I could lie on my bed and look at the sky, or sit at my desk and look at the hills, or stand at the window and look at the road below.

  Which is the best of these views?

  Some would say the hills, but the hills never change. Some would say the road, because the road is full of change and movement — tinkers, tailors, tourists, salesmen, cars, trucks and motorcycles, mules, ponies, and even, on one occasion, an elephant. The elephant had no business being up here, but I suppose if Hannibal could take them over the Alps, an attempt could also be made on the Himalayan passes. (It returned to the plains the next day.)

  The road is never dull but, given a choice, I’d opt for the sky. The sky is never the same. Even when it’s cloudless, the sky colours are different. The morning sky, the daytime sky, the evening sky, the moonlit sky, the starry sky, these are all different skies. And there are almost always birds in the sky — eagles flying high, mountain swifts doing acrobatics, cheeky myna birds meeting under the eaves of the roof, sparrows flitting in and out of the room at will. Sometimes a butterfly floats in on the breeze. And on summer nights, great moths enter at the open window, dazzled by my reading light. I have to catch them and put them out again, lest they injure themselves.

  When the monsoon rains arrive, the window has to be closed, otherwise cloud and mist fill the room, and that isn’t good for my books. But the sky is even more fascinating at this time of the year.

  From my desk I can, at this very moment, see the clouds advancing across the valley, rolling over the hills, ascending the next range. Raindrops patter against the window panes, closed until the rain stops.

  And when the shower passes and the clouds open up, the heavens are a deeper, darker blue. Truly magic, casements these . . . For every time I see the sky I am aware of belonging to the universe rather than to just one corner of the earth.

  The Evil Eye

  In northern India, it is called nazar — a glance of malice or envy — and it is held accountable for a wide variety of ailments and disasters.

  Recently the milkman’s cow went dry. His excuse: his neighbour, who also kept a cow, had been jealous and cast an evil eye which was enough to end the competition! And then there is the man who tells me that his ailing child is growing thinner day by day because a childless person has cast the evil eye upon him.

  I do not scoff at these beliefs. Ill will and evil intent cannot be shrugged off lightly. Hate has an aura which quickly permeates the surroundings.

  When members of my own household underwent a series of disasters, I was puzzled at the way in which they followed rapidly one after another. Only later did I learn that someone had actually been wishing ill upon us. We were the victims of nazar — a baleful glance from the evil eye of someone who passed us on the road every day.

  In India, as in most countries, the popular explanation for the fairly widespread belief in the evil eye is that it is based on envy or covetousness. It is logical enough to suppose that a man with only one eye is likely to envy a man who has two; the weak and puny envy the good health and good looks of others; the childless woman covets the children of more fortunate women.

  One is not surprised to learn that in the ancient Hindu ‘Laws of Manu’, a one-eyed man is classed with those who are to be treated with caution, possibly because his glance is more concentrated than that of a man with sight in both eyes.

  The old prejudice against the one-eyed resulted in Maha Singh, one of the Jaisalmer princes, being disqualified from succeeding to the throne. And when Jaswant Rao Holkar, another powerful Indian prince lost one of his eyes, he remarked: ‘I was thought bad enough before — now I shall be looked upon as a guru among rogues!’

  The prejudice extends even today to persons with a squint or cast in the eye. Years ago, I knew of an office clerk who suffered from a squint — and the accounts of his fellow clerks always went wrong. They made so many mistakes in their work that they compelled him to cover the offending eye with a cloth during office hours.

  The belief that certain persons possess the power of discharging a glance so malefic that it strikes like a dart at the person against whom it is directed, is prevalent in many parts of the world. Many believe that those born on a Saturday, under the unhappy influence of Saturn, have the power to cast an evil eye.

  This worldwide belief comes down from remote antiquity. The English word ‘fascination’ is from the Latin fascinatio, which is transliterated from the classical Greek word meaning ‘the mysterious bewitching power of the evil eye’. The ancient Egyptians knew and feared the evil eye, carried mascots and muttered protective charms as do the Bedouins and Moors even today.

  Montague Summers, the great English student of the occult (whose book The Vampire is a classic work), once described how, on a visit to Italy, he was walking with an Italian friend down the Via Roma, the main street of Naples, when he noticed people suddenly begin to scatter in every direction. His friend took him firmly by the arm and guided him into the nearest shop.

  ‘What on earth is up?’ asked Summers.

  ‘Zitto, zitto,’ whispered his friend, putting a finger to his lips.

  A tall, well-dressed man, quite a respectable-looking figure, was walking along the empty pavement past the shop window. Summers heard the word Jettatore and saw the protective gesture, the pointing horns, made with the hands of those who got out of the way of the mysterious man in the street.

  In Italy a Jettatore is a man (or woman) with the evil eye, one whose mere presence, whose very shadow, is ill-omened and unlucky enough, but whose baleful glance brings sorrow, sickness and death. Such a person may often be quite unaware of the effect he has on others.

  In parts of rural England, sickly or deformed children are still spoken of as wisht — that is, ‘ill-wished’ or ‘overlooked’, injured by someone who has cast his or her malevolent gaze upon the sufferer.

  An old woman in Somerset once quoted to me from the Bible (proverb
s, XXIII. 6): ‘Eat not the bread of him that hath an evil eye . . . The morsel which thou hast eaten shalt thou vomit up.’

  And she added: ‘There’s more than one of my neighbours I wouldn’t sit down to eat a meal with!’

  In Europe you ward off the evil eye by ‘making horns’ — tucking in the thumb and extending the first and little fingers. In India, one method of avoiding the evil eye is to make on the person likely to be effected a mark which acts as a disguise or distraction. Many people apply kajal to their children’s eyes, a device which also serves the practical purpose of protecting them from sunglare! Or a spot is marked in the middle of the forehead, like a third eye — rather like the false ‘eyes’ on the wings of butterflies, which are meant to distract predatory birds.

  Even domestic animals, like cattle and horses are protected by having brightly-coloured beads round their necks or by marking part of the harness with a single of double triangle. A horse is similarly safeguarded by leaving in the courtyard an earthen pot smeared with streaks of black and white.

  Strings and knots, tattooing, precious stones, iron rings made of silver and gold, incense, various grasses or herbs, saliva, blood . . . all have magical or protective properties.

  Garlic has been used as a protective in both the East and West. Count Dracula’s hypnotic eye was powerless in the presence of a liberal amount of garlic! And in parts of central India, before a young man’s marriage, an exorcist crushes pieces of garlic near his eyes or squeezes the juice into his nostrils to expel any evil spirit that might be lurking within.

  In some parts of northern India, children who have been the victims of the evil eye are said to be cured by waving garlic and pepper pods round their heads on a Tuesday; these are then thrown into the fire.

  Lest all this be dismissed as mere superstition, it would be well to recall that the power of positive and negative thinking has time and again been proved by scientists. In one study, identical barley seeds were planted in pots containing the same soil. All were similarly watered and exposed to sunlight for the same amount of time. But one set received positive thoughts directed at it; the other set received negative thoughts; and the third was left alone.