A Holiday with a Difference

England 2009. No, it is not the name of any sport event that the popular culture of today can relate to. Nor is it the tagline to the recently concluded Ashes series that the host nation managed to win. Neither is it a global milestone in an era obsessed with landmarks.
No, England 2009 is a personal celebration for me simply because it has offered me an experience so thoroughly enjoyable. It has amalgamated the childhood dreams that were once shared over a decade ago by two individuals in deep discussion about the places they would like to visit and the literary giants and characters in whose footsteps they would literally like to follow. That Elizabeth and I can say those individual dreams have now become a couple’s shared experience is enough for me to celebrate England 2009 in the way I know best – through prose and poetry.
For someone who was first introduced to The Daffodils in Grade 7, for someone whose favourite college course was English Romantic Writing, for someone who would lapse into daydreaming about what it must have been for horse-riding Rob Roy or the dashing Ivanhoe, this holiday has been a personal vindication of the vicarious ramblings that were once inspired by literature. Now, having gazed down at Lake Derwentwater, having driven through the scenic Lake District, and having walked those cobblestones that provide “such alternation in height and depth”, those lyrics and conversations of two centuries magnify memory and immerse one even further into the past.
While Elizabeth can empathise with emotions recollected in literature, her leanings are more towards the artistic achievements that are contemporary to the era of Classical Romanticism. She always enjoys the serene beauty of an art gallery and on one afternoon, a little after we passed the Scott Monument and the National Gallery at Edinburgh, burst out, “Darling, do you know where I would like to spend all my life?” Assuming she was enraptured by the beauty of Edinburgh, I was about to say that we could create such a possibility, when she continued, “… in an art gallery.” Now, while such a desire may not be literally fulfilled, perhaps I can consider Galleria 2010 over the course of the next academic year. For the immediate moment, though, let’s shelve that. Let us just say that the three of us – let’s not forget Calvin – are living the dream that two individuals aspired to when parted at university over a decade ago.
Yet, that is not all. What makes England 2009 even more special and creates those twinkles that Eli notices in my eyes are my “conversations into the past.” Those who have been following the literary efforts of Ency Whyte should by now be familiar with my desire to place the Anglo-Indian identity in some reasonable perspective especially for those who still wonder why I do not speak Tamil at home. “An Unacknowledged Diaspora” does, to a reasonable degree, touch on a theme familiar to “the ones that got away” and the “ones that stayed behind”. For, in England 2009, I - part of a family that stayed behind – managed to bridge over forty-seven years of kindred(?) history with “the family that got away.”
Yes, just two evenings with relatives I had never meant before and one afternoon with a Grand-Uncle whose two or three visits to Arkonam offer vague memories have transported me back in time and placed years of nothingness into better perspective.
Last evening I met for the first time, my paternal grandmother’s brother-in-law, Uncle Denzil. An octogenarian who now lives on his own, he and his wife migrated to England in 1963 with an eight-year old boy and six-year-old daughter. His description of that three-week journey on a steamer from Bombay to Marseille via the Suez made me wonder what it must have been like for this couple who were venturing into a new land with much hope and “just pennies in their pockets and a lot to fear”. Simultaneously, I was transported back in time to my then ailing grandmother and could only wonder at the many thoughts and emotions that must have inundated her as two sisters (Aunt Noreen is the other relative I hadn’t met before.) bid their other three siblings good-bye.
Sadly, I did not get to know my paternal grandmother very well; she passed away when I was hardly four. My other grandparents did offer me many memories that are today a source of pride and joy, but I could not – as a teenager - have the type of conversations that I had, during this holiday, with Uncle Denzil, Aunt Noreen and Uncle Ted (my maternal grandfather’s cousin.) But, if I were to play a fantasy game of my own, I wish I could put them all around one table and host a little family chat show asking them reasons for staying behind or going away, their hopes and aspirations as they continued lives oceans apart, and – if they were given the chance to – revisit those days so many years ago and reconsider their decisions. I do not know whether the reader senses my amazement but whenever I try to picture the 50s and 60s in newly independent India, I cannot cease wondering about the spectra of emotions that different people of the same family felt.
While I do not regret being part of the family that stayed behind, (I will be an Arkonam-Madras boy at heart) I did manage to gain some insight into what Floss and Babs must have felt, I did smile at the fact that teenagers will always be the same no matter the era, I did observe Eli laugh when an idiosyncracy of Pat was delineated with heritage in perspective, I could not help but smile when yet another tale of Joe’s strength was narrated and I could only re-attest a childhood memory of Norman’s bravery.
I have been told that our visit to these three families in London will be replayed in conversation and recalled in individual memory for months after we have gone. I have been told that one cannot believe that “Floss ‘s grandson came to visit us all the way from Zambia”. I have been told – and I have seen – that our visit brought twinkles to the eyes of octogenarians and transported them to the days of their youth.
For here, while I painted them a picture of the Madras I have come to know, they painted me a picture of the Madras that was theirs. For while, Uncle Ted painted me a picture of the halcyon days of the Arkonam institute, I painted him one – sadly – of its decay and demise. While Aunt Noreen spoke of the last time she visited Bab’s house, I told her how I came to be with Babs when she died. And when, over the course of our conversation, Uncle Denzil came to hear that we were alumni of Loyola College, Madras, he gave us a piece of history that we did not know: Nungambakkam railway station was built because of Loyola College.
England 2009: nestled between visits to landmarks popular to many around the world were visits to little towns in the heart of England; in one small corner of a tourist who kept clicking photographs was a small girl celebrating a landscape that was once a dream; in between the mundane conversations of daily touring were moments that inspired the poet within; and complemented by visits to museums that celebrate the legacy of our humanity were visits to old relatives who helped instil pride in one’s personal history. Yes, this was a holiday with a difference – my most memorable yet.