Girls Are Pearls: One woman's act of resistance to despair

Introduction

It was my fiftieth birthday and also my farewell to Heidelberg, a city I had come to love, and the English Church Heidelberg, a community in which I had found myself a spiritual home. Gladys, the doyenne of this church and always a benevolent and gracious hostess, had very kindly opened her villa for this party. I, a dedicated party lover, was enjoying myself catching up with friends. There had been singing and dancing to Tina Turner songs, performances of the Hokey Pokey all around Gladys’ spacious garden, and delicious food and wine to sample. Now there was a contented buzz and a lull in merry making.

During this lull, more serious topics came up for discussion. For example, ‘What I was I going to do upon my return to

Australia?’

That’s easy, I thought. ‘Well, find myself an inner-city house with a small garden or courtyard, ship my furniture over and set up a counselling practice.’

Elaine, my questioner, did not seem satisfied with this answer.

‘Any other plans?’ she enquired.

Isn’t that enough? went through my head. To my own surprise, I heard myself respond ‘I want to do some social work for impoverished women in India.’ It was the first time I had announced it to a group of friends.

‘Why India?’

A very good question.

1

Question: ‘Why India?’

Answer: ‘I was called’

O land of sunshine that did give birth to me

Peninsula so full of mystery

Star of the East

The finest jewel on earth

Land of my mother

Beloved by me

Mighty when Rome was but a she wolf’s cave

Envy of Pharaohs dead five thousand years

Your fighting men caused Alexander’s tears

The northern peaks forever capped with snow

Contrast so sharply with the endless plains

And from the pine-clad hills clear streamlets flow

To mighty rivers swelled by monsoon rains

Land of beauty, your folk rich and poor

How I long to set foot on your soil once more.

When did I first begin to appreciate the startling discrepancies, the sheer complexity and drama of India? It all began with Dad, whose deepest desire had been to become a history teacher. However, he had made some choices in his teens, which he deeply regretted, and of course there was also a war on and he was then conscripted. By the time he realised his mistake, it was too late. Circumstances led him down a very different path.

Dad corrected my homework every night and relished the task. His breadth of knowledge and passion for history and geography and India in particular was astonishing. He could go off at a tangent sometimes, and our conversations could embrace the Roman Empire, Greek mythology or his favourite topic, Egyptology. There is an old saying: when the pupil is ready the teacher will appear. In our case, it was the opposite, the teacher was ready and the pupil appeared … and couldn’t escape! He always spoke to me as if I were his pupil, and so it seemed destined that I would retain these lessons, albeit unconsciously. I was often tired at the end of the school day, but not Dad! ‘That will do’ was considered high praise indeed. He was happy with this poem, but only after some discussion.

I had stood up for my right to say ‘Land of my mother’ where he would have preferred ‘Land of my fathers’, as he felt it scanned better, but he agreed reluctantly that from my perspective it was indeed the land of my mother! We also had a discussion about the line ‘Land of beauty, your folk rich and poor’, and I am sure that my doggedness about hanging onto that line was that in that land of disparity, the poor should not be forgotten.

If it was Dad who gave me an understanding of historical events, it was my mother’s firmly held Christian values and faith that deeply influenced my thinking. She also supported equal rights for women and girls – and most of all, justice and fairness. She believed that all of us were here to serve others and use our God- given gifts to make the world a better place. She seldom gave voice to this unless directly asked, but rather she embodied this philosophy in her kind actions and gentle demeanour.

Although we were not biologically related, Grandad also played a role in my upbringing. He had displayed no surprise when his twenty- one-year-old son returned from India, a changed man, with an Indian bride and a small child in tow, who was clearly not his. It seemed to me as if Grandad had loved me from our first meeting, as if it was all destined to be the way it was. My origins seemed of no consequence.

Grandad was also the caretaker of the Baptist church which was opposite their house and adjacent to the farm land where my brother, my friend Pat, her cousin and I played. We were enter-tained by the farm labourers on long, hot sunny days, rode on the farm tractors and ate the men’s bread-and-cheese lunches on occasions. Apart from distracting the men from their work, we also accompanied Grandad while he went about his light duties as caretaker.

He would often take me by the hand and show me that well-known picture of Jesus with all the children of the world. I associated this with singing the chorus in Sunday School ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in his sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world.’ He would point at the little Indian girl standing next to Jesus. ‘Heather Anne, that little girl is just like you. Jesus loves her and he loves you.’

I think Grandad was the epitome of an uncomplicated kind soul, with a simple faith which shone forth. He was the ideal guardian of an uprooted child, finding her way around in a new environment. As he had been a semi invalid for most of his life, I think our presence was a gift to him as well. He was needed and valued and felt he was doing an important job, taking care of us while our parents worked. I adored him.

He introduced me to toast cooked on an open fire with a pitchfork, rice pudding and his tasty lamb stew with dumplings – going to infinite trouble to tempt my appetite, unused as I was to the British diet. Once he had found three or four dishes I liked, he would constantly cook them. He even made mashed potato hills with carrot trees and laid them delicately on a special plate with a house painted on it. Gravy was the river. Peas were plants. I refused to eat meat, so he shredded it and told me it was the earth. Brussels sprouts were bushes. When I ate everything on my plate, I got a round of applause! He had all sorts of folk remedies for my chronic bronchitis and asthma. These included wrapping my puny chest in red flannel smothered in Vicks ointment and goose fat. How comforting it must have been to Mum to know that I was in such kindly hands while she worked. He took all her worries seriously. That’s love.

I noted his tender attitude towards his new daughter-in-law, the warmth in his gaze and gentle touch on her arm when he passed by. I knew without any doubt he loved her as much as if she had been born into his family. There were some tensions in the household that were difficult for me to grasp at the time. Grand-dad’s old-fashioned gallantry contrasted with Grandma’s sharp comments. I am sure that she had her reasons for her attitude. Speculating, I imagine her picture of Dad’s future did not include an Indian bride with a small child. She displayed a kind of simmering resentment and quite overt racial discrimination. Mum kept her own counsel about such things and treated Grandma with respect. I think this inner discipline had a lot to do with her convent upbringing and her values around holding the family unit together, respecting one’s elders and serving God. It didn’t occur to me then, but I realised later that this belief system, while worthy and well intentioned, meant that she suppressed her own emotions and needs, which came at a cost and may have contributed to her ongoing health issues. It was Henry Maudsley, a nineteenth-century anatomist, who declared that ‘the sorrow which has no vent in tears, makes other organs weep.’

In this respect, Mum was a bit of an enigma to me as my emotions were closer to the surface and I never quite got the hang of suffering in silence. I was more likely to share my misery if un-happy! While Mum maintained a quiet composure, Dad had no qualms about taking issue about such matters and this confrontational behaviour did not improve his already mercurial relation-ship with his mother. To her credit, on her deathbed, Grandma said to me, ‘I was very hard on you when you were a child’, to which I replied ‘Yes, you were.’ And with that the matter was ended and forgiven. I concentrated on her good points, as my mother had always instructed me, and it was somehow very healing to have made our peace and to be able to think of her with some affection.

These very diverse adults, my role models, made me question the narrow definition of whom we can love. Is it mandatory to love people who are of our blood, our race, our tribe more than others? And, as I thought about whether a person could ever love too much, to the point of being emotionally drained, I began to understand that love replenishes itself and that there is plenty to go around. I also had a long way to go before I understood that just as important is self- love and to be kind and forgiving about our own human frailties and inconsistencies.

So, I wondered, how do you find a balance between caring for others and knowing one’s own limitations? I knew that I was an imperfect and flawed individual and I certainly wasn’t enamoured of hardship, so I secretly hoped my future would not involve me in any drastic action requiring great sacrifice. Like becoming a nun, God forbid! No offence to nuns – I have the utmost respect and admiration for them. I just doubted my capacity to sacrifice to that high standard. My mother appeared to have some distinctly nun-like qualities, which I had not inherited. Her priorities seemed to focus on protecting me from the cruelties that she had observed and abhorred during her own formative years. Having endured much loss and trauma, she wanted me to have a peaceful and safe haven in which to mature, free from anxiety.

I had no doubt that we children were the centre of her world. Her face would light up when I came into a room, and she would stroke my face or my hair gently and listen to all my news intently. This required much patience, for I was a fearsome chatterbox. But sometimes her smile was melancholy. A great sadness, borne out of suffering, lurked behind the facade, and as I was sensitive to every flicker on her face, I knew it was there.

I remember wondering how I would feel if my mother left me, and a shudder of fear would paralyse my body as I contemplated life without her. Sometimes I felt precariously balanced between two worlds: one known, safe and predictable; the other full of anxiety and fear of abandonment. My fears may have arisen from the knowledge that my biological father had disappeared when I was only six weeks old. Mum explained to me very simply that he had gone out one morning from our home in Shimla, in the then Punjab, and never returned. The British Army were unsympathetic to mixed-race liaisons and coldly dismissed her, refusing to give any information or help in any way. She was unable to maintain our lifestyle or pay the servants, so with a sad heart, she said her farewells to her household and her neighbours. Mum then turned to the Catholic priests for help, and to her relief they offered us shelter in the Catholic Club. She was a well-educated young woman for her time, having passed her Junior and Senior Cambridge examinations and completed typing, Pitman short-hand, bookkeeping and accounting courses. She found a good job doing secretarial work at Viceregal Lodge on Observatory Hill, and with two ayahs taking turns to take care of me, she was able to continue working and keep our heads just above water. She often said ‘Thank God and the nuns.’

Later, Mum met Colin. Or to be more exact, I met Colin. One of the ayahs was taking me for a walk, and Dad bent down to talk to me and said ‘Hello, young lady,’ to which I replied, ‘I am not young lady. I am Heather!’ Dad continued to call me ‘young lady’ until he died and I was nearly sixty. I always knew he was not happy when he said, ‘Now then, young lady!’ Mum and Colin married after the Partition of India and Pakistan and we went to live in England.

I am not young lady, I am Heather.

Something told me that Mum and Dad were keeping a secret. And, deep inside, there was that fear that I never articulated: if fathers can disappear so easily and no one knows what happened to them, maybe mothers could too?

In this case, my worst fears proved to be correct. Not long after my brother’s birth, Mum suddenly disappeared and I had no idea where she was. Photos taken of me with my infant brother at that time show a painfully thin, anxious child. After Mum returned home, I developed a nervous habit of following her around from room to room. This must have been irritating, as I even followed her to the bathroom, staggering along, carrying my little stool with me, prepared to wait indefinitely until she reappeared. Mum always smiled and patted me on the shoulder upon discovering her hypervigilant stalker waiting outside the door, so I am guessing she understood the depths of my anxiety. It is difficult to measure the impact of this separation on a child as young as Christopher. Dad was weighed down with adult responsibilities we knew nothing about so Granddad did his best, but no one could make up for Mum’s absence.

We were told she had gone to a convalescent home for a little rest, but the truth was more confronting than that. Her illness was called a nervous breakdown and she was treated with electroconvulsive therapy. I am guessing that she had post-natal depression, and with hindsight I wonder if she was also struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder. There was also no cure for her chronic homesickness. Of course, counselling was not available in those days and after she left