Don't Go To Work, Mummy

Mummy was trying to sneak out of the house to go to work.

 

Daniel heard her and woke up.

He started to cry,

“I want my mummy!”

Mummy gave Daniel a hug.

“ I’m going to work. I’ll see you in the evening”

But Daniel still cried.

“I don’t want you to go to work, Mummy. I want you to stay here with me.”

Mummy said,” But who will look after all the little babies in the hospital?”

Mummy is a doctor.

Daniel said,” But it’s too dark to go outside!”

They looked outside. The sky was beginning to turn light.

“ Look Daniel,” said Mummy,” The sun’s coming out!”

Daniel said, “ But it’s too windy to go outside!”

They looked outside. The trees were standing absolutely still.

“It’s not windy at all!” said Mummy

Daniel said,” But the hospital is shut!”

Daddy came downstairs.

“Shall we watch some telly?” said Daddy to Daniel.

“ OK,” said Daniel, suddenly managing to forget about Mummy.

All day, Daniel was a busy boy.

He went to nursery and played with his friends and had a good time.

He went to the park and fed the ducks.

He went home and played with his brother Joel.

In the evening, Mummy came home.

“MUMMY!!” said Daniel jumping up and down.

“ Have you brought something for me?”

“ Maybe”, said Mummy giving Daniel a hug. “ Look inside my bag”

Daniel found a package. It was a box of paints.

“Thank you Mummy!”,said Daniel.

“ Don’t go to work tomorrow Mummy, OK?”

“We’ll see”, said Mummy.

Hofuf Hospital

There's always a small part of me that will remain in Saudi Arabia.... my appendix!

When Mummy was young, Appacha got a job in Saudi Arabia so we moved to a village in the East of Saudi called Al-Hofuf. It couldn't have been more different from the life we had lived in Edinburgh till then.

We were housed in a villa on the huge staff accomodation complex. There were streets and streets of villas with ready made gardens and play areas; all lying empty and waiting to be occupied. We lived on a side street which was the only street with people living in it.

Next to us was a British Indian doctor and his Irish nurse wife. Next to them was an Egyptian surgeon with his English nurse wife. Opposite us lived two doctors; a Sri Lankan and an Indian.

The villas were huge and made of marble; it was the first time we had lived in a house so grand. Around the campus there was little but desert. We were vaguely aware that there was a town somewhere nearby but any shopping would be done by the men and in all my time there, I perhaps saw the town once.

The biggest difference of course was that there was no school! My mother had bought books before leaving Scotland which my sister and I  were expected to work our way through.

It was exciting, and new, and we were never bored. We had scarcely been there a month when one day I got a tummy ache. The pain got worse and worse and then I suddenly threw up my dinner. I remember the brown vomit staining the beautiful white marble floor in the kitchen. 

In the night my father realised I wasn't getting any better. He went and knocked on our next door neighbour's door but there was no answer. Then he went to the Egyptian's house and, this time, the door was opened.

The big Egyptian surgeon Dr Ramadan arrived with his huge hands and decided I had appendicitis and needed an operation. I was ever so slightly excited!

I can only imagine how my poor parents must have felt. My mum had to look after my little one year old brother and 7 year old sister so of course she couldn't come with me. So it was my dad who took me to the hospital in the ambulance and saw me walk into the operation theatre.

I don't remember feeling any anxiety then. Hospitals were my second home. They never seemed like places where bad things happened.

My jolly anaesthetist got me off to sleep with jokes and a good dose of something in my arm and the next thing I remember is being spoken to, in Malayalam, by a nurse with a mask on, as I was being shifted from trolley to bed. I could hear myself groaning but I don't remember feeling pain.

Later on that night, on the ward, a horrible nurse made me get up and walk to the toilet. The memory of this is so clear to me. When I think of how that woman made an 11 year old get up within hours of having surgery with no thought of the pain, my blood still boils. She was rough and brusque and I was completely on my own on that adult ward. 

It was no wonder then that when I felt desperate for a wee later on, I just lay there and wet the bed rather than ring for the witch-nurse.

In the morning, a different nurse arrived on shift; this one was kind, gentle. She made me sit up so she could comb my hair. She changed my sodden and stinking sheets with never a scold and made me comfortable in bed with my book which, of all things, happened to be Pygmalion!

When Dr Ramadan arrived for rounds, he couldn't get over the fact that I was reading and he kept exclaiming to his colleagues that it was the first time he had seen a patient read in Saudi Arabia.

Across the aisle from me, there was a severely disabled woman who was completely dependent on the nurses. They would draw the curtains to change her soiled clothes and an almighty stink would fill the room. 

I was glad I didn't have to stay in hospital long. I remember my dad carrying me up the stairs once we got home and for the next week or so, I stayed in the bedroom. I could just about see my operation wound and the big ugly stitches that held it together; it looked ugly then but it has since healed into an almost invisible scar.

Close Encounters

The story goes that once Daddy walked across a tiny ledge on the fourth floor from one balcony to another to spy on his sister. 

Daddy clearly had a head for heights. 
There weren't many things that frightened Daddy. When you are young, you think you are invincible.

When he was growing up, Daddy was the sensible one. He followed rules, he behaved, he was responsible.

When the local boys headed their bikes towards their garden gate to ogle his beautiful sister, he would be the one who came speeding home to shoo his sister inside so they couldn't see her. Pakku-ammachi used to call him 'Granddad' for his old man ways.

But once he got to college, it was as though Daddy had been let out of prison! Suddenly he needed adventure. Rules were there to be broken. Walls were meant to be climbed. Classes were meant to be cut!

Daddy and his friends looked for every opportunity to go exploring Kerala and the neighbouring states. Their means of transport was Shivan, the owner of the coffee shop/canteen on the college grounds. Shivan had a rattle trap jeep which, for the cost of petrol and a share of the adventures, he would drive them anywhere in.

These alcohol fuelled jaunts could start on a mere whim and never involved any planning. They would sleep out in the open air and catch fish for their dinner. It's best not to ask about what they did for toilets and showers!

Soon Daddy got himself a motorbike. His friend taught him how to drive it and one of their trips was made on a cavalcade of motorbikes. The group decided to go to Munnar, a hill station in the Western Ghats famed for its tea estates. 

Wild elephants lived in those hills and it wasn't uncommon, in the dry season, for a herd of elephants to descend from the forest in search of food or water.
However, you were lucky as a tourist if you actually got to see the elephants.

So, when the group rounded a bend in the hill road and found an elephant blocking their path, their initial feeling was one of excitement at their good fortune. Those who had cameras, whipped them out and began taking shots. 

Daddy can't remember the exact point at which they realised the danger they were in. The elephant slowly turned to face them. You could tell from its restless manner, from the fanning of its ears, from the swaying of its trunk, that this elephant was unhappy. Not just unhappy, angry! Daddy backed away and shouted to his friends, "Start the bike! Start the bike! Run!"

A lone elephant is usually a rogue elephant and is dangerous.

The boys scrambled on to their motorbikes. The elephant started to take strides towards them. In sheer terror Daddy tried to start his bike. Nothing happened! The elephant picked up speed. To his relief, Daddy's bike suddenly spluttered to life and he almost did a wheelie in his haste to get away. 

They escaped the charging elephant by the skin of their teeth. Daddy has always had a healthy respect for elephants since then.

The Glue That Holds a Family Together

Growing up on a rubber plantation was, for the three boys and their two sisters, a constant stream of adventures. Their father was in charge of running the plantation and the British Sahib, who only visited occasionally, was a kind master.

Acres and acres of rubber trees stood in line like well behaved children at assembly. The air was cool and wildlife abounded. In the morning, the tappers would go from tree to tree making their spiral incisions on the bark and the trees would bleed their white sap into the coconut shells strapped around them.

The children roamed wild and free among the trees, far away from their parents' watchful eyes. Their father ruled the household like a dictator. Their mother was their protector but there was little even she could do if they made their dad angry. 

Three young boys can get into all sorts of trouble and if they did, they would be soundly beaten by father. 

One of their favourite games was racing their cycles down a slope. Of course this often ended with the rider crashing into something. Unfortunately for Thankachan, the middle brother, the thing that broke his fall one day was a barbed wire fence at the bottom of the slope. 

Like a knife, the wire cut a deep line on his belly wall. Thankachan's shout of pain brought his older sister Thankamma running. They stared in horror at the gash. Blood streamed out. 

Thankamma was frightened by the amount of blood and how deep the cut seemed, but she was even more frightened by the thought of what her father would say. She was sure Thankachan would get a terrible beating for having played such a foolish and dangerous game. 

Suddenly, she had an idea. She ran to the nearest rubber tree and scooped up the latex from the coconut shell cup. Then she smoothed it over the wound. The gooey sticky mess stuck to the skin and the wound and the bleeding stopped! 

Sneaking back home, they made short work of hiding Thankachan's bloodied and torn shirt. They managed to keep the wound hidden from their father and in a few days it had healed completely! 

Nowadays, doctors commonly use skin glue instead of stitches to hold wounds together. I will always say that it was Thankamma Aunty who invented the idea!

Needless to say, Thankachan's sisters loved him very much and probably spoiled him a bit. When older sister Kunjamma got married, it was to a very wealthy man with his own plantations, a car and a horse-drawn carriage. The new brother in law was very kind to the younger boys. He would send them the princely sum of Rs 100 as spending money, thereby sealing his popularity.

Soon it was time for Thankamma to marry. When the 'boy' Georgekutty came to see Thankamma, the brothers climbed up a tall mango tree and lay in wait to see what he looked like. 

They didn't like what they saw at all. Georgekutty was clearly not a millionaire like their brother in law. He didn't look like the kind of person who would send them pocket money. 

They scrambled down the tree and ran to warn Thankamma where she was getting dressed up to meet her future groom.

'Thankamma! Don't marry that guy!' they said to her. 'If you marry him, we will never speak to you again!'

Thankamma calmly carried on dressing. 'If my father tells me to marry him, I will marry him', she said.

And so it was that Georgekutty Uncle became a part of the family. Whether he knew about the younger boys' objections or not, when Georgekutty uncle married Thankamma Aunty, he adopted the boys as his own flesh and blood. He may not have had money to give them but he was always there for them. 

When Thankachan and his friends got caught for sneaking a pitcher of toddy into their hostel room, it was Georgekutty who came to meet the principal. When they did it again and got suspended from college, it was again he who posed as Thankachan's guardian. This was a service he provided for Thankachan's roommates too!

Over the years, Georgekutty uncle, the rejected suitor, became the favourite brother in law.

George and the Bishop

When your Uppappa George was 11 years old, he didn't get into the posh school your Daddy went to so he was put into Perumpally Boarding school. The Bishop of Perumpally was the patron of the school which was on the grounds of the church and the Bishop usually lived in the house there. 

The school was surrounded by orchards with mangoes and cashew trees. But the fruit of these trees was forbidden to the boarders. What greater torture could they have devised for these sons of Adam than to put them in the middle of an orchard full of forbidden fruit!

In those days, it was common for the children to get caned for being naughty. And no one got caned more than George. It got to be so that if no other perpetrator could be found for the crime, they caned George anyway because, by the laws of statistics, he was the one most likely to have done wrong. 

But being the scapegoat didn't dampen George's spirits. He roamed the grounds and knew them inside out. He knew the best places to hide and the best trees to steal fruit from. 

In the whole of that school, George had only one, unexpected, ally and that was the Bishop himself. This is the story of how George and the Bishop became friends.

The Bishop of Perumpally was revered and respected far and wide. It was said that he was a prophet and that many things he predicted came to pass. When the Bishop met George's sister, he said that she would marry a man with a beard, and, sure enough, a year later, that was exactly what happened. 

The Bishop loved the orchards as much as George did and probably knew all the same hiding places. He would probably have climbed the same trees as George if only his robes had allowed it. But most of all, the orchards provided the privacy for the Bishop to escape from his responsibilities and smoke a sneaky cigarette.

One day, as the Bishop stood puffing away beneath a mango tree, he saw the leaves rustle and a brown leg dangling from a branch.

" What are you doing up there, George?" asked the Bishop.

George sat very still.

" Are you picking mangoes?" asked the Bishop.

Slowly the leaves parted and the boy looked down at the Bishop with mango juice staining his mouth and chin. The Bishop looked up at the boy with smoke curling up from his nostrils. 

A sly grin lit the boy's face and found it's reflection on the Bishop's face. 
They acknowledged each other as partners in crime and a friendship was born.

George learned more in the grounds of that school than his teachers ever succeeded in teaching him in the classrooms. 

The Bishop owned a turkey that laid eggs. Unfortunately for the Bishop, the turkey never laid it's eggs in the same place. It's not difficult to imagine that George was usually the one who found the eggs first. 

In the dormitory toilets he would empty out his geometry instrument tin and with 3 candles lit under it, it would form a fine frying pan to make a turkey egg omlette! The best way to succeed in crime is to get rid of the stolen loot fast and what can be more fool proof than eating it! 

George's favourite hiding place was on top of the school bus. One day, as George was lying flat on the roof of the bus, he heard the engine turn on and, before he knew it, the bus was moving! The driver drove the bus all the way to the petrol station before he realised that he had a stowaway on top.

George spent four years in Perumpally School. Once he left, he never went back. I wonder what his classmates and teachers would say if they knew where he was now...

Snake In The Grass

When Appacha was young, people were aware what a gift life was. In a second's time you could lose your life from disease or a falling tree or lightning. 

When Appacha was only a toddler, he remembers watching his older sister die of diphtheria. This terrible disease almost doesn't exist any more because of vaccines but there were no immunisations in those days. 

However, running around on the farm and in the surrounding fields with his twin sister, Appacha the boy did not waste time worrying about death and dying. 

Until, one day, he ran across a field overgrown with weeds and felt a sharp sting on his leg. He kept running, climbed over the fence and then froze. Sitting astride the fence, he slowly looked down ; two tiny beads of blood had appeared on his skin. 

In his mind's eye he could almost see the snake he had stepped on as he ran, it's wide open jaws, it's angry fangs, it's long body arched before it bit him. He began to shiver with terror.

His sister Maria who had run ahead suddenly stopped. It must have been the twin telepathy that told her something was not right. When she saw her brother sitting unable to move from sheer fear, she ran home shouting and screaming. 

The family rushed to the scene. Appacha's mother began to wail. Several of the women joined her. She had already lost one child and now, to lose another... and that too, a boy!

From the neighbour came an idea. There was a famous medicine man who lived nearby. His specialty was curing snake bites. The child must be taken to him and treatment must be started immediately if there was to be any hope of survival.

Appacha was taken in a procession to the medicine man's house. The old man with his glowering eyebrows and wrinkled skin was almost as frightening to the boy as the thought of dying from snake bite. Sweat ran down his shirtless chest. His fingers were gnarled and he had dirty nails.  After a careful examination, the doctor began to grind leaves and powders together to make a foul smelling paste. 

The paste was put on the wound and a night long vigil was ordered. 

In the meantime, the young men had gone to the field to find the snake. Armed with beating sticks they searched the undergrowth. The medicine for the bite would work better if the attacking snake was dead. 

They couldn't find a snake but they found a sharp twig sticking up out of the mud in the middle of the field. 

The next morning, Appacha was still alive. The medicine man received much glory for saving the boy. The wound became infected but that was a minor price to pay for the child's life. Appacha still has the scar on his leg.

Grandmother's Tales

When Daddy was young, he was the good boy. He would study well and get good marks in his exams. His mother never had to teach him anything. When the teacher taught the class, Daddy would understand everything in a moment's time and so he never had to spend too much time with his books.

Daddy's little brother, though, wasn't so good. In the mornings, he would drag his feet and never get ready on time. When the school bus arrived, Uppappa would not be ready. Daddy, who was always ready on time, would be so embarrassed, he would tell the bus driver, 'My brother is not coming to school today'. 

The bus would leave and Uppappa would be left behind. Their dad, Achacha would have to bundle him into the car and chase the bus down. 

In the evenings, when Uppappa was asked, 'Have you got any homework?' his constant reply would be, 'No!' But then the next morning, when Ammachi opened his bag, she would find lots and lots of work to be done and no time to do it!

Ammachi's youngest child drove her to despair. 

Her first child, Pakku-ammachi, on the other hand, was beautiful and intelligent and did all the things a little girl should do. She never forgot her homework or got into scrapes. 

Pakku-ammachi only got into trouble once and this was how it happened. Every evening the boy servant would take Pakku-ammachi to the park. She was very popular in the park. All the young girls thought she was their pet. 

One evening, Pakku-ammachi was dressed and ready to go to the park but the servant boy was delayed. As she waited, some of her friends from the park passed by and took her with them. No one knew that Pakku- ammachi had left. When the servant boy called for her, there was no answer. 

Immediately there was panic. They searched high and low. Achacha wanted to call the police. He thought she had been kidnapped. Just then, there came little Pakku-ammachi, strolling back with her friends. 

Achacha ran and grabbed his cane. All his worry and fear for the safety of his daughter welled up in him. He raised the cane to beat her. The little girl's eyes grew wide and filled with tears and standing there, she did a wee wee! She was so frightened! 
Of course, then the cane was forgotten and all was forgiven.

Although Achacha lifted the cane on that occasion, he never beat his children. He was so stern that one word from him was enough to make them behave. 
And so his children were well behaved.

Their cousins were perhaps not so well behaved! When the boy cousins came to visit, the games would become rough and noisy. Cousin Georgie's favourite game was 'Dark Room'. He would shut the door, draw the curtains and make the room as dark as possible. Then.... well, then there were no rules. Basically you grabbed the first person you came across in the dark and beat them to a pulp!

Cousins Jiby and Siby would run wild all over the house. Every visit meant at least one piece of broken furniture!

Nowadays, clever people would say that children only behave like that when they have no other way to spend all their energy. And growing up, Daddy and his brother had plenty of energy. Like most brothers, they would fight often but were best friends when it was time to play. 

And though they were on best behaviour when Achacha was around, they had their fair share of scrapes too.

When Uppappa was 2 years old, he was constantly climbing up things. He was very good at climbing up but not so good at figuring out how to come down again. So, often, once he had reached the top, he would just let go and take the quickest route down!

One day, Ammachi had put Uppappa down for his afternoon nap. She had no sooner left the bedroom than she heard a sickening thump. She ran back to find Uppappa in a twisted heap on the floor. The toddler had climbed up their radio shelf and stuck his hand inside a plug, electrocuting himself. The force of the current had thrown him clear which was probably what saved him from more serious damage. 

Ammachi scooped up her child and ran. She didn't stop to lock the door or take her purse. She just ran. She thought her son was going to die. 

In those days, neighbours looked after each other. Chinnamma aunty who lived next door saw Ammachi running out with the baby in her arms. She quickly came over, locked up the house and took Daddy and the servant boy to her own house. 

In the hospital, it was hours before Uppappa regained consciousness.

In those days, Achacha was working in a rubber plantation far away. He would only visit home in the weekends. The day Uppappa had his accident was in the middle of the week. At the plantation, Achacha was feeling a terrible uneasiness and a voice in his head was telling him to go home immediately. Remember that in those days there was no phone to make a quick call to check that everyone was ok. 

Finally, Achacha could bear it no longer. He stopped work and hurried home. When he arrived, he was amazed that his premonition had been so right. 

Luckily, Uppappa came out of this ordeal without any visible damage. But to this day, Ammachi will claim that  that shock caused damage to his brain!

Today, Uppappa does things with computer software that very few people in this world can do. His research is talked about in the top universities of America and he constantly gets requests for permission to use his thesis work. But Ammachi still regrets that he did badly in school!

Uppappa's school days are legendary. The stories of his escapades are gleefully told at every family gathering. And these are what we will look at in the next chapter....