There is the adage, “Every journey begins with a single step”, and I took my first step into this life and into this world on November 26. This was the day that I was born at 27 Main Road Royapuram in the city of Madras (now Chennai) in India. There were no obstetricians or gynaecologists present; Mum delivered me in a homebirth with the help of a midwife. She gave birth to all her children this way, I was her youngest.

I’d like to think my birth was a happy event for the family, however, that was not the case. Mum had been sick for months and suffered from stomach problems. Suffice it to say she was probably being discrete about an ailment such as diarrhoea or dysentery. In our family you simply, said your stomach was “paining” and you had “loose motions”. It was always a good idea to keep track of your “motions” by the way, in case you visited the doctor. One of the first questions they asked you was, “How are your motions?” Mum’s motions were apparently not good when I was born.

My dad encountered problems of his own: He was unable to find work in Madras city so he took the only job he could as a storeman with Tarapore & Co. Tarapore & Co was a construction company that carried out large-scale projects such as dams, bridges, etc., in areas, where the Bengal tigers roamed. My parents were experiencing post-Colonial India which was not kind to people like us because we were the remnants of the British Raj – the Anglo-Indians.

During the Raj, the Anglo-Indians enjoyed the best of Britain, the best jobs, the best houses, the best delectable delights, all canned and shipped from the motherland. But that was then and by the time I was born, the Anglos had to take whatever they could get. And, Dad’s new job took him to a site over a thousand kilometres away from his family. He only returned home once a year for his annual holidays. Subsequently, he was not present at my birth and only saw me for the first time when I was three months old.

My Mum and Dad on the day of their Engagement

My brother Noel, who was the eldest, was initially excited about my birth because he wanted a baby brother. But after hearing the news that I was a girl, he gave up in despair and went to bed early that night. Who can blame him? He’d been waiting long enough, there were considerable age differences between my siblings and me. Noel, for instance, was eighteen years older than me. My sisters were sixteen, fourteen and six years, respectively.

My mum was 42 years old, and my dad was 52 years old when I was born, hence my nickname ‘the last drop’. They were rather old to be having a home birth, or any birth, for that matter. Even with today’s medical technology, pregnancy at their age would be considered risky. I’ve tried to calculate the odds of my parents having a child through natural conception, in a once-a-year sexual encounter, without miscarriage, or other severe birth defects, in a home birth environment, with no medical intervention. I think the chances of survival were slim. So, it seems that from the very beginning I liked to defy the odds, with the help of God, that is.  I am truly grateful that I was not born with any severe abnormality, but I do believe I was born with a damaged cell or two.  

There is not much else to report on my birth except the usual, like how I got my name. Apparently, it was a tossup between Patience, Prudence and Cheryl.  Lord…you’d think they could’ve been a bit more imaginative than patience and prudence! Still, I guess that’s one of the perks of having children: you get to call them whatever you want. In the end they settled for a name which in Hebrew means — beloved, having grace and favour, in the vineyard of God. And that’s pretty much been the story of my life.

Me in my backyard in what also looks like a shoe graveyard

Not long after I was born, I had my first introduction to sickness and disease. I was struck down with whooping cough when I was three months old, and the cough lasted several months. Many a time I’ve heard stories of how I drove the family mad with my continual coughing. My sisters took turns with Mum caring for me day and night. I eventually recovered from the whooping cough, but it seemed that disease and death were never too far away.

By the time I was born, all but one of my mum’s ten brothers and sisters had died, most of them from a hereditary kidney disease called Hereditary Nephritis. My grandparents on both my mum and dad’s side had also died. So many funerals, I cannot imagine how my parents coped with it all. And we were about to witness another death that would devastate our family forever, but before that we enjoyed some family time together.

I was a little over two years old when we first began to travel. The whole family left Madras city and travelled to Idwani in North India, where my dad was working, and we lived there for a while. There were no other children around, no education facilities, no toys. I remember playing with whatever I could find, bits of timber, an assortment of tools and tins of paint. I liked rolling the tins of paint from one end of the room to the other.

One day while enthusiastically rolling paint tins in various directions, the lid from one of the tins blew off and paint spilled all over the warehouse floor. This was the first time I saw my dad get angry. He rarely got angry; he was such a patient man. As a matter of fact, I made him angry only twice in his lifetime. The other time was when I spilled ink from his fountain pen onto a letter he had just written. He was so meticulous about everything he did; I’ve never met a neater and tidier person. After the paint incident, he banished us from the storerooms and I for one had to find new ways to amuse myself.

The only toys left were my sisters’ dresses, shoes, jewellery and my favourite towel, which I wore around my head to imitate my sister Barbara’s long flowing hair. She had the most beautiful hair I’d ever seen, jet black and perfectly straight and whichever way she wore it, it just looked so amazing.  After dressing up and putting on my towel to look like Barbara, I would knock on the front door and introduce myself to Mum as one of her neighbours. She would then invite me in for a cup of tea and a chat. I chatted while she cooked, and she listened to my stories about my imaginary life: my supposed drunken husband, and any other gossip I’d heard from my adult siblings. Whenever I had her ear, I never hesitated to rat on “the others” for all the times they bullied me.

The beautiful Bengal Tiger

Our stay in Idwani was abruptly ended by a violent assault on one on my older sisters. After this incident we returned to Madras, leaving Dad behind. He continued to work in Idwani briefly before moving to a new location. Several months had passed and by now my brother Noel and two of my sisters were in their late teens and early twenties. I remember Noel as a loving, handsome, perfect older brother who watched over us girls. Some days he used to sit on a chair with me on his lap. One of the last times I sat on his lap, an ice cream cart went past the house, and he withdrew a few coins from his pocket and bought me an ice cream. I also remember something else about him, something so terrible that even now as I write about it, tears well up inside me and my heart aches at the thought of experiencing something so tragic at such a young age.

Noel was just twenty-two years old when he was struck down with Hereditary Nephritis the same kidney disease that had plagued our family for generations and took the lives of most of my Mum’s siblings. Noel was experiencing one of the main symptoms of this disease – haematuria which is loss of blood in the urine. Then his kidneys began shrinking until they were not able to function anymore, resulting in his death. Noel went into hospital briefly when he was in the last stages of this disease, and the next time I saw him, he was dead.

His body arrived home on a bullock cart. I remember my mum and sisters screaming inconsolably. Our only brother and my parents’ eldest son had gone, irreplaceable, and we as a family would never be the same again. Our time with him was so brief, but it was better to have had him for such a short time than not to have had him at all. Mum told me that Noel died young because he was too good to live on this earth. I think she was right. Between my dad and Noel, the benchmark had been set, by which all men in my life would be judged. And they all fall short.

Our handsome brother Noel Joseph Oliver

The family washed and dressed Noel’s handsome body and laid him out in the sitting room. They packed ice around and underneath him. All day and into the night the family waited with him, kissing him, holding his hand, praying…then I remember smelling something. It was the first time I had smelled something so unusual. It smelt pleasant but distinctive. I didn’t know what it was. Many years later I smelt it again, my senses heightened, so I inquired as to what it was. I was told it was Eau de Cologne. The memory of Noel’s dead body came rushing back to me and I ran out of the room as fast as I could. I’ve avoided that smell ever since. In India Eau de Cologne was used on dead bodies to stop them smelling before burial.

As a child, I was not protected from the more macabre aspects of life and death, and I found myself reliving these tragedies again and again. I cannot help but feel sympathy for the thousands of children around the world, especially in war-torn countries, who experience similar ordeals daily. No matter who they are, or how mature and grown up they may appear on the outside, they are only children, and exposure to death and trauma will scar them for life. Images that take seconds to experience in childhood last a lifetime; this I know for a fact.

Noel’s death was a tragedy, but I did not need to see and touch his dead body at the tender age of four. For me the memory of sitting on his lap and eating an ice cream would have sufficed. But that was India, and that’s the way they done things and still do.

After Noel’s death my dad still worked away to support the family. He moved to a new location, in the State of Bengal to a place called Duhlian. The rest of us continued to live at 27 Main Road, Royapuram, the home where I was born.

Royapuram was central to the city of Madras (now Chennai) and its name means the town of St. Peter in the Tamil language. Ironically, it was St. Peter’s presence in the form of a statue that first made me spiritually aware. The impressive golden key which he held indicated the possibility of a door that opened into another realm, a realm that lay beyond this world. I felt intrigued by the prospect of a better place than the miserable one I was living in. My home stood directly opposite the church that housed his statue. A dirty, freakishly busy road separated us.

Our home at number 27 Main Road was a poorly constructed, dilapidated old building, where our family (the Olivers) and four other Anglo-Indian families resided. There were the Castellases, the Kennedys, the Fletchers and the Reynolds.  Crammed like sardines in a tin can, we shared common front and back areas and one temperamental water faucet that worked some days and didn’t on others. If it was going to work on any given day, it usually did so between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m. When the water flowed, all the occupants rushed to fill their forty-four-gallon drums and empty buckets, as we were always uncertain when it might flow again. Collectively, we also shared one tree and several thin walls that allowed plenty of eavesdropping and gossip to be exchanged between the families.

While most people in India live amicably with little personal space, it didn’t suit us Anglo-Indians to live this way. As a child I witnessed many adult fights, especially among the women. Name calling, cursing, hair pulling and face scratching were not uncommon. We were a feisty bunch! But come Sunday, we dressed in our Sunday best, covered our heads with virtuous veils and made our way to our respective parishes, as all good Catholics do!

In our corner of the building, we had two very large, elongated rooms, for sitting, dining, sleeping, and cooking, and one smaller room we used as a bathroom. Our decor was minimalistic, to coin a modern phrase, with the odd hand-me-down piece from a previous generation. I recall the meat safe as being one of these pieces, it stored some perishable items. The sitting area had a couple of chairs, a coffee table and the all-important family grotto, which was a standard feature in almost all Anglo-Indian homes. In amongst the statues of various patron saints lay a collection of prayers and novenas. Last year’s Easter Sunday Palms fanned out over the altar and contributed nicely to the overall effect. And then there were the photos of all the deceased family members.

It was not uncommon to see Uncle Freddy, amongst the photos, a totally dead person sitting up in a chair or bed, surrounded by living family members: the dead and the living together, posing for what would be the last earthly reminder of their joint existence. If you didn’t look too closely, you could mistake the slouching of the dead body for a drunken or a severely physically impaired relative, perhaps. But every effort was made to prop the body up to look as natural and alive as possible. If only it could smile, it would have been a perfect shot.

Our sleeping arrangements were also a little odd. Even though we all had our own beds, they were laid out in a row, dormitory style. The married couples slept in a curtained-off section of the same room. Beds were not the only thing in rows; the bathroom also consisted of a row of chamber pots or commodes, a row of forty-four-gallon drums with water for bathing, and cakes of Lifebuoy soap. The commodes were emptied daily by an untouchable person. Scavengers, we used to call them, they were those unfortunate human beings who found themselves, through no fault of their own, being born into the lowest caste in India. Because of their lowly status they had to perform the tasks that others would not or could not perform, such as emptying chamber pots into an open sewer that was highly susceptible to blockages.

I cannot believe that I ever lived under such a system of hierarchy, and I have promised myself that if I ever meet an untouchable person, anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, I will hug them. Even if they were covered in shit! For, the untouchables there was never a prospect of a better life, nor could they afford to dream. All they had was an enforced religious ideology that burdened them to perform their menial tasks with subservience of heart and mind. If they did this well, there was the prospect of a better reincarnation in the afterlife. One must ask the question, a better reincarnation into what? Perhaps to return as a higher caste person so they can also emulate their oppressors and discriminate against others also?  Would this be the ultimate justice for them? Somehow, I don’t think so.

For now, as in previous times, they just exist in this horrid situation, and the practice continues to gain momentum in India. I don’t think it’s possible to have a more exploitive system, where the rich use religion in such a devious manner. Not that we were exactly rich; like 90% or more of the then-Indian population, we also struggled to survive, but in theory at least we were richer than the untouchables. For us and others in India, there was hope; we could improve ourselves and dream of better things. Hope for the untouchables was subject to death; until then they had to live out their meagre existence in total humility.

Although we Anglo-Indians did little to help these misfortunate people, perhaps it was because we had our own issues to deal with. The trickle of “white blood” that flowed through our veins didn’t always work in our favour. We were also discriminated against and looked down upon because we were neither black nor white. In that aspect we were no different from the untouchables, but unlike the untouchables our lives were not all bad. We at least had some good days.

A good day for us was when the grinding stone worked profusely in the kitchen, grinding fresh spices, chilies and coconut. When there was money to go to the market and buy fresh meat, fish, vegetables and rice. When the little kerosene-infused wick burned brightly on the stove, and Mum sang her favourite hymns, in sync with the clamour of pots and pans, while she did what she loved doing the most, which was cooking. A good day for us was when we dreamed of a better future but were content to see a loaf of bread and a small pot of jam sitting in the middle of the dining table. All was well with the world, and it was a good day.