Mama Mary comes to me From Roy’s childhood, she tells the story of moving from Assam, India to the hill station town of Ooty, and later to Kerala, where her mother eventually founded a school. As they try to find a foothold in Ooty, her mother’s older brother and grandmother try to expel the family, invoking an inheritance law that leaves the daughter with little protection.
A teacher is something my mother always wanted to be, what she qualifies as being. During her years she married and lived with our father, she worked as an assistant manager in a remote tea garden in Assam, northeastern India, a dream of pursuing any kind of decayed and troubled career. It was reignited when she realized that her husband was like many young people working in lonely teahouses, and that her husband was hopelessly addicted to alcohol.
In October 1962, when war broke out between India and China broke out, women and children evacuated from the border areas. We moved to Kolkata. Once there, my mother decided she would not return to Assam. Starting from Kolkata, we have been all over the country, all the way to a small hill station in Tamil Nadu State. My brother LKC – Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy – four and a half years old, only one month before my third birthday. It wasn’t until we were in our 20s that we saw or heard my father’s voice again.
At Ooty, we live half of the “holiday” hut belonging to our grandfather, who had retired in Delhi and was a senior government servant of an imperial entomologist – the British government of Delhi. He is alienated from my grandmother. He cut off contact with her and his children a few years ago. I died the year I was born.
I don’t know how we got into that cabin. Maybe the tenant who lives in his other half has the key. Maybe we broke in. My mom seems to be familiar with the house. and the town. Maybe she went there with her parents when she was a child. The cabin was wet and gloomy, with cracked concrete floors and asbestos ceilings. The plywood partition separates half of our rooms from the tenant’s occupied. She was an old British lady named Mrs. Patmore. She wears her hair in a high bloating style, which makes us wonder what is hidden inside. We think, Wasp, my brother and me. I’m not sure if she paid any rent. She may not know who to pay. Of course, we did not pay the rent. We are squatters, intruders-not tenants. We live like runaways in huge wooden trunks filled with luxurious clothes from dead imperial entomologists – shirts, dress shirts, three-piece suits. We found an old cookie tin filled with cuff links. (Obviously, my grandfather was a passionate collaborator of the colonial government and accepted empire Part of his professional designation. Our mother told us that it was to stay away from him and she married the first person to propose to her.
