Once Upon a Life: Burnt Curry and Bloody Rags: A Memoir

Sutsungkala

Preface

It has not been an easy task writing this book and the reader will understand why as the story unfolds. But I have done it because of certain inner compulsions.

The narratives in this book cover some of the most significant incidents in the different phases of my life, a life that went on to overcome the travails of a most difficult childhood, early marriage and the subsequent responsibilities of a single parent raising four children and coping with the demands of a full-time job. The memories of that life presented here are the most insistent ones which depict the journey of an individual in search of the self-worth once lost to time and circumstances. This book is basically a memoir rather than an auto-biography because, as Gore Vidal has said, ‘A memoir is how one remembers one’s life, while an auto-biography is history, requiring research, dates and facts double-checked’. Therefore the accuracy required in an auto-biography has not been attempted here; nor has any chronological detail or sequence been mentioned or strictly followed. The only principle adhered to here is the effort to present the authenticity and intensity of the impressions retained in the memory of a heart which has borne the burden of an excruciating truth these many years with a clarity and sharpness that have not been diluted or lessened by time.

At the most intimate and personal level, the book is an attempt to put a semblance of coherence and a sense of summation into the dialogue that I have been trying to have with my children over these long years, verbal or otherwise, in order to make them understand what has gone into the making of this imperfect woman whom they call mother. There were many times when my prattling about my own childhood as contrasted to theirs would evoke the response, ‘Yes mommy, but those days were different’. At other times, I would be rebuffed by their silence; hurting inside, but unable to proceed further because I did not know how to penetrate the barrier of their youthful indifference. At times I even accused them inwardly of being insensitive and unfeeling.

But in spite of an uneasy and prolonged state of being in a parental limbo which became my lot, I persevered because I believed that I deserved to be heard and if verbal communication failed, then I had to leave them a legacy in writing which would make them appreciate what they are now and what they have had in terms of parental love and care. This is therefore an offering to my children, my version of the book of knowledge about ordinary lives: the joys and sorrows, about plenty and poverty and, most importantly, this book is about love and what it is like to be deprived of it.

At another level, it is an attempt to exorcise my own personal ghosts from a fractured childhood that was ripped apart by a series of tragedies. There is however no claim to exclusivity in the nature of deprivation and suffering that we had to go through because sufferings of children through natural catastrophes and other causes have been an inevitable ingredient of human history. But a story becomes unique when the sufferer survives to find a better future and lives to tell the story. That is why I consider it imperative that I tell my personal history so that the telling will heal some old wounds in an ageing heart. And if in the sharing a new response is generated in the minds of loved ones, I will consider it a just reward for living through the painful recollection.

But there is another important reason for writing this account: it has been prompted by a sense of wonder at our ultimate destinies; how from being absolute destitutes we were able to achieve a measure of success both as individuals of some personal merit and as decent members of society. Many others, family and friends alike, often express this sense of wonder at our ultimate fate. I remember an old aunt’s comment when all six of us were well-settled in life. With a directness typical of rural folk but devoid of any malice, she said, ‘By all human reckoning, you all should have been eating dust as beggars, or at best become menial servants in other people’s houses. But look at you now, you all have made your way in the world and found your rightful places in society. Your lives are prime examples of God’s mysterious ways’. At first I strongly resented the remark, especially the bit about becoming beggars, and thought her rude and cruel in the extreme. I even thought that she ‘resented’ our deliverance from the fate that she and others had envisioned for us. But when I thought about it later, after the initial anger had passed, I began to view the remark positively and tried to understand what she had said. Anyone who saw our circumstances during our childhood would agree with her that ours was a doomed family and believe that no human force on earth could reverse our fate. It is indeed true that it cannot be explained through ordinary human logic how we survived those initial years after our parents’ death and the long years of struggle in our individual lives. In this sense this book is a testimony to God’s infinite mercy and the generosity of the many kind souls who helped us on our way. Though many of our individual stories of survival are yet to be told, this book is a humble offering of Thanksgiving to God and all those who assisted us during the dark days of our childhood and adolescence.

Again, in certain other ways, I am also acting as a spokesperson for all my siblings who too have gone through the same hardships and dislocations and eventually prevailed. The material deprivations have long since been compensated, but it is the psychological scarring that may have left us wanting in many ways as adult siblings and even as parents. The past, which was our common heritage, remained long hidden in individual hearts. It is only now that much of that most painful period of our lives is laid bare here. The revelation is in a sense, an attempt at re-enforcing the core of our family which was so drastically altered for us when we were dispersed like so much chaff in the winds of misfortune. Two of my elder brothers and my only sister have passed on before reading a word of this book but they also had suffered and prevailed. That is why this book is dedicated to their memory too. But above all this book is an offering to the living who not only prevailed but also continue to cherish the present and are trying to build greater understanding and accommodation among, not only the survivors but more importantly among the next generation that has been so privileged when compared to our childhood circumstances.

This book is to a great extent, my confessional. I was dreaming of becoming someone and coming into my own. Instead, the end of High School found me in a totally baffling situation where some decisions were made for me which did not take into account what I wanted to do with my life. They were solely determined, once again by circumstances. I wanted to study further, more specifically to study medicine and become a doctor. But the general response to this fanciful wish was: ‘who is going to pay for your studies?’ Here I was then, stranded between my dreams and the stark reality of my situation which seemed insurmountable. Once again there was no ‘home’ for me to take shelter in; though both my elder brothers were married by then, their homes were not mine. One choice was to join my younger siblings in my uncle’s home in the village. But then, what would I do there? It was as if I was a stray who needed to be rescued and tethered to a respectable post; and the obvious solution was that I had to be married off. At that point of time, the idea of marriage was remote and vague to me, it existed only in fairy-tale romances; it did not happen like this where barely a month out of boarding school you are virtually pushed into an alliance with a complete stranger and expected to become his shadow for the rest of your life. All my protestations were brushed aside and eventually I too gave in to the inevitable. My fate was sealed. For my family, the marriage was the best solution to the problem called Temsula, and they were overjoyed because they thought they found me the most perfect placement in life. But for me it was a mad plunge into the unknown. My predicament can be best compared to an un-initiated novice being pushed into a dark and alien space to contend with unfamiliar and dangerous players; my only weapons of self-defence being natural instincts and a will to survive.

The traumatic circumstances pertaining to our difficult childhood had remained locked away in my memory, and the fact that my memory retained these particular episodes out of many more perhaps, indicate that unbeknown to me they have had lasting influences on me during the formative years and have vicariously instilled a measure of toughness in my character. The story about our childhood, to my mind is the most important section and I needed to tell my loved ones what it was like to grow up with such a deep and constant longing for the remembered warmth of our parents’ love and tender care, and always worrying from where our next meal would come. Children growing up without this vital sense of security can be compared to young saplings trying to cling to life in a desert.

Writing this has been cathartic in many ways. I have discovered that by facing the past, I have gained new strength to face the future. The ugly and the painful have become less so and now I can come out of the shell of self-isolation and even of shame sometimes about my miserable past by truthfully talking about a very difficult childhood and adolescence. It is not for nothing that we have this phrase, ‘blessings in disguise’. Having known privation, indignity, hunger and deprivation of various kinds, I can relate more easily with the unfortunate ones of this world. In their circumstances I can recognise the travails of my own difficult past and that recognition has often prompted me to extend a helping hand or a kind word when I can do nothing more. I thank God that I am now in position to be of some help to such fellow beings. Perhaps by reaching out to them I am trying to rekindle in them too the resilience of the human spirit which helped me to overcome all these deprivations and has made me what I am today. In the process I have enlarged my circle of friends who constantly add to my emotional well-being. These are the blessings that have accrued to my life mainly because of all the earlier miseries.

I have travelled a long way since the time I realized that no matter how hard you thought about or longed for someone dead, s/he never comes back. Life has this forward-looking momentum that propels you to move ahead only. My life was such that most of the time I seemed to have no say in it and the best that I could do was to go along with these invisible and invincible forces. Articulating these often painful memories is my attempt to make sense of all that has happened to me so that I can understand myself better.

This story is mainly about my own life – as an ordinary woman who faced seemingly insurmountable odds from early childhood and who through sheer grit and self-belief overcame those vicissitudes of life. That I also happen to write a bit has added, I hope, a new perspective to the narrative.

And above all, I have written this book because I had to tell my story before time claimed it all.

Temsula Ao

Dimapur,

September 2011

Part I

Early Childhood

Recovering one’s memories, I believe, is a sub-conscious process. Why it happens or when, is difficult to pinpoint. But it is a constant feature of one’s life; for example we often find ourselves saying things like, ‘when I was young’ or ‘when I was sick that year’ often without realizing that these are all acts of this recovery process. Memories however are not one-to-one transferences; they emerge from multiple prisms of the subconscious of the ‘rememberer’. The volition involved in the process to actually articulate these may vary from one person to another in terms of its semiotics, though the framework of presentation may remain the same. But the effort to do so in writing certainly requires a tremendous responsibility in terms of adhering to the true representation and relevance of the memories to one’s life.

Writing about a childhood, which by any reckoning can be termed only as extremely difficult, becomes even more ‘difficult’ because impressions and actual memories of that phase of my life often come back to me as nebulous spectres in a lunar-like landscape dotted with blurred images; and again some as blocks of distinct events and experiences. There is no sequential ordering in these early memories and the kaleidoscopic recollections highlight only the defining moments of a childhood marred by early tragedy in the untimely death of the two most important persons in the life of any child, its parents.

Father

I begin with memories concerning my father, though it is not easy to recall his physical features or his voice. Whatever impressions I have of him have most probably been influenced by the few photographs of him and mother painstakingly restored by modern technology.

I see a young looking face, quite fair and broad with thick black hair. He is wearing a white shirt with half sleeves. It has an open collar. He is sitting with a woman on his right. Both look very self-conscious and serious. In another place he is standing with three other men; he is wearing very baggy shorts and there is a table in front of them with some dishes and tiny drinking goblets. The last one shows him lying on his back in a black-lined box; there are many flowers on and around him.

My father’s name was Imnamathongba Changkiri and he was employed in the Christian Hospital at Borbhetta Mission Compound in Jorhat, Assam as Supervisor. We lived in a house within the big compound where the hospital was located, along with nurses’ hostels and doctors’ quarters, other staff quarters, a school and also a chapel attached to the hospital. Perhaps the earliest memories of this period are the times when father carried me on his shoulders when he went to the Sahib’s bungalow to play badminton after work. I loved these outings because I got to sit on the lawns of the big two-storied house and watch my father and his friends, sometimes including the sahib, play noisy games. Father would not allow my elder brothers to accompany him saying that they had to finish their home-work. Seeing the big white man among the others made me wonder what kind of a ‘man’ he was.

There is another very distinct image in my mind which is most probably from this period where the sahib’s entire family is depicted as though in a portrait.

It is a late afternoon scene and I see a bunch of horse riders circling our house on their way towards the other hospital beyond, where lepers were treated. Seated on what appeared to be enormous horses are the sahib, his beautiful wife, his two daughters and son. They are riding slowly and their golden hair is shining in the setting sun. It is an incredible scene. They don’t look human at all. They look like some gods from another planet. I am suddenly very afraid and run and hide under the bed. Father is laughing at me, saying, ‘Silly girl, why are you afraid? They are like us, only now they are on horses’. It was a rare sight because they normally kept to themselves and besides, the children were away in boarding school somewhere for most of the time.

(This was the family of Dr. O.W. Hasselblad, his wife Norma, their daughters Marva and Wyva and their son Carl out on their afternoon ride through the compound. This missionary couple was to play an important role in shaping my life when through their efforts, I was put in the boarding school at Golaghat.)

Though I did not realize it at that time, I was considered to be my father’s favourite and therefore grew up as a pampered child. There were some reasons why everybody thought so, especially my brother Tajen. Father used to eat from a wooden plate carved out of a single piece of wood. It had four legs which gave the plate the required elevation as if it was placed on a low table. I loved those moments when he would call me at meal times and insist that I join him and many times mother would object by saying that I had already eaten. But father would have none of it and seating me by his side on a low stool, he would put choice morsels of meat tucked inside balls of rice in my mouth and watch me eat with pleasure. Such acts of ‘favouritism’ did not go un-noticed and were most resented by my brother Tajen and at every given opportunity he would either pinch me or pull my hair!

Though I did not observe anything different about father’s treatment of me, later when I was growing up as an orphan, my uncle explained to me the reason for father’s special affection for me. It appears that my parents lost two daughters older to my brothers and when I was born some years later my father was overjoyed. Then my younger brother was born and thus I was the only daughter among four children for quite some years.

Father seems to have had strict ideas about how to bring up children including his favourite. There are some incidents in my mind which clearly illustrate this. One evening I insisted on accompanying him to the sahib’s bungalow; I had no idea why he was going there but I wanted to be with him. When we reached the bungalow, the sahib called him to his office and I followed. I saw that the white doctor had a pile of money on his table and after looking at a piece of paper he counted the money, stuffed it into a bag and handed the bag to my father. When he saw me, he called me over to where he was sitting and handed me a coin. It was heavy and white, not like the small ones I’d handled when mother was paying the vegetable man. This one was different and as I held it, I looked up at father. He was frowning and told me give it back. The sahib would not hear of it; he refused to take it back when I offered it to him. I looked up at father again and saw that he was still frowning so I put the coin on the table but the sahib said something to my father and put it back in my hand telling me to go out of the room. It was a most puzzling event; I did not understand why father did not want me to accept the money. I do not remember what happened to the coin; I only remember that it was the one and only time when I accompanied father on his monthly visits to the sahib’s office to collect money to pay the employees of the compound the next day.

There was another incident which revealed father’s sterner side. One evening we, father, mother and me, visited a neighbour’s house. While the grown-ups were busy chatting, my eyes fell on a cute little container on a side table. I surreptitiously opened the lid and saw that the lady had stored buttons of all colours and sizes in it. They looked so pretty! I immediately fell in love with that little golden-coloured container which appeared to have been made of a translucent material soft to the touch. I impulsively turned to the lady and asked, ‘Aunty, can I have this?’ Father nearly dropped his tea cup, and mother looked embarrassed. Before the lady could say anything, father said, ‘No, you cannot have it.’ But the hostess, without saying anything, picked up the container, emptied it and put in my hand. Father tried to snatch it from my hands to give it back. But I was adamant and clung to it saying, ‘Aunty has given it to me.’ When I began to whimper, my parents excused themselves and silently we walked home.

We reached home in silence and entered the front door which was quickly bolted by father.

I do not know what or who hit me but my right cheek is stinging and I hear father hiss in my ear, ‘Go and return the case to aunty’. I must have done as he ordered because when I return still dreading father’s reaction I find I am sitting on his lap and he is stroking my swollen cheek lovingly and saying to me, You should never covet other people’s things.

It was the first time when father was so stern with me and when I think of this incident sometimes, my cheek still smarts from the slap of a father who in spite of his love for a favourite child would not compromise on his principles. The trinket in question might have been insignificant, but the lesson he taught me has been invaluable.

There is a star-like scar on the inside of my left fore-arm which is the mark of an extraordinary boil that required surgery under anaesthesia. The actual events elude me; I only remember vaguely the evening when father carried me home in his arms the short distance from the hospital. I must have fallen asleep immediately because when I woke up, every one else, including my mother, had eaten dinner and were fast asleep. Only father had kept vigil over me. He helped me to the kitchen where he lit the fire to heat my dinner and served me. I started to eat with relish as he watched me. Suddenly there was an unearthly howling sound just outside the kitchen door and I was petrified, and went into a curling position, pushing the plate away. Father laughed and said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a jackal. Do you want to see it?’ At first I refused, but he insisted and emboldened by his urging, and staying close to him, we made for a chink in the bamboo wall of the kitchen, and there he was, a big dog-like creature sitting on his haunches and letting out those blood-curdling evil sounds. After watching him for a while, father shook the bamboo door and made threatening sounds with his mouth as well as stamping on the mud floor. As we watched, the jackal immediately slunk off towards the bushes nearby. This is one of the more frequent memories that I recall simply because whenever I think of the menacing jackal in my vicinity, I remember how unafraid I had become because father had his arms around me. I felt absolutely safe. There have been many instances in later life when I had often longed for the sense of security and well-being I felt when father was around.

The fact that I was considered father’s favourite did not seem to matter much to the others. But as I have mentioned earlier, though my brother Tajen resented it, there was a time that he tried to take advantage of it. Father had a