Mother Takes London

Mother Takes London

It was in the weeks after my father's funeral that things began to
unravel.

I don't remember much about the ceremony itself. A combination of
jet-lag and grief had rendered me too numb to be certain of details.
The Heathrow-Kuala Lumpur flight runs a little over 13 hours, and even
the firm's paying for a business class ticket (standard bereavement
policy, apparently) hadn't taken the edge of the past 4 days. The old
man's heart attack had been entirely unexpected, so the 'phone call
from my uncle, which Karen patched through into the meeting room - "JP,
I think you better take this" - was a complete shock. I remember asking
for my Mother but only succeeding in hearing her sob. I don't know what
the clients thought was going on, I couldn't have made much sense in
the rest of the meeting.

The first task was to apportion my active files to colleagues
(observing with a strange detachment the battle between their urge to
be good people and help me out in my hour of grief, and the resentment
they felt at having to add to their already exhausting workloads). That
done, I got the first flight I could back home, 6000 miles, arriving
just in time to bury him.

Certainly the turnout was good: my father was a well known and well
respected man. A leading surgeon, a tower of the Indian community, the
head of a large and sprawling family; all of whom, patients, community,
family were there. My sister, who lives in KL and hence wasn't jet
lagged, gave a fine, painful eulogy whilst I stood on my mother's side,
lending her my hand to clench in fearful embrace.

At the end, I had to prise myself free in order to take up my place by
the coffin. My sister's husband was front left, I on the right; behind
us, our uncles, Dad's two brothers, and behind them, his two closest
friends - all ready to carry the coffin, to carry my father, down the
aisle.

Dad, meticulous to the last, had been quite specific in his funeral
instructions, which his solicitors had handed to me, still sealed, my
name on the envelope:

- Re: pallbearers; no hired muscle, please. That's always struck me as
odd. I want my weight borne by those I love, by those on whom I have
always been able to depend. Just one last time.

So, earlier, we had been given a five-minute tutorial on technique by
the church's professional pall bearers. They were unwilling at first,
saying it was tradition that they carry the coffin. They got over their
principles, though, when we assured them that we would be making the
usual donation to the church renovation fund. They instructed us with
an air of detached amusement; though I'm pretty certain that they later
laid bets on exactly how we amateurs were going to mess this up. Most
likely dropping the coffin, having it crack open and sending my
father's dead form skidding across the Church's highly polished marble
floor.

It turned out OK. We remembered the procedure and backs straight, knees
bent, grasped the handles and with a joint unconscious 'ooofff' of
exhalation, hidden by a thankfully loud organ chord, we took up his
weight.

A little further on in his funeral notes, in the same perfect hand, so
unlike a doctor's stereotype, another line item, this one not an
instruction but a statement:

- Re: your mother. She will need you now, and you her.

Back at the house, as is customary for an Indian widow, my mother
dressed in a white sari. This provoked some comment. The fact that she
had been married to my father for 30 years, and that she has throughout
that period been the very model of Asian wifeliness, did not stop KL's
chattering classes commenting on how good, how natural she looks in a
sari. Natural: even though she is a Mat Salleh, a white woman, an
English woman.

*

My parents met in a make-do hospice on the beach in Kerala, Southern
India, in (the clich? is rescued by its location) the summer of
'69.

My mother, a London girl from a family who had never strayed more South
than Fulham or further East than Chancery Lane, was on her gap year,
one of the first women to do a VSO stint. My father, a Catholic-Brahmin
whose parents had emigrated from India to Malaysia just in time to
avoid partition, had been sent back to the motherland to qualify as a
doctor and was in his final year at Medical College there.

They spent the long Indian summer together, healing the ill and feeding
each other mangoes. At its end Mum returned to the Kings Road, Dad to
his hospital. Between her West and his East they carried out what I
have since discovered - to my simultaneous embarrassment and pride -
was an intensely passionate correspondence.

Eventually, not satisfied with letters, Dad informed Mother that he was
coming to London to ask for her hand in marriage.

I would give anything to have been able to be there at his first
meeting with my Grandmother (Ma's Da had died some years before). The
story Dad used to tell, which Ma now denies and G'ma turns red at, is
that he turned up at the town house on Chelsea Manor Street, very early
in the morning and a little stinky from what would then have been a 24
hour flight (KL-Colombo-Dubai-London). In a neat (if creased) suit, he
braced himself and knocked smartly.

Even back then, Dad fancied himself reasonably worldly and had realised
that a prospective brown son-in-law, turning up in the pre-dawn might
not be every English mother's dream, so he had a speech all worked out
to reassure them, comforting yet firm. Something along the lines
of:

- Mr. Squirrel, Mrs. Squirrel, firstly let me say what a great pleasure
it is to meet you after all this time. Secondly, let me straightaway
allay any concerns you may have by saying that I would not have
travelled all this way if my intentions towards Caroline were not
entirely honourable, and my prospects quite optimistic.

The door opened, he got a momentarily glimpse of his future
mother-in-law in a flowing night gown and, having taken a deep breath,
got about as far as "Um?" before she thrust two large black bin bags
into his outstretched arms and slammed the door shut again. It turned
out that my Grandmother was perfectly accustomed to brown faces at her
front door in the early hours of the morning, and she knew exactly what
they wanted.

Picture my Father: standing there, in the near zero temperature, in a
city which he knew only from Sherlock Holmes stories, outside the house
of the woman he loved, holding her family's refuse in his hands. He
must have thought quite seriously about turning around and heading
straight back to Malaysia and having his parents arrange a nice
suitable match. It must have taken some considerable fortitude to put
the bags down, and knock again.

- Pardon, I think there has been a mistake.
- Sorry, were they not tied properly or something?
- No, no you see, I am not here to take your rubbish. I am here to take
your daughter.

After that, I think G'ma more or less had to agree to the marriage out
of pure embarrassment, and to prove, once and for all, that she was
adamantly not a racist.

*

Perhaps a week after we bury him, a couple of days before I'm due to
return to London, I ask my mother if she's had a chance to think about
her future plans. She had abandoned the white sari by now, and was in
her customary linen trousers and cool batik top.

- Why, I'm coming back to London with you, of course.
- What do you mean?
- What I say, Jeya. Your father's dead now. It's time for me to go
home.
I pray that I kept my face neutral. For nearly 20 years, since I was 12
and left for boarding school, my parents and I have peacefully
inhabited different continents. She and my father had Asia. I had
England.

I must be very precise about this bit. I love my parents (or perhaps
now that my father is dead, I loved my parents? Death confuses the
tenses) very much. Also, I think, no, I'm pretty certain that Dad &;
Ma are/were pretty proud of me. That's not why we couldn't live in the
same country.

It's just that their idea of family is a very Asian one. It involves
concepts like collective family responsibility and communal decision
making; no pre-martial sex under the family roof, and no moving out
from under the family roof until you are married (not the only
lose-lose paradox in my family's store). Much as I respect these
ideals, they were quite inconsistent with the habits I had acquired
through school and Oxford. I think they recognised this also, and found
it easier to turn a blind eye when I was far away then they would have
if I was home. Parents need to be proud of their children, no matter
what little shits we are.

So upon graduation, when I suggested to my parents that my career would
be best served by applying for a training contract with a London firm
of solicitors, they agreed all too happily. And so we started a pattern
that has served us so well for so long. Once a year, normally at Easter
they would visit me for a week; I would visit them every Christmas.
That was the deal.

And it worked. Well, it kind of worked. If I'm being completely honest
it did encourage a kind of locus based schizophrenia on my part.
KL-Jeyaratnam Paul, was (for he seems to no longer exist) a dutiful,
devout son who, for example, drank only the occasional glass of wine;
had no interest in recreational drugs, attended church on the 2 Sundays
a year he was at home, and, whilst having some nice female friends who
were politely interested in him, was a quite asexual, even celibate
creature. London-JP is slightly different from this.

London-JP is a 30 year old city solicitor, specialising in media law
and fast tracked for partnership, with equally large quantities of
stress and disposable income. London JP also has a bachelor flat, an
Audi TT convertible and an accompanying lifestyle. At the end of a long
18 hour work day, London JP might occasionally choose to unwind with a
line of high grade coke, a bottle of quality wine, and one of a small
pool of slightly lower quality women.

Not having to introduce any of this long line of unsuitable and short
lived girlfriends to his parents was a distinct advantage of the
arrangement London-JP had with KL-Jeyaratnam.

That this deal was now under threat was the train of thought that
suddenly hurtled, whistles blaring, through my head when my mother
announced her intentions. As I say, I hope I kept my face neutral as
she went on:

- What else is there for me here - to be the widow forever, to be
constantly reminded that your father is gone, to see pity in the faces
of his family, all of his friends, all those who worshipped him,
wondering how I can go on? Why I didn't go the whole hog and chuck
myself on his grave to be burned? To wonder about like a ghost in this
house that we shared for 30 years, or to be sitting forever behind your
sister's shoulder - fussing over her husband now I no longer have one
of my own? No, son, it is time for me to go back home, back to where I
started. Also, it is your home now too, and it is good that we should
be together. Your father would like that.

So it came to pass, eight weeks later I meet her at Heathrow, and drive
her to my flat. And for the first time in nearly 20 years, I'm sharing
a city with my mother.

*

The first 5 weeks are hellish. With Mother actually in the flat, my two
worlds collide and my two personas are left acutely confused. I had
difficulty working out who I was. I would wake up London-JP: naked
hung-over, horny, and panicking about the day's meetings. My normal
habit, to take the edge off the morning was to have a quick wank before
I jumped in the shower. Now though, as soon as she heard my alarm go
of, Mother would knock on my bedroom door, and just walk straight in
with toast and tea on a tray. She'd have been up since 5 (she had
shared a surgeon's routine for too long, and so got up in time for
rounds), and by the time I rose, was already fearsomely lonely. Nothing
like a mother in the bedroom to kill a morning glory, so my morning
masturbation routine found itself on the back burner.

Even when out of the flat, I was spared not this non-stop dimensional
shift. My girl, Karen, quickly established herself as a believer in the
sacred bond between mother and son and never hesitated in putting
Mother's calls through. This one came in the midst of a completion
meeting on the financing of a ?12 million pound British gangster
film:

- JP, its your mother, sounds urgent
- Oh. OK, thanks Karen. Mother?
- Jeya - what time are you going to be home?
- Ma - I don't know. Later. What do you want?
- Well, if you are going to be home by seven, I thought I would cook a
flan. But if you are going to be later than that, then I'll make a
curry, because that will keep better.
- Mother, I don't want anything, I'll probably just get something
here.
- Oh.
- Was there anything else?
- No, no, I'll make the curry then.

To avoid fights, I took to working even longer hours, which isn't hard,
at a city solicitor's firm, there's always more to do. This succeeded
in getting me so exhausted that my sex drive took a nose dive, a
virtuous circle of sorts, as that prevented all sorts of other
complications.

This despite the fact that, for the first time in ages, I more or less
had a steady girl friend, just not one I could bring home. Not that
Mother could have prohibited it of course; it just wasn't a
relationship which would lend it self to easy maternal explanation. In
my own head, if I squinted just right, I could more or less satisfy
myself that what Kate and I were doing didn't count as adultery. I
don't think I could manage the same sleight of mind if I had to explain
her oddly timed and rushed visits to Ma.

At the end of 5 weeks, just when I had established the habit of a bit
of casual lunch time self abuse in the partners' loo, Mother decided
quite unprompted (at least I wasn't consciously prompting) that she
needed some space of her own. She found and rented a lovely two bed in
Marylebone - it's close enough for us to have dinner every Wednesday
and Church every Sunday, but not so close to put me in any real danger
of an Unannounced Drop-Over.

So much for my teething problems at Ma's re-entry; it wasn't entirely
trouble free for her either. There is probably much I can only guess
but will never know - of the friends who weren't quite imaginative or
generous enough to re-incorporate her back into their lives and
circles, finding that her Eastern ways, her long absence and the lack
of shared references presented too wide a chasm. Of the trivial but
many frustrations of a proud and innately independent woman who, having
spent the past 30 years of technological innovation in a land where
staff are common place, simply doesn't know how to use a dishwasher, an
electric can-opener, or a digital video recorder. Who, used to drivers,
finds the nightmarish claustrophobia and vagaries of the tube even more
unbearable than the other 12 million of us. Most of all, I try not to
imagine the times when she catches a glimpse of my Father behind a till
in a corner shop, selling tickets on a double-decker bus, or crisply
white coasted, ducking into a white arched door on Harley Street, and
has to bite back tears as she hurries back to the flat that serves as
her new home.

The difficulties she does tell me about, though, are on the whole
rather more amusing. London is, to anyone, a difficult city to navigate
and there have been some changes since Ma was a teenager in the 60s,
ploughing up and down the King's Road with her gaggle of blondes. For
one thing, the blonde : non- blonde ratio has changed a little since
then, as she discovers when attempting a walk in Hyde Park.

That particular call comes just after Kate and I have finished a
Saturday morning special, in that quiet moment where we're lying in
each other's warmth. I'm feeling quite pleased with myself, and
thinking about all the things we could do over the weekend, just like a
proper couple, and she's calculating how long she's got before she has
to pick up her 3 year old from his Play-Dough group. The chasm of
silence between our two very different day-dreams has got so painful,
that I'm positively grateful when the 'phone rings:

- Ah, Jeya, this is your mother.
- I know Ma, I've got caller ID. (What was I thinking?!)
- What? What does that mean?
- Never mind Ma, what's up?
- Well, JP did you know that Hyde Park is full of (her voice a dramatic
hush) Muslim Fundamentalists these days?
- Ma!
- Well it is, all the women are in full tudung and everything. It's
quite extraordinary.
- Ma, for god's sake, you lived in a Muslim country for thirty
years?
- Well, yes, dear. But this is Hyde Park, Not Taman Tasik
Perdana.

By the time I get out of that particular quagmire, Kate is dressed and
on her way out the door. I stay in bed the rest of that day, watching
my neighbours' shadows dance and fade on the walls of the light
well.

*

The next major disruption arises when my mother, not content with her
regular teas with old school friends, her weekly dinners with me, and
her surveillance of the London Arab community, decides that she is
going to get a job, and applies for and gets a fundraising position
with Oxfam (charity she knows, my parents were always big on
charity).

At first I was all for this scheme. It would give her a sense of
purpose, of focus, new friends, and less time to call me in the office.
So I support her wholeheartedly , and was still nodding affirmatives
into the 'phone when the conversation turned to NI numbers, and she
didn't have one, whatever they were, and apparently she needed one, and
could I help, I was a lawyer, after all.

What's a good son to do?

I filled out the forms for her and when the day of her appointment
finally came (6 weeks, 3 letters - the last of which on my firm's
official stationery - and numerous "on hold" phone sessions later) we
head down to her local DSS office. I told Karen I would be an hour,
tops, at a client meeting and could she cover for me.

I don't know if you've had much occasion to spend much time in a
benefits office? Take it from me: don't. Do what ever it takes: suck
your boss' cock, rob banks, deal crack, stay married to a physically
abusive devil worshipper; all these things are mere pins and pricks of
fortune when compared to the pure purgatory that a day queuing in a
benefits office is.

This particular one was in the arse of Euston, just in that little bit
of London that should be really trendy but has somehow been forgotten
by the gentrificating hordes which have colonised its flanks,
Marylebone and Bloomsbury. Tavistock Square is typical of this part of
town. A disused, unkempt park in the centre of a motley collection of
low grade government offices and budget hotels, servicing and serviced
by the denizens of King's Cross.

As soon as we stepped in the door, I knew that my estimate of an hour
had been woefully na?ve. The interior of nos. 1-6 Tavistock Sq, whilst
looking like nothing more than a scruffy under-maintained 70s office
block, quickly made clear its intention to suck up time like a black
hole. Blue plastic signs with yellow lettering gave one set of
directions, which, when we followed took us, not to the promised NI
office but to a disused gent's loo. We then discovered a second set of
signs, these more temporary A4 laser print outs, which seemed to have
superseded the blue plastic jobs. This time we ended up in a Ladies Loo
(very much in use). Third time round, Mother suggested that we should
follow both the blue plastic and the white paper signs, one at a time,
in alternation. Amazingly, that worked.

The method of the room was similarly sub-Kafka. There were 13 glass
fronted booths, each of which had a long queue in front of it. The
signs (Paper/A4) told us that those with pre-booked appointments should
proceed immediately to one of these booths, in order to receive a queue
number which would allow them to join the queue. In other words, we had
to queue, in order to earn the right to queue. I joined the end of the
shortest line whilst Mother started chatting to a nearby suited man,
about my age.

The composition of the crowd was far more diverse than I had
anticipated, from which I deduced that the booths were multi-purposed:
dispensing benefits as well as misery, frustration as well as NI
numbers. It seemed like all of life was here, London in microcosm. A
coterie of single mothers, suckling babes sat next to a rash of
homeless gentlemen, all matted hair and sausage rolls; in the corner a
parliament of eastern European prostitutes, all high heels and big
hair, eyed their prospects warily. Dotted around in haphazard clumps
were a number of mobile phone fixated, suited professionals -
Australians, Americans, a couple of Indian-Nationals - clearly taking
time out from busy jobs to sort out some work permit related nightmare.
A tall pin-stripped Yank who had been loudly berating the system to
anyone who would listen, caught my eye and shook his head in despair. I
nodded in quasi-solidarity, and gestured to my Mother so as to
communicate that I was here only for her, and had no work permit or
immigration issues of my own, thanks very much.

My mother was talking to another young professional, from his accent
clearly Antipodean. She had introduced me, and so I had to come
over.

- G'day, mate. Don't worry - they'll get to you soon enough, I've only
been here since 10. I brought a book. Name's Matt.

His book was a 400 page tome entitled A Brief History of Western
Philosophy. It was 1:30pm. I shook his hand, but didn't smile
back.

About 45 minutes later, just as the temperature in the room was
reaching the point of no return, a short, black, 5-year-old,
puffa-clad, diamond eyed ball of energy burst in, followed a few yards
behind by his quite beautiful mother. If I was given to speculation, I
guess the odds are that she was one of those single mothers who we hear
so much about, come down to pick up her unemployment benefit, her
single parent benefit, and her child support, all in one swoop. Neither
she nor her son, however, seemed conscious of the stigma of their
social strata. She, as I have already said but it bears repeating, was
movie star stunning, with an Erykah Badu head-dress and what must have
been 3 feet of hair under it and he was one of the most confident, good
natured kids I had come across.

Quickly deciding that it was his predestined role to cheer up the room,
he charged round and introduced himself, faintly incomprehensibly (I
think his name was Qwat), but very cheerfully to a selection of the
worst tempered of the queue. Matt, my Mother's philosophical Kiwi, was
so taken by young Q that he offered him his mobile phone as a toy.
Thanking him neatly, the little man sucked the phone for a while,
whilst his mother watched, glowing.

Losing interest in us, Qwat embarked on a circulatory tour of the room,
and in so doing, came across a rack of DSS leaflets, each stack a
different appealing colour. He chanced a quick back glance at his
mother and receiving no condemnation, proceeded to grab two small
handfuls, apparently at random, causing a goodly avalanche of several
hundred other pamphlets onto the floor, where they spread out in
graceful arcs.

Unabashed, Qwat began distributing his spoils to the rest of the room,
pausing politely with his arm outstretched and his gaze fixed, until
his victim had no choice but to accept the offering. This is the point
where his intervention into our purgatory began to seem quite divinely
inspired. For whilst Qwat was certainly too young to read, his matching
of leaflet with recipient was infused with a delightful irony: a
heavily pregnant northern lady received a bright pink pamphlet on child
benefit, the homeless commune was presented with a sheaf of information
on council tax, his own mother got a slim volume on Child Support
Reform; the Eastern European prostitutes were given (one each) torn
pages from a volume on "self employment as the key to inner city
rejuvenation". When my turn came, Mom had the grace to avert her eyes
and blush, as the young satirist proudly proffered me a lychee coloured
fold-out on STDs: "Prevention through Lifestyle".

Still, time seemed to pass a bit more quickly with Qwat around and it
can't have been more than 3 or 4 millennia later that we finally
exited. Mother had been fobbed off with assurances that her
first-last-life-time-lasting National Insurance number would turn up
sometime in the next 4 months, and I, having long since called the
office and fabricated an emergency, was resigned to a wash-out
day.

It was a pleasant enough April evening so we decided to walk for a
while, traversing the grotty garden. Upon reaching its centre we
discovered a large bronze statue of a man naked from the waist up,
sitting cross legged. Ma twigged before I did:

- Gandhi.
- Is it? You sure?

She was right, of course, but even after reading the confirming plaque
(unveiled in 1966, by Harold Wilson. Paid for by the Indian Society of
London), I still didn't think it a very good likeness. Then I realised
that I had no idea what Gandhi actually looked like, the image in my
head was not of the dead Indian leader, but rather of a made-up Ben
Kingsley, and striking though everyone said the resemblance was,
Kinglsey is, like me, only half Indian and therefore my mental picture
of the world's most famous sub-continental leader was a rather
Anglicised one.

(It's probably shameful how little I know about Gandhi, or about Indian
history generally, but I do know about movies, and about actors.
Kingsley's father was an Indian doctor who emigrated from Uganda, and
married an English actress, who encouraged her son onto the stage.
Ben's birth name is Krishnan Banji, after his paternal great
grandfather, a great Spice trader, famed on the beaches of Zanzibar.
"Ben Kingsley", was a later invention - his father's idea - "Com'on,
boy, you know you are not going to get anywhere in this show business
with an Indian name". How proud they must both have been, his
English-Actress mother, his Indian-Healer father, how bursting proud
when 32 year old Ben/Krishnan won an Oscar for his portrayal of India's
Great Soul.)

I climbed onto the pedestal of the statue, and leaned closer, squinting
at the oversized bald head, bigger than mine. A blob of pigeon shit
adorned the left ear, and around the neck a garland of fast-dying
marigolds. The torso was muscular, more so than I would have thought
likely in life, but dusty and dulled with pollution and acid rain.
Gandhi's glassed stare was directed precisely at the DSS office from
which we had just emerged. The overall impression was one of neglect: a
forgotten little Indian saint, lost in the midst of the capital of a
former Empire.

I swung round to climb down.

- You reckon he's waiting for his NI number too, Ma? That place would
be enough to try even his?

I stopped mid-gag, as I realised something was wrong with Mother. In
the fast fading light, I thought she was having some sort of fit,
shaking so much, her face contorted, her mouth open in a silent
scream-mask. By the time I reached her, her cheeks were already hot
with tears, I tried to hold her, but she shrugged me off, her body
taut, her fists clenched in a fury I can't understand. Through the
sobs, she whispers in a voice that terrifies me in its crackling
variation, and its focussed anger, just repeating over and over
again:

- What have we done? What have we done? What have you done?

I took Mother home in a taxi that night. I had the driver wait whilst I
saw her in and settled, and only when I was sure she was alright did I
leave, a little late, for my midnight rendezvous with Kate.

I wanted to talk about Ma's outburst to Kate, but in the end, didn't.
To tell the truth, I don't think Kate was too wild about my mother's
move to London and, at the end of her own long day, she certainly
wasn't interested in hearing about my worries about Ma. Fair enough, I
guess; after all she already has a full contingent of mother and
mother-in-law. There really isn't space for another queen in her
deck.

*

Much later that night, or earlier the next morning (insomnia, like
death, is hard to be precise about, it confuses the language - tenses
don't work right, is becomes was; a.m. slides to p.m. nights slide into
mornings) I took my lap-top into bed and began to surf the web, in
order to learn a little about London's statues. Specifically about the
number of statues in London that honour great non-white leaders. After
a while, having found only statues that honour imperialists famous for
killing large amounts of non-white people (Cecil Rhodes, Henry
Havelock, butcher of Delhi), I began to get a little bit angry
too.

Before I fall asleep, I think of my father and for the first time since
I've been back in London, I found myself missing him terribly, no
longer able to pretend that his absence was simply the usual,
accustomed absence of a father who lives in another country. Even as I
began to accept his being dead I wished all the more that he was here.
For with him gone and with Ma's move to London, I'd become the last
remaining thread of his 'Indianess', her only remaining link with him,
and with the world they shared. And I'm not sure I'm Indian enough for
that.

*

The next weekend, in some vague attempt to prove my multi-cultural
credentials to my mother, I decide to take her for a walk on the
Embankment - to see the only other London statue honouring a non-white
leader: the giant bust of Mandela's head which lolls in the shadow of
the South Bank Centre.

I had done my research so was able to keep up a steady stream of facts
(the bronze statue replaces the original fibreglass cast, which was the
subject of frequent vandalism and was eventually set on fire, it was
unveiled in 1985, by Oliver Tambo; Ken Livingston who was the
mastermind behind its erection, was currently supporting a scheme for a
full body marble Mandela to stand on a specially constructed fifth
plinth in Trafalgar Square?) whilst she, rather absently it seemed to
me, nodded and listened whilst running her hand over the inscription
("The Struggle is My Life").

- Jeya, come and sit down here
- Yes, Ma.
- This isn't about statues, Jeya.
- I know, Ma. It's Dad, isn't it. I miss him to.
- Jeya, I miss your father so much that I spend each morning trying not
to wake up, but this isn't about him either. This is about you.
- Me - what are you talking about, Ma - I'm fine, I'm better than
fine.
- Shut up and Listen, Jeyaratnam Paul - you're still my son.

So, cowed by the polysyllabic cadence of my name, I sat down in
Mandela's shadow, as my mother told me a story. A story which I had
heard many times before, but which this time was infused with a new
resonance. The story of my first meeting with my grandmother, my first
trip to London and of a multigenerational dash down the
Embankment:

G'ma had booked tea at the Savoy - it was her Tuesday tradition, and
she saw no reason to interrupt it just because her only grandson was
coming to meet her for the first time. So I sat, in short pants, a new
tweed jacket and a black roll neck sweater; my grandmother in pearls,
my mother (defiantly) in a sari. They took turns feeding me cucumber
sandwiches, and scones, which I accepted in equal amounts, a small pawn
in an intergenerational struggle for love and approval which I was far
too little to understand.

Evidently, at some point I had grown bored of the company, and tottered
of to explore the hotel, whilst my female ancestors stirred their tea
at each other. When they eventually noticed I wasn't in the tea room, I
had escaped through a back entrance and was half way down the
Embankment, pockets full of scones to feed the goldfish I was certain I
would find in the shallows of the Thames.

- I have no idea how you got that far in such a little time, JP, I
honestly don't. You were such a confident little boy, trusting
everyone, approaching everyone, like a little raja, Londoners were just
your subjects; the city was like your playground. The only way we found
you was by asking the people along the way, apparently you had stopped
just about everyone you bumped into, asking "Where fishies?" and
batting those long lashes of yours at them. Your Grandmother and I had
to run all the way down, terribly fearful we'd find you floating face
down in the river. My sari got all unwrapped, flapping in the breeze: I
must have given quite the streak show to the tourists. We found you
eventually with a policeman, who you had persuaded to lend you his
helmet (in exchange for a scone, he explained later), you wanted to
know why he didn't have a gun "''cause at home polis have guns". If you
were 15 years older he would have arrested you, as it was you quite
charmed him. Oh, Jeya, what happened to that little boy?

A long beat till I realised something was expected of me.

- I grew up Ma.
- You got beaten, Jeya. You got cowed. Look at you: you're 30, your
father's dead, and you should be a man by now, but you don't have half
the sense of self you did when you were three. You scuttle, scared
through this city, like a rat in its crowded undergrounds, from a job
that forces you to be something you're not, to a woman who can never
really be yours. Acting all the time, in an accent that isn't yours,
behind a white mask, hiding behind God knows what else, as if that's
the only way you can survive in this place.

All these years your father warned me, wanted us to bring you back, and
all these years, I said "No, he's doing fine, he is a grown man, he is
living his own life", God how wrong I was, and I blame myself for that.
Jeya, darling, please, I know it's a hard city, and I know there are
things that are difficult for you, being caught between two worlds, I
do know that, but oh, Jeya, we did a better job than this, your Dad and
I, we really did.

And then she was crying, and I was crying, and this time it was Mother
who dropped me off in the taxi first, and I watched from my bedroom
window as the black cab pulled away, with my Mother inside it, down
long, winding London streets.