Saturday 3^rd November

Intimations of mortality…

Some of the small children closely related to us and our friends are very smart indeed. Pauline’s granddaughter Evie is a good example of the apple not falling far from the tree…both her mother and her grandmother are as clever as can be and Evie threatens to outshine them already.

The other day she couldn’t sleep and cried inconsolably – it had just dawned on her that she was going to die. One day in the far distant future, but…she would die nevertheless. Abi tried to console her, but Evie looked at her, eyes wide, and said, “Mummy what HAPPENS when we die?” It is not a good idea to tell children that dying is just like falling asleep – we want them to rejoice in going to bed and falling fast asleep, nice and early thank you. So Abi dredged up the best possible scenario and said, “Well…my grandmother always told me that when we die we go to a lovely place, full of music…” “Not OPERA!”” said Evie, suspiciously. “Well no not opera. But it is all very lovely and there are people we know who have died there to meet us, and everyone is very happy.”

There was a bit of a silence while Evie reflected on this slightly unlikely story.

“Mummy….what do the scientists say about all of this?”

(Evie is not quite five….)

India #9

Our first night in Mumbai we saw people bedding down for the night all over the footpaths. This was a shock to all of us except Pete, who has been to India three times before. Whole families stake out a small bit of street as their home. They snug up and go to sleep, sometimes under blazing streetlights. We never failed to be astounded by how well the little children slept – not a whimper! There they would be, sometimes just lying on a piece of old newspaper, or a thin bit of sari if they were lucky, and they certainly were in no need of Controlled Crying techniques, or of tizzying! (Barbara’s daughter Angharad has a very useful book on helping toddlers with their sleep patterns, written by a woman called Tizzy Hall, aka the Baby Whisperer. Angharad calls this training program tizzying, and it has worked a treat with her Arabella.) But poor children in India, some of them sleeping with their families on narrow dusty median strips in the middle of 6-lane highways, doze like little angels.

 

On our first night in Mumbai, I was particularly astonished to see a man contentedly zizzing away, lying on a piece of cardboard and using his wooden leg as a pillow. All of this did, ofcourse, make me feel more than a little bit guilty. I am SUCH a Princess and the Pea; can’t sleep if the mattress is too hard, or the pillow not to my liking. In many hotels I whinged and wailed and poor Pete had to go hunting around for extra mattresses to make my bedding more comfortable so that I could sleep. How would I go, sleeping on a dusty, or wet, Mumbai footpath, with people walking around me, maybe treading on my delicate fingers; wouldn’t my back ache so much that I would sob and carry on?? How could these people lie there, uncomplaining and peaceful?

 

There were many families living on the street near the Crawford Market (now re-named Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Market but still EVERYONE in Mumbai-Bombay calls it Crawford Market.) We were charmed to find a baby in a hammock made from an old piece of sari tied to the railing separating the footpath from the busy street; two very young children were in charge of this baby, rocking it happily. It would have made a beautiful photo but we were all a bit wary of intruding on people’s lives, and especially on their poverty, with our cameras.