A Convoluted Beginning

MATERNAL  GRANDFATHER

The ancestors of my Maternal Grandfather owned vineyards in Portugal until 200 years before his birth, when the Portuguese invaded India.

Wealthy Portuguese families then relocated to India, creating lavish homes in Bombay in which their culture, language and religion could flourish. Many of the marriage and business alliances between neighbouring Portuguese families, that began in 18th century, are still alive and well today.

Stanislaus - as his family's second son - was sent to study for the priesthood in a seminary in the family's ancestral land. 

After 7 years, and on the verge of taking his vows, Stanislaus realized he didn't want to be a priest. He also realized his refusal to take his vows disgraced his entire family and therefore he would not be welcomed back into the bosom of his family in India.

So the 20 year old decided to run away to make his fortune in South America, where the official language was Portuguese.

But Fate had other ideas! The merchant vessel upon which he booked passage, was, in fact, bound for Goa, which lay on the Arabian coast of India, not far from his home city of Bombay.

Stanislaus thus found himself back in the land of his birth, India. But having scandalized his family, he was shunned by them and left to make his own way in the world.  Not speaking Hindi and with little money and even less worldly experience, my Grandfather spent a further seven years reinventing himself.

With the help of his future bride's Father, he created and ran an import-export business while continuing his education and learning English for the first time, from the Jesuit's St. Xavier's College in Bombay.

Eight years later, Stanislaus married the daughter of his generous business benefactor, building for his bride an impressive Art Deco home, where they both lived happily till his death in 1953.

 MATERNAL GRANDMOTHER

Through St. Xavier's college in Bandra, Estelle's  father had obtained a degree in History and, along the way, had also learned English.

Involved in finances, her father had many political connections through which he became a vast land owner of one-third of Bandra island.

It had been through her Father's considerable influence that the financial endeavours of Estelle's future husband had thrived, providing him with sufficient financial security to be worthy of her hand in marriage.

By the end of World War 2, Estelle and Stanislaus were parents to 6 children - three boys and three girls. Stanislaus was a conscientious businessman, and the family enjoyed the profits from his thriving import-export business, which connected him to the frequently explosive Indian political scene. 

Estelle herself was a small boned, delightfully frivolous young lady, who enjoyed  the intrigue and glamour of the many house-parties she attended in the company of friends and family.

She rarely troubled herself with thinking too deeply, as Indian society of her day frowned on learned ladies.  Her gifts were social and musical,  and her much vaunted beauty was counted as an asset and comfort to all who were privileged to spend time with her.

PATERNAL GRANDFATHER

John, my Paternal Grandfather, had been the tenth child of another John, a highly regarded Suffolk coachman and his country sweetheart, a Suffolk girl named Ellen.

His ancestors had previously worked as labourers on the land, for several hundred years in the English county of Suffolk. They were literally surrounded by aunts, uncles and cousins, with whom they shared both hardships and joys. Their bucolic lifestyle had been hard and humble, but honest.  And the family dynamic had remained the same for centuries.

But John Senior had a rare and natural gift with horses that was to radically change his young family's fortunes.

At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the Elder John was 'head-hunted' by a wealthy Yorkshire landowner to oversee the care and conditioning of his many fine carriage horses.

John had accepted the offer and his employer had borne the cost of relocating him, and his wife and children, from rural Suffolk to Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire, England.  From then on, the family lived near the stables, on the grounds of the grand estate.

My Grandfather was the first child in 400 years of our family's history to be born in the Yorkshire dales.

Once relocated to the city of Halifax, the transplanted family were no longer able to share their hopes or fears with their extended family, John Junior had thus been forced to learn 'town' ways.

New social and work skills led him to accept employment as a "sugar stirrer" in the Rowntree Sweet (candy) factory.  Then John married young, and sired two daughters before World War 1 broke out.

In 1914, he joined the Army, but suffered prolonged bouts of malaria caused him to spend the war alternating between the unforgiving cold of Crimea  and the relative warmth of the Army hospital.

Choosing to be de-mobbed in India, where it was always warm, John sent for his wife to travel to India.  In those days, that involved a 6-week journey in a crowded ship via the Suez Canal.  Florence had been ill on her arrival in Bombay, having contracted what was termed 'the plague' on board ship.  She died six weeks later, far from her home in England, a victim of the post WW1 Spanish Flu pandemic

Fearing for the health of their two small daughters, John made the heart-wrenching decision to leave them in England to be raised by their Maternal Aunt.  He was never to see them again.

Ironically, John, himself, chose to remain in India, for his own health's sake.  He continually suffered from debilitating bouts of malaria which restricted his ability to work full-time, despite the warmer climate of India. Nonetheless, John persisted, eventually becoming well enough to be trained as a seller for the Army and Navy stores, in Bombay.

In England, during the late fifties and early sixties, both Grandfather John and Grandmother Rachel lived in my family home in Ealing, London.  Then, he'd been a short, stout, jovial man with a florid complexion and thinning hair, who suffered from deep vein thrombosis.

There was nothing pretentious about John Junior.  He meant what he said and said what he meant! Despite his many health issues, he continued to drink liquor, smoke cigarettes and enjoyed gambling on horse races till his death at 75.

Granddad had learned a lot about horseflesh from his talented father and we both shared a deep love of horses. He would often recall his brief time as a jockey in Yorkshire - an event he was to remember  fondly for the rest of his life.

In his latter years, Granddad and I would watch horse racing on television together. In a thick Yorkshire accent, he'd share with me all the equine skills and knowledge that his father had once taught him.  In return, my keen eye helped us both to pick race winners on a regular basis. Without my parents' knowing Granddad's 'flutter on the ponies' would often augment my weekend pocket-money !

PATERNAL GRANDMOTHER 

Antoinette Rachel was one of eight children born to a French-Indian medical doctor on a Mauritius sugar plantation and a female domestic staff member.

 

French, was, and is still, the official language of this tropical island nation, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. So Rachel (as she was known) spoke only French until she left Mauritius.

Before WW1, society did not consider that girls had any merit. Although Rachel and her sisters had all been taught to read, write and do arithmetic - which was a rare privilege for any girls born in the late 1800s - their education did not include going to college. 

Only Rachel's brothers were afforded the opportunity of a higher education. Each in turn was sent to Bombay, where they all became trained as a doctors.

At 26, Rachel, her sisters and their Father travelled together to India, staying with her elder brother, who was in General Practice. Thus the whole family was together when their Father suddenly died.

As the offspring of a house servant and a staff doctor, each of the doctor's children had been treated well on the Mauritius plantation, only because of their Father's status in that household. When he died, Rachel and her siblings found themselves no longer welcome there, even though their several Mothers continued in service on that same plantation. 

Thus, in their twenties, and speaking no English or Hindi, Rachel and her sisters were left homeless and motherless, and had to fend for themselves in the early 20th Century in Bombay.

Fortunately, Rachel was a keen student with a good mind plus the discipline to teach herself English from a dictionary. Assiduously, she learned 10 new words every day till she became fluent enough to enter the job market. Years passed, as she grasped the intricacies of the business world, by importing from her beloved Mauritius, shipments of vanilla and tea - aromas that reminded her of a home, for which she yearned but would never again see.

Rachel remained in India, excelling socially, as well as in business, and eventually selling to Army and Navy Stores, where she met her future husband. And a few short years later, she married the short, stocky Yorkshire man, and bore him two sons, though only one survived. That was my Father, Maurice, who was born in the mid nineteen twenties.

Tall and willowy, Rachel had the regal bearing of a Masai tribeswoman.  Trained to be subservient, she was a quiet and observant girl who rarely spoke, unless spoken to.  She had grown up with her siblings in the tropical paradise of Mauritius.  But, after their Father's death, none of them was ever to return to their  island in the sun.

Fate once again separated the sisters, as their adult lives revolved around each of their own marriages and children. One by one, the sisters emigrated to England, where they reconnected, and maintained close ties with each other's family until Rachel's death in 1965.

DAD 

Jack enjoyed sports, despite having poor eyesight.  Boxing was his first love, but it damaged his eyes so Jack hung up his gloves.  After time off to heal, his love of sports re-surfaced in table tennis, through which he strengthened his hand-eye coordination and regained his confidence.  

He then concentrated on studies in accountancy, although he never abandoned his love of sports. His determination to be successful resulted in his winning coveted trophies for all his sports. Jack's billiards team represented the Bombay Presidency, the government boundary of western India, in tournaments all over India.

With both of his parents separated from their own homelands and families, Maurice, aka "Jack",  had grown up with a keen desire to succeed at everything, but especially at being the beloved and admired head of his own large family.  

Just prior to meeting my Mother, Jack took a job for TWA,  a job that would allow him to travel abroad, as well as live permanently outside of India.

MOM

Mother grew up in India, during the twilight of Britain's imperialism.  Her Father was a shrewd business-man, who was well regarded by India's indigenous and political leaders. In the days leading up to the quest for Independence, he was thus often invited to the home of the Viceroy and his wife.

Yvonne, was a natural scholar, who thrived in private school in the Himalayas, as well as later at the University in Calcutta. She was socially adept and a popular student, with an irrepressible sense of humour which kept her in touch with many of her old school-friends well into her 80s.

Being first born, she benefited directly from her Father's Jesuit education. During holidays at home between term times, she and Stanislaus enjoyed many discussions about philosophy, science and metaphysics.

Yvonne's sports' endeavours built stamina rather than testing her for speed. Rather perversely, her convent nuns, while permitting competition did not applaud winning. Her physical sports thus included horse-trekking up the Himalayas. And her mental pursuits were those sanctioned by strict Catholic boarding school rules.

As her parents' beautiful and brilliant first child, Yvonne was groomed to entertain dignitaries, and often accompanied her father to diplomatic parties and political gatherings. But she had a yen for medicine, which she was able to indulge by tending to hospitalized wounded WW2 soldiers during her long boarding-school holidays.  At 15, Yvonne expressed a desire to become a surgeon.  But her father flatly refused to entertain the idea that a woman could ever be a surgeon. It simply wasn't done.

During her teenage years, Yvonne was disappointed by her Father's denial of her 'calling'.  To appease his daughter, her Father would sometimes ask her to accompany him on political visits to the Viceroy's Delhi residence. It was there that she listened intently as Nehru, Djinna and Ghandiji proffered their vision for India's freedom from British rule.  Despite their diverging viewpoints, Mother knew she was a was a witness to history in the making, and that it would leave an indelible imprint upon her psyche.

It was through her Father's Ambassadorial and political connections, prior to India's partition from England in 1947, that my Mother-to-be met and talked with Mahatma Gandhi. During those last gasps of British rule in India, Mrs. Nehru, the wife of India's first Prime Minister, sensed a kindred spirit when she actively took Yvonne under her wing.

Perhaps incongruously, it was in this magnificent residence of historic significance for the identity of India that Mother was carefully groomed in the correct way to set a genteel table, complete with damask tablecloth and fresh flowers, for a proper English tea!

It was Mrs Nehru who recognized Yvonne's value as a diplomat and encouraged my then teenaged Mother to think for herself, and to trust the conclusions she drew.  That was a radical idea in those post war days of transition - and one that she gleefully passed on to her three daughters.

ME 

Dad and Mom enthusiastically started on their plan to begin a family, as soon as they were married in 1947. But instead of their much longed-for first-born son, a first-born daughter entered the world, via the hospital for British Veterans (and their families) in Bombay.

At the precise moment my body entered the physical world, the electricity failed and all the lights went out, or were dimmed, even in the hospital's maternity ward.
It was the middle of the monsoon season, less than one year after India had wrestled its independence from the British, yet already the infrastructure was being sorely tested.

I was thus welcomed to a world made gentle by candlelight, and cradled by capable hands, two hours after the sun had sunk into the Arabian Sea. And I'd barely uttered my first sounds, when the door to Mom's delivery room opened and a soft voice asked for verification of my time of birth

Nobody knew to whom the voice belonged. But one of the nurses verbally confirmed the time. This is quite normal in India, where many parents arrange for Astrology charts to be drawn up for their newborns, so the request for such information, though unexpected, raised no alarms.

ASTROLOGER
The next day, a very ancient man hobbled into my Mother's room and requested some time with her. Knowing he was an Astrologer, and thinking that he must have been sent to her by my Father, she permitted a short visit. The old man stayed two hours, outlining the events and circumstances of the life Mom's infant was destined to live. He also told her of my accomplishments in past lives, as a holy man in India.

Only later, when thanking my Father for such a thoughtful gift, did my Mother realize that Father had NOT sent the Astrologer. Apparently the old man had sent himself!

Having been raised as a Catholic in the Himalayan Mountains, Mom was familiar with the customs and beliefs of the Buddhist monks who lived in that area. She knew, for instance, that these monks often donned disguises to deliver important messages. Yet she had not been prepared for this stranger to insist that her child had a spiritual mission to accomplish in this current life that would intertwine not only Western and Eastern faith but also their cultures.  I was not yet one day old when all this information was revealed to my somewhat astonished 21-year old Mother.

The venerable old man also suggested that she not divulge the details of my pathway to me, personally, until after I had found my own way to that conclusion. He then told her cheerful yet cautionary tales about what karmically befell those who interfered with a Lama's will. And my Mother, being both a wise woman and a citizen of the world, well-versed in reading between the lines, clearly understood!

Beyond being loving and conscientious parents towards me, she and my Father were merely to guide my footsteps towards the Light. Apart from providing for my physical and educational needs, they were not permitted to decide my fate for me. And despite much cajoling, trickery and outright begging, on my part, Mother has yet to divulge the details of my fate, as told to her by that old Lama.

Maddeningly, she will only say...so far, so good!

The photo of my parents and me, taken before my sisters were born! We lived in a basement at 20 Wright's Lane, Kensington, London. The year was 1953 and I was almost 5 years old. This is my most enduring memory of our first real family home in England.

In the year before this photo was taken, I had cuddled my first puppy and ridden my first real horse - the cart-horse that pulled the milk float! I had also visited, with my Mother, every museum, park and art gallery in central London during our afternoon "adventures" in the heart of London's Kensington district.

I will forever fondly remember the smell of leather sofas when I shopped with Mom at Barkers and Pontings; and the heady scent of flowers when we treated ourselves to tea in the Roof Garden at Derry and Toms.

Later I was to take my own daughter to feed ducks at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens, just as I had done with my own Mother 20 year earlier.  But before that day dawned, I was to encounter many weird and wonderful psychic experiences. 

Later chapters will reveal more about my psychic evolution during my early years