Words From Vaish

Bus journeys in India usually leave one irritated, uncomfortable and bored... This one, courtesy UP State Tourism, was no different despite the “de luxe” tag. The air conditioning had broken down and the passengers – serving members of the armed forces and their dependents – were sloshing somnolently in their own sweat. Cramped, with both legs gone to sleep and a throbbing headache, my then 16-year-old self glumly contemplated a wasted weekend at a Corbett National Park overrun with day trippers scaring away the wildlife. As we approached Ramnagar, the situation began to look up. The dessicated plains with their forlorn stands of withered mango trees and scraggy eucalyptus   gave way to denser growths of Sal, Kikar and Mohua trees. It was very like being in some medieval European cathedral, with shafts of dim emerald light lancing dramatically through the vaults of the majestic trees as though filtered through stained glass windows. The cool scented air was better th...

ROUND-THE-WORLD ROBYN “What goes out, comes around in the end.  It happened to my Mum and me, it really did. My Mum was born in New Zealand in 1899. She was the only daughter of a Welsh ship’s engineer and an Anglo-Irish seamstress, one Kathleen Ann Bailey. Sadly, Granddad Lloyd was drowned in a ferry disaster in 1909. He’d provided as well as he could for his family with his savings and an insurance policy, but it simply wasn’t enough. So, that year, Grandma Lloyd moved herself and Mum to India . She had relatives there in the British Raj, who promised to help her s et up a small tailoring business in Bengal Presidency, as it was called then. You could live quite well on a little there, in those days. Grandma and Mum set up shop in a small town upriver from Calcutta on the Hoogly. It was hard going initially because the native tailors were pretty good, and much cheaper too. But Grandma could do the European fashions for ladies and kids that they couldn’t. Both sh...