Thathi, Aiya and Loku Mammah
Good friends we have
Oh good friends we've lost
Along the way.
In this great future you can'’t forget your past
So dry your tears, I say
- Bob Marley, No Woman, No Cry
I can't hear any song by Bob Marley without thinking about Loku Mammah. Aiya and I burst into an impromptuou rendition of "I Shot the Sheriff" in the kitchen a few weeks back. This usually pushes Ammi into a homicidal rage. We sang with our usual amount of gusto and after inhumanely butchering a few stanzas we stopped. Slightly out of breath (because we are both slightly out of shape) we fell silent. Initially I thought it was due to the Sunday afternoon 'itis which can stealthily incapacitate those who are much stronger than us. But Aiya quietly confessed that he is unable to hear Bob Marley without thinking about Loku Mammah. What ensued was a brief conversation between the three of us (Ammi having put down the meat cleaver) about what a generally hip guy he was.
The truth is I don't remember a whole lot about Loku Mammah, just a few personal memories of him interspersed with everyone else's. When I think of him I'm whisked back to being 4, that's the last time I saw him.
I remember a lap as big as Thathi's to sit in, it could accommodatete Aiya, myself and Rajiv in it all at once. I don't ever remember it being too crowded. Although I'm told that the three of us weren't averse to reverting to fisticuffs if someone was hogging. We were a violent bunch even then.
We had cricket and rugby players coming in and out of our little home, Thathi had some really big friends. But Loku Mammah filled the entire place up, not just because to a 4 year old he was a giant of a man. He was over 6 feet and commanded a lot of respect and had a no nonsense air of authority about him. However there was still something that made people want to be around him. He was incredibly approachable, I tasted this first hand. Being a non-stop talker even then he'd always humour me even though I spoke a parcel of utter rubbish, a mile-a-minute to boot. (Granted in retrospect, I think I made much more sense back in those days.)
He sent me a Barbara Sansoni doll. I don't remember exactly when I got it or who he sent it through. But it made me happy to know that he still remembered me, even though we were in Toronto and our family was so far away. I never played with it. True. I was not much into dolls. But in my defence I never tried to decapitate it or cut its hair off. Through the years most of my stuffed toys found their way into storage. I just never had the heart to put that unplayed doll in with the rest (she's still in my room). Not because I particularly liked her, but because Loku Mammah gave her to me. So Raggedy Anne and Andy, Charlie, and a slew of other much loved toys were put away, never to see the light of day again. A racoon made a nest in my box of toys. I'm glad I wasn't there when Thathi and Punchy cleared out the storage last May when we moved.
31 October 1991.
I was supposed to go out as a bumble bee that year for Halloween. We always had an in class Halloween party where everyone would dress up in their costumes and contribute some cavity giving item to the festivities. It was one of the highlights of the year. We had gone to the pumpkin patch the week before to pick out the perfect gourd to carve into a Jack O'Lantern. The build up was ridiculous, especially to a bunch of kids in grade 2.
My memories of that morning are a bit hazy. Someone had woken Ammi and Thathi up with a phone call and the house was in a state of surreal chaos. But there was a bone chilling hush in the air. No one wanted to tell Amammah. Thathi couldn't, Ammi couldn't, Punchy couldn't, Punchy mammah couldn't.
Loku Mammah had died of a heart attack while swimming with Rajiv.
Piyo (my nanny) is the one who had to do it. I don't remember Amammah's initial reaction. My first encounter with death left me angry in my childish stupidness. I knew how I was supposed to act, but I was really pissed off that I couldn't wear my bumble bee costume to school. No one had the heart to dress me. Ammi tried to placate me by reminding me that I already had a chance to wear my costume to my Girl Guide troop's Halloween party a few days before. This type of reasoning did not work. I huffed of to school with my trademarked sour face of anger, tears burning my eyes not for my dead uncle but for my ruined Halloween.
Mr. Christie was right out of teacher's college, we were his first class. A grade 1-2 split. I was his pet. He famously told my parents during a parent teacher interview that they should give me everything I asked for. (Which thus far has been a rousing success.) He noticed that I was upset, and wasn't dressed up. Stupidly asking, in the way only a caring teacher can, if everything was all right. I told him that my mother's eldest brother had died. I channeled the anger of the lost bumble bee costume and forced a few tears out. Mr. Christie was a sucker, and I had secured a morning free of reading comprehension, cursive writing and decimal places.
I was allowed to choose one friend to make a Halloween poster with me. Brandon was my partner for folk dancing, my gay best friend in elementary school. He was good at art so I picked him. Neither one of us knew much about death, and although we were having a lot of fun making the poster we pretended we didn't. Because when someone dies you're not supposed to be happy. Mr. Christie heaped praise on our hideous poster and hung it up in a place of prominence, right on the door into our classroom. It almost made my lack of a costume worth it.
I begged Aiya to take me out trick or treating that evening. Ammi announced that we would never celebrate Halloween ever again, no more costumes or candy. I thought she was heartless. It was surprisingly easy to get Aiya to agree, I don't really remember how he handled his grief, but he had a sweet tooth, so off we went, Vindhiya, myself and Paul. We didn't make it that far down the street, Paul wet his pants and we had to come home. (This is just one of the reasons why I hated my cousins when I was a kid)
I wasn't forced to brush my teeth before bed that evening; the adults had their mind on other things than my dental hygiene. So with traces of chocolate in my mouth I said my prayers like the pious little Anglican I was.
"Lord, be with me as I go to sleep. Don't let me die. Make sure the house doesn't burn down with all of us in it. Please don't let robbers come in and murder us and then take all of our things..." The general theme of these night time prayers was me appealing to God not to smite me down in some horrible and unusual way. What? I was an Anglican. That's what Anglican's do. (Have you not seen Monty Python's The Meaning of Life?)
After I amened I went over everything that happened that day. I mentally tried to process and analyse the important bits. (It's something I still do today, and is probably the #1 contributor to my insomnia and the root of my narcolepsy.) That's when I thought about Rajiv. Rajiv who was just 9 months older than me. Rajiv who didn't have Thathi anymore. I became very sad for him, I couldn't fathom his loss then, and can't fathom it now either.
Trick or treat.
