Jerry Pinto - Em and the Big Hoom

‘He made me read to him from the papers every day and from Reader’s Digest . “They put in a load of rubbish,” he would say, “but you can learn something and you can learn the language well.” He believed in English. “It is the new Latin,” he would say. “Because of America. All the new inventions come out of America and so everyone has to learn English.”’

‘One thing…’ I started.

‘One thing,’ he said. ‘If you want to get people to talk to you, you should never interrupt.’

‘Never? Even if I think something is wrong or missing?’

‘Especially if you think something is wrong or missing.’

‘Why?’

‘Stops them. Gives them time to think. Interrupts the flow. If you want to get more, you shut up and wait.’

And so did I get my first lesson for life as an adult from my father. I remained silent until he raised his eyebrows in a mute question.

‘Why didn’t you go home? Dr da Gama Rose…’

‘Rosa.’

‘Whatever.’

‘No, his name was Dr da Gama Rosa. Names are important. Isn’t yours important to you?’

My second lesson.

‘He’d have given you the money to go home. Or you could have earned it with your first salary.’

‘I suppose,’ my father said. ‘I could have. But I didn’t. Why didn’t I? I don’t think anyone has ever asked me that before. No, I don’t think I’ve asked myself that question before. That’s a good question, then. I didn’t go home. I stayed.’

He thought about it for a while. I felt important, and I felt silly that I was feeling important.

‘I suppose I was ashamed. I had been stupid. I had taken a boy’s invitation and come to the city. I had lost all my money. And maybe it was because everyone who came back from the city, came back rich. They went to Bombay or Aden or Nairobi and they came back with stories of things they had seen or what they had done. I would have had to say that I went to the city and became a coolie and a compounder and had come home.’

He fell silent again. I was minding my manners and my lessons in life, so I was quiet and was rewarded.

‘Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe it was ambition. Maybe it was the city. I don’t think you’ll ever understand how challenging the city can be for a boy from a village. You don’t know anything about it. You don’t know if you buy your ticket before or after you get onto the train. You don’t know if you can go into a mosque or not. You don’t know if the man holding out booklets is offering them free or is selling them. You don’t know why a stranger is smiling at you from the next park bench.’

‘Wouldn’t that make you want to run away from it all?’

‘That’s where pride comes in, and stubbornness. The city is a challenge but it’s a challenge that doesn’t care either way. If you go home, it won’t jeer, it just won’t notice. You can stay and work hard and make something of yourself and it still won’t notice. But you will know. I would have known that I had failed. So I stayed.’

‘You could have written,’ I said. It was family legend that Masses had been held in the village church for my father’s soul. The family had assumed he was dead.

‘They thought I had died in Poona or on the way back.’

‘Why not on the way there?’

‘Because my examination results came in the post. I did well too.’

That must have fitted in nicely with the tragedy, I thought.

‘When did you return?’

‘With my engineering degree.’

As the doctor’s practice declined, he began to invest more and more of his life into his compounder’s future.

‘We work in the ABC professions,’ Dr da Gama Rosa said. ‘Ayahs. Butlers. Cooks.’

‘Doctors too,’ said his compounder.

‘Drunks, more likely,’ said the Doctor. ‘If you want to be someone else, you have to work ten times as hard because they see us as the boys in the band. But what’s worse is that that’s how we see ourselves. Do a little work, sing a song, drink yourself to death, go out with a funeral band and four children following the coffin.’

Once his assistant had begun to master the English newspapers, the doctor made him read a series of English classics borrowed from a public library that stood at the corner of Dhobi Talao. At first, Dr da Gama Rosa picked the books but eventually he started sending The Big Hoom.

‘One day, I happened to look over a young man’s shoulder and saw a cutaway drawing of a motor. I did not know what it was at the time but it looked fascinating. So I asked him what the book was and he flipped it over so I could see the cover. It was Coates’ Manual for Engineers. I wanted to ask him more but he said he was studying for an exam, so please. I looked at the shelves and found another Coates. It was marked ‘for reference only’ but Dr da Gama Rosa had told me how to get around that. Most of the time the labels were old so all you had to do was peel it off and get the book issued anyway.’

‘What did the doctor say when you started reading Coates?’

‘I think he was disappointed. I think he wanted me to become a doctor. When I was in the clinic, he would test me all the time. He would make me read temperatures and take blood pressure and ask me what I would prescribe.’

Which explained the almost impersonal kindness with which The Big Hoom treated us when we were ill.

‘And so you got into the Victoria Regina Technical Institute?’

‘On the second attempt,’ said The Big Hoom. ‘And three years later, with an engineering degree, I went home.’

The prodigal was not welcomed, even if he had made good.

‘Your grandmother was a big woman for her time. She was nearly five foot ten and she could carry a head-load of firewood five kilometres to the Mapusa market, talking all the while.’

The news spread even before he got off the bus.

‘By the time I reached home, mother was waiting for me with a stick,’ he smiled. ‘Later, I was told she had burst into tears at the news, then dried her eyes, killed three chickens, changed her sari and picked up the stick.’

‘Did she beat you?’

‘No. Six years had passed. She remembered a boy of fifteen who would take his father’s shirts without permission. She hit me once or twice but there was no conviction in her. And I remember when she hit me, the village, standing behind, said “Ohhhhh” and then when she hit me the second time, they all said “Aaahhhhh”. She got angry and roared at them. “Kaam na?” Don’t you have any work to do? And then she took me in to see my father.’

‘He didn’t come out to see you?’

‘He was paralysed from the waist down. We don’t know how it happened. He was working as a cook in Hyderabad. My mother said he was in the Nizam’s palace, but then everyone in Goa said that they were cooking for royalty if they were cooks. Most of the time, they were cooking for middle-class Parsis in Bombay.’

‘Were they happy to see you?’

‘I suppose. But I think they were happier when I showed them my degree. Neither could read so my mother brought in a lady from the next house to read it out to her so she could be sure that I wasn’t fooling them. Then I showed them the letter from Ampersand Smith Limited, the company I had joined as a trainee engineer.’

‘What happened to Dr da Gama Rosa?’

‘When I got the job, he said, “Now don’t show your face here again.” I said that I would come and see him on Saturdays. He said, “We’ll see.” Of course, that made me all the more determined to go and see him. But when I went on the first Saturday, the clinic was closed. So I went on Monday, sneaking out at lunch. He was pleased to see me and told me to keep two shirts and a pair of trousers at the office at all times.’