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Posts Tagged ‘India’

let’s end with … as a child in bangalore

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2025| Leave a Comment »

When my father was reassigned to Vienna we had to say good-bye to all of our friends. We had a party with my school friends. I “planned” it but my Ayah did all the work. The Ayah took care of me and my sister and made sure we weren’t stolen. She tucked me in bed at night, and chased the animals out. She got me up each morning. She was dark of skin with long dark hair. She would get me out of trouble and keep me safe. If I broke something, like a nice glass or cup, she often took the blame for me. 

Hadi was the butler and oversaw the house and whole compound. He reported to my father. He was kind and gentle. One day I decided to cook a steak. I had to cook something. I was in the kitchen. I don’t remember why. He watched as I cooked the steak guiding me. When I thought it was done he said no but I didn’t listen. I insisted on eating it and it made me sick.

Let’s end with the Maharajah. My first impression of him was that he was fat. I mean he was a very big man to a small boy. My dad took me to work at the library that was located in Coorg. And that’s where I think I first saw him. He and my dad and I took a walk around his place. I wouldn’t call it a palace. Big compound is closer. The animals were loose in the compound. There was an elephant, gray, probably a male but I don’t know for sure. Probably a giraffe. He hunted. He shot a mother tiger and captured the cubs. There was a batch of those that I saw and played with. Four of them. They were very small. They would fit in my hands if I held them now. I think I told you they were white but they weren’t white solidly through. I don’t remember what year that was but I saw him more than once. I know he met with Queen Elizabeth in 1961 as she toured India. I remember seeing her driving in a convertible. I was looking down from the roof of the library. 

I can’t think of these times as unusual. It was simply my childhood. We moved on to Vienna for a few years. I joined the Boy Scouts, an international troop, and received an award for knot tying. I had weak ankles and a doctor their prescribed ice skating. My mother taught me some fancy ballroom dances and my father tried to teach me guitar. There I was introduced to sachertorte. It is still one of my favorite desserts. Like I said, simply my childhood.


Photo Sources:

Horne Family Album

https://archive.org/details/propix.275036712

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as a child in bangalore 2

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 8, 2025| 6 Comments »

In Steve’s own words …

In Bangalore, I used to walk to the local Indian school, St. Anthony’s Boy’s School. Sometimes I took a rickshaw. The driver would be peddling on the street and I would wave him down. It was cheap and I had enough pocket money. I thought school was thorough and complete meaning subjects were covered thoroughly and completely without any gaps or holes. But when I went on to a British school in Bangalore I discovered there were holes in what I had been taught. It didn’t matter. I just loved learning and reading. Given that my father ran a library there were plenty of books at my disposal. My parents were open to me reading anything. There were no PTA (parent teacher association) meetings. No judgements. My father probably gave me the most books on all sorts of subjects. 

The dachshund would meet me when I walked home from school. My general routine after returning home was to put on outdoor clothes and go climb a tree. There were not so many other kids around. Sometimes a few. We lived on Richmond Road, a street with lots of bungalows. White people generally lived in these bungalows, mostly Brits. They worked for the state I guess maybe civil servants.

after first communion

My dad had a jeep as part of his job. On Sundays we would drive to mass at the Catholic church. I remember the building as spacious. Sometimes he would drive me to the library where he worked. That seemed spacious to me too. Everything seemed spacious to me back then. Even our bungalow.

I remember the bungalow had a veranda. I remember lots of plants on ours planted by the gardener and by my dad as well. My father liked to garden growing all kinds of plants edible and not. I remember everything from African violets to basil. 

In addition to the dachshund and siamese cat, he owned parakeets. About four or five blue parakeets in a green cage. He also kept fish in a standard fish bowl. They were just plain old fish not very interesting to me. He also kept two horses. He loved animals. He’d grown up on a farm in Nebraska. 

I fell from a mango tree and my dad looked at my arm and decided it was broken and took me to the doctor. I also fell while climbing a wall. A piece of the wall broke off in my hand and that’s how I fell. A stranger, an Indian man,  picked me up and took me up to the house. Broke my arm that time too catching myself with my hand and elbow beneath me. But aside from events like this I felt safe and happy in Bangalore.

I enjoyed the food. My first glass of water there I drank not realizing there were peppercorns in the glass. Overall the food was not spicy. We had a cook. He would make me fried chicken. When my father was entertaining he would take over the kitchen. He greatly enjoyed cooking. From him I learned how to make pesto. He was a good cook. 

My younger sister had been born in Italy. My mother had her hands full with me, a baby and my father and all our animals. She was very beautiful and always smelled nice. Like flowers.

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as a child in bangalore

Posted in Guest Contributor, Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2025| 5 Comments »

In Steve’s own words:

We were there from 1957 to 1962. My father worked as a librarian for the U.S. State Department. I was five years old when we arrived and I could still speak Italian from his previous post in Genoa, Italy. I had great pets in India. My father had a dachshund. A long skinny regular sized dachshund not a miniature. He also had a Siamese cat that he had brought from Italy. In addition I had a young mongoose. His name was Mongi. My father purchased him from a snake charmer. I most remember how he used to run up the sleeve of my shirt. I first saw him when the snake charmer came to visit our bungalow. He took him out of a bag and put him on the ground. He ran up to the snake and sniffed. The snake had come out of the bushes around our place. I think it was a cobra. The mongoose ignored the snake for a bit and sniffed all of the hands and feets he could find before returning to the snake. The snake charmer held a bag open and the mongoose ran back inside. The snake charmer picked up the snake very carefully and placed the snake in a different bag. The snake charmer, who probably saw my face filled with delight, made my father an offer. In exchange for a 5 rupee note, maybe about a $1, my father bought me the mongoose.

sitting on the steps of the bungalow book in hand

Over time I had more than one mongoose though only one at a time. The first Mongi got too used to people and got too close to someone cutting grass with a sickle and was killed. The snake charmers visited the house once a week and they always had a mongoose for sale. I remember my father reading Kipling’s Riki Tiki Tavi to me. In the end I think I had two or three mongoose before we left India for the U.S. before embarking for Austria. They were all killed by the sickle because the men wielding the sickle sat in the grass looking very inviting and the mongoose would get too close. The last Mongi I had to leave  behind because he was not allowed to enter the U.S. I felt like he was being unfairly blamed for killing chickens when he’d never killed a chicken in his life.

They are about as big as a gray squirrel. Our Siamese cat liked to carry them around in its mouth and treated them like kittens. The dachshund also liked to pick them up and carry them around by the waist. The trio got along fine even when a new Mongi appeared. They liked to sleep together and with me. When the Ayah put me to bed, she covered my bed with mosquito netting. The mongoose would wait and unstuff the net where it was tucked underneath the mattress and slip into bed with me. We kept him fed fairly well with leftovers from the table and bits of chicken. They could come and go as they pleased in and out of the house and into any bedroom. My mother thought me and my father were nuts but she bore with it. The family gardeners liked them because they killed the snakes that the gardeners chanced upon.

My mother had a harder time dealing with the goats. They weren’t pets. They were more of a nuisance. We kept a few in the compound. They were kept for their meat and had free range to wander wherever liked. I rarely messed with them because they would butt fiercely with their heads. Sometimes they wandered into the house. They’d walk right through the screen door by butting the screen out. They usually made their way to the couch and fell asleep. I think they thought they were people.

The most common animal I saw in India were monkeys. There were several mango trees in the compound. The monkeys infested the trees. Rheesus monkeys. They made a chittering sound. They ate the mangoes and also threw them to the ground. I liked to climb the mango trees to pick mangoes and just eat them fresh. I still like the taste of fresh mangoes.

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“I miss my mongoose.”

Posted in Inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 6, 2011| 2 Comments »

You just never know where inspiration is gonna come from.

Have you noticed on the back of cars there are often decals indicating the make up of the family? White stick figures roughly indicating gender, age, etc.  The usual line up is X number of parents, X number of children, and X number of cats and dogs.   So the other day Steve and I are out driving.  At a stop light, we see different decals on the car in front of us.  They  indicate the family is composed of two adults and their two ferrets.  We knew they were ferrets because the word ferret had been applied to the car under the image of two long cat-like creatures.  I wasn’t hugely surprised.  Over the years I’ve made the acquaintance of a few New Englanders owning pet ferrets.  What surprised me was hearing the following words said softly beside me, “I miss my mongoose.”

My only childhood experience of a mongoose was watching the animated version of Rikki-Tikki-Tavi on television with my younger brother when I was seven.  As far as I know there were no mongoose in Virginia.  But Steve, whose father served in the U.S. foreign service,  spent several years of his childhood in India.  And there, in a bungalow in Bangalore, he was allowed to add a pet mongoose to his menagerie that already included a Dachshund and Siamese cat.  “The cat used to carry the mongoose around like a kitten, with a hold on the back of its neck.  And the dog allowed the mongoose to pummel its stomach as they all settled down to sleep together.  Quite clearly the mongoose was in charge.”

“Just imagine,” Steve adds with a smile, “A Dachshund, a mongoose, and a Siamese cat walk into a room.  There’s a story there, don’t you think?”  Undoubtedly, especially when you add in a towheaded little boy.

Animal images from http://www.fantom-xp.com/

Steve image by his father circa late 1950’s.

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