Old English

This is an historical piece with a touch of sci-fi and deals with words in the English language that are no longer used.

Alvertos Onesimus had been the senior professor of English at Muchalls University in Aberdeenshire for over ten years and his retirement age was creeping forward, he thought at an alarming rate. It was two years since he’d lost his wife, Ergronia, in a frightening incident.

They were both on holiday at the time, in Thailand when hurricane Andrea swept in; Ergronia was taking her early morning walk along the deserted golden sands and the Professor was in bed nursing an overdose of the local rum he had consumed the previous evening. 

Ergronia would have called him well-fuzzled, using a word from the early nineteen-hundreds, to describe someone who was well and truly intoxicated. She too was a professor of English and gained her doctorate in a thesis that looked at old English words that were no longer used in the twenty-first century.

She had started her day at six o’clock in the morning, with the weather being very appricitic, which was the word the people living in sixteen-twenty would have described it. A winter’s day but with gloriously hot sunshine. It was about an hour later when the dark clouds started to gather, the sky darkened, and it started raining. Fifteen minutes later it began lumming down, as the populace of eighteen-eighty described it when heavy rain poured down.

The storm was without warning, and the lummation occurred while Ergronia was briskly walking back to the resort. The inquest, held after the disaster, declared that she was presumed dead, as her body was never found. It was assumed she was washed away in the terrible flooding, along with the other six hundred and sixty-six recorded fatalities, that occurred all along the coast and at their resort, Aonang Phu Petra, close to the town of Krabi.

They had chosen the place after nights of google searching and using Trivago searching for the most comfortable resort at the lowest cost on offer. They were both in their early sixties when they visited Thailand and they thought of their holiday as a preretirement gift to themselves. They had both been given an unexpected Christmas bonus by Muchalls and neither had close relations to bequeath their meagre assets to. A holiday in the sun would do them good and perhaps bring back their more riotous days of their youth in the nineteen sixties.

They would get totally crapulous, eating excessive amounts of foods they had never even tasted before, and they swore they would never have a grumpish day. Ergronia used to hate being sullen and was always annoyed when Alvertos behaved like a sluberdegullion and spent the entire the weekend sprawled on the sofa and had no intention of moving. She was using the word commonly used in the sixteen-hundreds to describe slovenly behaviour.

One day when he’d spent the whole of a Sunday reclined on the sofa in their parlour she burst into the room screaming, “Zenzizenzizenzic!” at the top of her voice using as much inter-costal-diaphragmatic air she could muster from her slender frame.

“Ah, ah,” he replied, “thought you’d catch me napping with to the power of eight, did you?”

She was a trifle dumfounded that he knew the meaning of her outburst and screamed again, “Zenzizenzisenzic!” after she realigned her inter-costal muscles.

“Yes, yes, I heard you the first time my dearest,” he softly replied, “I’ve just been reading Christopher Marlowe’s play the Jew of Malta, marvellous work, the passage where Barabas, the Jew, explains his interest in mathematics, brilliant! It doth represent the square of squares quite squarely.”

“Exactly.” she replied, “It’s amazing what they knew way back then.”

“The Jew goes on to explain to the judge why he thinks the prosecutor should not be female because she is too callipygian.”

Ergronia grinned mischievously, “You said my buttocks were beautifully shaped when you married me, and that wasn’t in sixteen forty either.”

They both laughed, and she moved closer to him, bending down and gave him a soft peck on the cheek, “Some tea my quockerwogger?”

“Divine idea,” he replied, “with perhaps a scone, strawberry jam and cream and I’m not a wooden puppet hanging on a string!”

“Oh no! can’t have you turning into a jollux!”

“Me? Get fat? Come on, I’m the same weight as when I was a snoutfair.”

“Yes, yes I know you’ve always been good looking and handsome.”

It was then that a most unusual occurrence transpired. The door bell rang and on a Sunday of all days. In the quiet tranquil town of Muchalls in the middle of eastern Scotland this was an infrequent event, unless of course it was the town’s Presbyterian minister who was normally on the prowl for further converts on Sunday afternoons after he had such a poor attendance at his morning service.

Ergronia said, “I’ll get it.” And off she went to answer the door.

While Alvertos picked up and reopened his copy of the Jew of Malta, Ergronia approached their front door with the bell giving a second even louder chime. She opened the door to the university’s Vice Chancellor, a small man in stature but he held a high opinion of himself. Ergronia escorted him in to the parlour.

“It’s our Cockolorum, my dear, he wants a word about tomorrow’s meeting. I’ll put the kettle on and make some tea. Excuse me Vice Chancellor,” she said graciously as she backed herself out of the parlour and headed for the kitchen.

The professor rose from the sofa and asked the Vice Chancellor to take a seat, which he did in the aqua ornate green-blue upholstered Versailles armchair made from solid mahogany and finished with Gold Leaf. It was an heirloom left to Alvertos and Ergronia on their wedding day by Alvertos’s late great-aunt. Alvertos grunted as the Cockolorum sat down and thought what a Pismire!

That’s exactly what the Vice chancellor was, thought the professor, a small little man who looked like an ant who had a high opinion of himself.

Having plonked his minute frame in the priceless armchair the Vice Chancellor pulled out his pipe and without requesting if he could light up. Alvertos thought the Vice Chancellor should either have requested or gone outside to have his Lunt.

“Tomorrow is going be an ordeal Onesimus, the whole damm tribe will be there. Accountants, bankers, politicos, the bloody Minister for Education and that arsehole from the local constabulary what’s ’is name?”

“Chief Constable MacPherson, I think, he was in charge of the last royal visit we had about ten years ago.” Replied the professor refusing to put off by the Vice Chancellor’s use of his surname, Onesimus, which he hated, as he refused to accept his ancestors had any connection to an imprisoned slave who became a saint. He continued, “So you want me to support the arrangements you’ve made Sir?”

“Quite right! That’s exactly what I want you to do, we can’t let those outsiders get their bloody way. They’ll get us spending our entire years budget! And the damm girl’s only ninth or tenth in line to the throne! Waste of time and money if you ask me!”

“Yes sir, it does seem to be a rather farcical affair and you can be assured of my cooperation Vice Chancellor,” said Alvertos rising from the sofa and indicating that the discussion was over he guided the Vice chancellor to the parlour door just as Ergronia came in carrying a tray with tea and scones.

“Oh, Vice Chancellor, you must stay for tea, scones, home-made strawberry jam with inulin as a sweetener, Alvertos is on a diet so we eat and use a lot of Jerusalem Artichokes, and of course cream, so you can curmure at tomorrow’s meeting.”

Alvertos grinned as he acknowledged his wife’s desire to see the Vice chancellor break wind all through the meeting. The vision of a farting Vice Chancellor caused his grin to explode into a loud guffaw of raucous laughter.

The Vice Chancellor was disturbed by the almost doubled-up figure of the professor who was in joyous mirth with his wife’s joke, so he quickly made haste to the front door which Ergronia held open.

The Vice Chancellor made a fast retreat through the garden to the gate.

Ergronia turned to her husband and said, “I wish he’d become lethophobic so that his fear of oblivion swallows him up. Shall I get our Houppelanders from the wardrobe, so we can cloak-up and fly away from all these beef-witted, stupid students who spend ninety percent of their time during our lectures glued to their smart-phones and tablets and pay no attention to the knowledge we are trying to pass on?”

“Yes enough!” Alvertos replied, “a brilliant Excogigation! You have gorgonized me”

And they skidaddled back to their own dimensional universe with Alvertos completely mesmerized by his wife’s sagacity!

Fortune and The Company's Eyes

So, what now?

You’ve been informed about the acting electricians in the early days of The Market Theatre, I thought it was about time that I told a tale about some actors acting.

This is because of the reaction to my tale about the early days of the Company and the Market Theatre, so I’ve decided that I should take you into one of its old broom cupboards which was upstairs, where today you’d find the wardrobe department.

Back in 1976 it was an empty space that we rehearsed in for the production of “Fortune and Men’s Eyes” with the late Barney Simon, which was to be performed at the Nunnery, a small venue on the campus of Wits University.

The play was written by John Herbert in 1967 and explores a young man's experience in prison, delving into the themes of homosexuality and sexual slavery.

It was based in part by Herbert's own experience; he spent four months imprisoned in a youth reformatory after having been convicted of wearing drag in 1967. The character of Queenie in the play is an authorial self-insertion.

The title comes from Shakespeare’s sonnet 29, which begins with the line "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes".

The characters are “Rocky”, a juvenile delinquent who has been in prison before and knows the ropes, played by the late Bill Flynn. “Smitty”, a new inmate played by Paul Slabolepszy, “Mona”, a fragile possibly gay inmate who has been in for some time, played by Danny Keogh and the transvestite “Queenie”, played by myself. And a fifth character our warder played by Nigel Vermaas.

All were intricate deep characters and each of us knew we were about to embark on some seriously deep challenging work.

Barney was one of my favourite directors and he often said, “You’ve got to find it in yourself!”

His first mission was trying to get us four inmates of the prison to understand what confinement, in a small enclosed space, was really like; and how the feeling would affect our various characters.

To do this, he locked the four of us in the afore-mentioned small old broom cupboard sometimes for a whole day with a short break for a walk, a drink and a urination.

The cupboard had no window, the only visibility out was from the top of the cupboard door which had a slatted ventilation, if this was forced upward we could see the legs of the fifth character in the play, our warden, played by Nigel Vermass, and he was forced to sit outside, also for the whole day, so he could search his inner-self to discover why he was such a vindictive bastard.

One of the longer walls was bare, the other had four sturdy shelves, approximately one metre fifty in length and about forty centimetres in depth or width.

We were all young and fit so in no time at all Dannny Keogh, playing the frail inmate Mona, was soon lying precariously on his back on the topmost shelf, feeling he would get away from the torments that Rocky threw about.

Not to be outdone Bill, as Rocky, climbed onto the third shelf and helped the new inmate Smitty up onto the second.

I have always had an aversion to the smell of breaking wind and in the afternoon, seeing as we’d all eaten baked beans at our fifteen-minute lunch break, bought at the handy Spar market across the road at that time, I knew what was in store.


So, I took the concrete floor and used one of the four blankets Barney had given us. On the floor I could lie either on my back or propped up by an elbow on my side.


My A-level physics had taught me that hot air rises, and it sure did, everything I emitted, and that Paul and Bill released rose up to give poor Danny a torrid time. He complained bitterly and leapt down to breathe the clean air rolling in under the door. He even asked Nigel to get us some fresh air spray.

Of course, Nigel the warder, refused.

Our first stint in the cupboard was from nine thirty in the morning till four thirty in the afternoon, with two five-minute breaks for a drink, a pee, a walk, and a fifteen-minute break for lunch. After that first Monday of rehearsals we all kept our diets free from methane producing products.

Tuesday, we were placed in the cupboard again, same again Wednesday but we were released at five-thirty, Thursday, with an added half an hour and Friday, with another full hour added, but on Saturday morning we read the play! What a relief and all of us agreed that our confinement certainly helped and opened many new avenues for us to explore. Even Nigel, who has only ten or so lines in the piece, was twice as vicious and doubly mean.

On Sunday Barney asked me to pop round to his house. I knew what was coming. How on earth was I going to manage Queenie’s song “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, which he sings at the opening of the second act in full drag.


He gave me a recording of Bessie Smith doing the song. I had already told Barney that I was tone deaf, and I’d caused three singing teachers at RADA to seek Psychiatric help.


Barney immediately gave me a telephone number and said, “Call her, she’s expecting you to call, she definitely can help.”

I called the lady, Irene Frangs, as soon as I got back to my flat in Yeoville.

In the phone call it was arranged that I should pop by her house on Jan Smuts Avenue at three o’clock that Sunday afternoon. I immediately gave her the full run down about my aversion to singing and my inability to hold a tune; I even told how three teachers at RADA had not managed to be successful.

Irene seemed to not hear what I said and asked, “You’re British ja?” This coming from a very large red-haired lady with Greek ancestry was odd.

“Yes,” I replied.

“Recognise this?” as her fingers rippled across the grand piano with the opening chords of the “God save the Queen”.

“Call it an anthem to your character, So, come on belt it out!”

And I did. She helped me along and after we’d done it four times she asked, “Know any other songs?”

“Yep, I had to sing it in a play, The Cuban Missile Crisis, last year back in the UK, I did for Prospect Theatre Company; I played Lee Marvin and had to sing “I was born under a Wandering Star” same way as Lee did.”

The chords played out and off I went and even amazed myself. At the end Irene stood and applauded. “Right Cess, I won’t hear another word about being tone deaf and not being able to sing we’ll have you doing opera next week!” For the next four weeks I visited Irene twice weekly, on Sundays and in the afternoon on Wednesdays.

She adapted the song into Sprechgesang, so that I wouldn’t have to sing but rather speak, as I progressed I found myself naturally hitting the right notes and the dance routine I devised gave the whole drag act a very humourous sexual slant.

For those of you that don’t know the song I’ve downloaded a video of Bessie Lee singing and have given you the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZVD8QqNoak

The venue, The Nunnery was very small, but Barney designed a set with the help of Sarah Roberts who also designed the costumes, and selected my very own slinky Drag dress and high heels.

There was raked seating at each end of the oblong hall, in the central area they constructed a cell out of scaffolding; there was one metal door with a spy window through which Nigel could peer through and make sure his prisoners were behaving themselves.

This gave the sense of a very uncomfortable enclosed space. Four bunk beds were attached to the structure at different heights; they were also made of scaffolding with wooden boards and straw mattresses.

Seats for the audience were also available just under the lighting rig, here they sat on boards laid on the scaffolding with their legs dangling into the upper reaches of the cell.

It worked fantastically well, and one hundred and twenty-five patrons made a full-house; some members of the public made a second visit to see the play solely because they wanted to sit in the scaffolding.

We had five weeks of rehearsal working eight to ten hours each day including Saturdays. The get-in weekend was a frantic and hectic time. Mannie Manim designed the lighting, it was very difficult for him as he had to light from all sides of the venue and from above as well. This caused problems for us actors, as we had to constantly aware of casting shadows on each other.

The show received rave reviews from all the newspaper critics and my dragged rendition of “A good man is hard to find” received its own round of cheers and applause.

We played to full houses for six weeks, and if I remember correctly we had a two-week extension. There was talk, when it was discovered that The Nunnery had another production booked in, to find another venue.


Unfortunately, there was not another small venue available, and both Barney and Mannie knew that we would lose that special undefinable effect that The Nunnery had.

So, the production closed.

It hit the headlines again later in the year in all the Johannesburg newspapers, when Paul Slabolepszy won the best actor of the year, the production the best production award and Barney was nominated for the best director; he may even have won it, but my ageing grey matter’s hard drive can not retrieve the information.

Paul went on to even greater things and during the eighties till the present day he has become one of South Africa's playwrights winning numerous awards.

I can however give you the lyrics to Bessie Smith’s song and the text of Shakespeare’s sonnet 29.

A good man is hard to find,
You always get the other kind

A good man is hard to find,
You always get the other kind
Just when you think that he's your pal,
You look for him and find
Him fooling around some other gal
Then you rave,
You even pray,
To see him laying in his grave
So if your man is nice,
You better take my advice
Hug him in the morning,
Kiss him every night,
Give him plenty loving,
Treat him right
Cause a good man now day's is hard to find

So if your man is nice,
You better take my advice
And hug him in the morning,
Kiss him every night,
Give him plenty loving,
And treat him right
For a good man now day's is hard to find

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.






PS: Now you've read this post, I would like you to comment on it. Say what you really think please. If you read any of the previous tales the same applies. It will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Genisis

As I’ve often mentioned before, a jobbing actor always needs the companionship of a good book, a crossword or a Suduko puzzle to pass away the time he is hurrying up and waiting.

The choice of book rests with the individual.

I have always tended to towards Sci-Fi or a fast moving spy-thriller. Occasionally I have plunged into something deeper, like when I was in India. This was to get my mind completely away from the scenes of dismal poverty or sickening wealth that walked hand in hand from the marble polished hotel forecourts into the sewerage filled gutters, so I had a re-read of Milan Kundera’s “Imagination”.

His deep and memorable prose certainly made me think twice as I watched a woman squatting in a Mumbai tree on the main road from the airport doing her daily morning ablutions. This spectacular display occurred approximately one hour after our arrival in the sub-continent, and while we were engulfed by the oppressive humid heat of pre-monsoon India in a taxi.

At the very moment the woman’s falling faeces cascaded to the street below, I was reading what I thought was a very apt quote of Kunderas’;  “There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside time.” I wanted the sickening sight to be removed from my time zone!

Taken literally, modern physicists like Stephen Hawkins would say that this was an impossibility, or rather highly improbable, unless of course we plunged into his parallel and multiple universe theories.
This I’m not prepared or capable of doing so I’ll take you along the mundane route of my enlightened memories that caught fire in the depths of my cerebrum.

New sights of a gold-plated lift taking us to a penthouse abode quickly erased the image of the tree squatting woman and the roof top swimming pool surrounded by imitation grass made me realize that the local Indian film producer we were visiting would have a flushing loo.

However, Kundera’s  quote resurfaced in my grey matter about a week later as I stood up and hoisted up my trousers after I had deposited the contents of my Dehli-Belly in the Nilgri Hills’ tea plantation.

It was probably the very act of defecation and relieving my bursting bowels that brought back the memory of the lady in the Mumbai tree and hence Kundera’s quote; but this time the quote brought the word Genesis to the fore front of my brain, as the scenic surroundings reminded me of the mountain Kingdom of Lesotho and the riddle which Chief Mojaje had given me on the last evening of my five day trek.

“The answer’s in Genesis”, he had said and then continued, “Give me the name of the man who was born before his father, died before his father and was laid on his grandmother’s chest?”

We were almost half way through our drive through India and were in Mysore. At supper in the half-a-star hotel , Anthony, the director outlined our movements for the following day. He had to cash some his US dollar traveler’s cheques and then we would take a look at the Holi festival, before travelling onto Trivandrum. I’ve already described this in the story “Dehli Belly in the Nilgri Hills”, so I won’t repeat myself.

This meant that we would not be going to Goa, which I been told by a friend was the most beautiful area of India. The fused culture of the catholic Portuguese colonialists and the locals was apparently a fascinating combination.

Dr Hromik said we would see some evidence of this as we travelled through the southern Nilgris as the Portuguese influence had moved quite a distance into the interior.

So the day after witnessing the harrowing scene of the blood-letting at the Holi festival we climbed aboard our 4x4 and set off.

I take this opportunity to give a brief description of the state of the Indian roads.

You have to immediately understand that it is not only combustion engine vehicles that travel on these thoroughfares. Elephants, mules, donkeys, a few horse & traps, cattle, and pedestrians make use of the roads. It seems as if no particular vehicle or even pedestrian has primary use of the road and everything that is on the road takes its own time to get from A to B. This you can imagine results in slow moving traffic.

Not so.

The average maximum speed throughout the whole road system is approximately 45 to 50 miles per hour when you are on an open road. In towns and cities this slows down to a snail’s pace, and as none of the traffic lights are in working condition all junctions assume the status of a 4 way stop, with it seems the elephant always having the prime right-of-way, unless it is out-ranked by a cow.

As a first timer to India I was often shocked by how close a small car comes to hitting a huge truck head on. The cars like to weave around the slow moving rickshaws and trucks but this means they have to go on the wrong side of the road. After a while you get used to this insanity. If it’s too much for you don’t watch or close your eyes.

Never mind elephants, because of their massive bulk, commanding the right of way at intersections. Beware of cows! They are holy animals and it seems that the bovines are aware of this fact, and so they happily sit in the middle of the road forcing vehicles to drive around them. This can be alarming at times because around a blind corner you can stumble upon a gigantic bull without warning.

So, as tempting as it might be for those of you, who like the Hindu locals who believe in reincarnation, I advise you to never, drive in India yourself. The road rules and ways of the land are so different than the west that it is a recipe for disaster.

Our trip down the mountain range was filled with all of the above encounters.  Elephants laden with cotton bales with a youth the size of Tom-Thumb perched on the animal’s neck weaved its way past trucks, cars, and rickshaws.

We had almost completed our descent when Dr Hromik suggested that we stop in the tiny town of Tenkasi and see as he described it, “A combination of cultures”.

On the main street next to a tyre-changing establishment where eight and nine year old boys removed punctured tryes off their rims with the use of crowbars and their own body weight was a Catholic church. Right next to it was a Hindu shrine and, believe it or not, a Buddhist meeting hall.

While Dr Hromik, our director and his wife decided to enjoy the facilities on offer at the “Yard-of-Tea” establishment, which was next to the youngsters jumping up and down on their punctured tryes, I sauntered across the road to the Catholic Church.

Nothing about Catholicism is small or insignificant; usually their places of worship are huge, towering Cathedrals with bells that summon their congregations from the surrounding countryside, so this church was unique. It was minute.

A small chapel I think would be an adequate description. Neatly aligned fold up chairs for the congregation and a tiled aisle leading to the small altar. I wandered down the aisle and was suddenly aware of nother presence in the church; I turned around and saw what can only be described as Humpty-Dumpty sitting in a chair next to the front entrance.

“Can I be helping you?” enquired Humpty.

“Perhaps, I was just looking.” I replied wandering back to the robed entity.

As I approached I saw that he was not robed in the normal Catholic attire but a wrap around toga, all in white with a crimson band round his large waist. He was completely bald.

“I’m a Bhikkhu”, he said as he rose to greet me.

“A Bikku?”

He explained, “A Buddhist monk.”

“In a Catholic Church?”

He smiled, “Each to his own.” He replied. “I often sit in here to mediate.”

“Instead of your place next door?”

He smiled again, “It helps me understand.”

“Understand what?”

“Being.”

My God I thought. This is going to be deep. “You are delving into your confusion, right?”

Damm right I was!

He laughed and put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You like a cup of tea?”

We exited the church and crossed the road to my companions who were watching their “Yard-of-tea” being made.

To describe this process is tedious so I think a picture should suffice. The “yard” is the distance which the tea is poured from its brewing chamber to its receiving cup. This movement is said to make the tea smoother, mixes in the milk and sugar, and creates the exact temperature at which it should be consumed. It is a theatrical event and it was fascinating to watch the brewer make each cup individually for his now five customers.

I introduced my new companion to Dr Hromik, Anthony and his wife. Our ensuing conversation was remarkable as it seemed to touch and encompass every thread of enquiry known to man. Politics and religion were the leaders, closely followed by cricket, and then we entered into Dr Hromik’s realm of travelling Dravidian Indians way back in 8000BC and the reason for our visit to India.

The monk, was very interested in this and said, “The paths are wide and the roads are dusty.”

It took a while for this to sink in and it was only at the end of our tea drinking sojourn that I gave him the reason I’d visited the Catholic Church, Chief Mojae’s riddle, “Give me the name of the man who was born before his father, died before his father and was buried in his grandmother’s chest.”

He smiled and said, “It’s an understanding of being born. That will give you the answer, it’s in Genesis.”

That night in my Trivandrum hostel room I sat in bed reading the bible, a reader’s digest condensed version that was in my bedside locker and it suddenly hit me.

The answer was Abel. He was born before his father, as his father wasn’t born BUT created from the earth by God. And he was slain by Cain his brother before his farther’s death and he was buried in the earth, his grandmother.

 

God bless Buddhist monks!

Dehli Belly in The Nilgri Hills

The Nilgri Hills

During my illustrious career I have been involved in the making of several documentaries as a presenter, a writer, a voice over artist and even at one time a producer.

This involvement has taken me to several foreign climes, in including Australia, Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and India. The latter is the country which is home to the Nilgri Hills, a mountain range that crosses the centre of the sub continent. The range of mountains form a
part of the Western Ghats situated in the western part of Tamil Nadu state.

It is on this range of hills that the Jack fruit grows. This is a remarkable fruit as it is the only fruit that grows directly from the trunk of the tree and not from the branches. It grows to a great size,
some a long as four feet with a girth almost as large.

In the Hindu religion it is held to be food for the Gods.

The reasons for this are threefold. To start with it is not easily accessible; secondly it is covered by very small spikes that are poisonous to touch. Although not fatal they give a nasty prick that
causes a rash on the finger.

It is for this reason that the collectors of this gigantic fruit and those that dissect it to get to the very tasty edible part, coat their hands in cooking oil. This coating gives protection from the spikes also from the gelatinous substance that surrounds the absolutely delicious inner kernel. The flavor is comparable to a combination of apple, pineapple, mango, and banana.

The Jack Fruit

Tea Pickers in The Nilgri Hills

The third reason for the protective oil coating is the gelatinous substance is like super glue when you touch it, and a visit to a local clinic is necessary to part your glued together fingers.

I mention this exotic fruit to give you an idea of the unusual fodder that crossed my lips while on this particular assignment.

I was in India travelling by road from Bombay, or Mumbai as it is now called, filming a doccie called “Behind the African Mask”. We travelled from Mumbai to the southern most tip of the sub-continent ending at the town of Trivandrum.

The premise of this documentary was exploring the theory of a Dr Cyril Hromnik who believes that Dravidian Indians crossed over the Indian Ocean as far back as 8000 BC to mine gold in Southern Africa.

This Cape Town based historian Dr Cyril Hromnik has produced a vast body of research. He paints a compelling picture of an ancient settlement of gold miners in the Eastern Transvaal and Swaziland with roots that go back to the early Dravidian seafarers who had expert navigation skills and a lust for African gold.

So the documentary attempted to answer the question; did ancient Dravidian Seafarers establish the first gold mines in Southern Africa?

Also grown of the lower slope of the Nilgri Hills is tea. Nilgiri tea is generally described as being a dark, intensely aromatic, fragrant and flavoured tea and is grown in the district of Tamil Nadu.

It was whilst I was trekking up the slopes amongst this aromatic tea that I had my first rear end explosion.

It was a low-budget production. The producer stroke writer, director and camera operator, his wife as coordinator and general dogs-body, Dr Hromnik and myself as the on screen presenter and  carrier of what else was needed, made up our full crew.

We had a hired a driver four our four wheel drive jeep as driving in India is a nightmare for anybody brought up in the western world. The driver Habba was also our interpreter and our go-between when any bribes had to be negotiated for entrance to certain historical sites.

We were on a climb through the terraced tea plantation to see an ancient dolmen, also known as a cromlech, a portal tomb or a quoit. I suppose it’s a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb.

All these strange words entered my vocabulary while I was on this shoot. I had already been made familiar with the Yoni stone and the Shivaling or Lingam, which are representations of the male phallus and the female vulva.

In Hindu philosophy the Yoni is the origin of life and an abstract creative force that moves through the entire universe, so during the climb Dr Hromnik had said we were going to see the most enormous Yoni very close to the Dolmen.

To this day I still do not know that the thought of seeing a giant Vulva or Vagina set my bowels in motion, or if it was the curried paste of the Jack fruit I had eaten the previous evening, but set in motion they were.

I quickly had to remember all the advice I’d read in Kathleen Meyer ‘s humourous , environmentally sound and explicit book entitled “How to shit in the woods”.

I borrowed a small trowel from our director, which he’d brought along for leveling the ground for his camera, and dug Kathleen’s suggested six inch hole while I squatted, hidden from the tea picking ladies, between two lines of tea bushes.

The relief was gratifying and as I strode effortlessly on an empty fuel tank up the hill to catch up with the rest of the crew, I wondered how my six inch buried semi-liquid donation would affect the aroma of the Nilgri Tea picked from the nearby bushes.

The Yoni was enormous and the dolmen was as it should be, two vertical stones with a large slab stone lain across the top. Dr Hromnik had dragged us all the way on this four hour climb to see something that we had already seen many times on our travels in the Eastern Transvaal of
Southern Africa, in Zimbawe, and in Swaziland.

His point was that he wanted to show us how the construction of this particular Dolmen and it’s orientation toward the setting sun was very similar to the ones we’d seen in Africa.

Down the hill we trekked back to our waiting vehicle and driver, who told us we had still another four hours drive till we reached our overnight stop-over in the city of Mysore.

We were visiting this city for two reasons.

Firstly our director had to cash in some dollar traveler’s cheques and we were going to see the Holi festivities in the city.

In Hinduism, Holi also called Holaka or Phagwa is an annual festival celebrated on the day after the full moon in the Hindu month of March or Phalguna, as it is known in the local tongue. It celebrates spring, commemorates various events in Hindu mythology and is a time of disregarding social norms and indulging in general merrymaking.

The central ritual of Holi is the throwing and applying of coloured water and powders on friends and family, which gives the holiday its common name "Festival of Colors."

The ritual is said to be based on a story of Krishna and Radha, when Krishna playfully splashes maids with water, but most of all it celebrates the coming of spring with all its beautiful colours and vibrant life.

Dr Hromnik said that similar festivities were also conducted by the Nguni tribes of Southern Africa, thus adding more credence to his theory that The Dravidian Indians had crossed to Africa and left some of their culture.

The following morning after spending over four hours exchanging dockets for wooden discs and then pieces of paper with hand-written instructions and signatures on them, our director finally got his hands on almost a small suitcase of Indian Rupees.

The Indian banking system is archaic and adheres to Nehru’s political doctrine of every man
having a job no mater how menial it may be.

In our hotel too this was highly evident. If I lit up a cigarette, immediately a man would appear with an ashtray. I’d drop my ash into it. Again immediately a boy would rush up and scoop the ash into a bucket. Then another boy would appear from nowhere and take the bucket across the room and empty the contents into a dust bin. Then suddenly I’d be surrounded by two boys and a man with their hands open expecting payment of a few Rupees for disposing of my tobacco ash.

Back in the bustling city, we then weaved and threaded our way through the throngs of people who were in the city for the festival. We were heading for the river where most of the “splashing” would take place.

It is estimated that over 4.5 million people come to Mysore for the Holi festival that lasts for four days. It is amazing to think that we Westerners believe we’re in a crowd at a Rolling Stone’s concert that has sixty thousand people crammed into a stadium and here we were watching close on one hundred and twenty thousand people splash around in the Kabani River.

Negotiating our way through the crowded streets was like moving through a tin of sardines, sweat, splashing water and coloured powders engulfed us and only once or twice would the crowds thin out. This was usually when a “Bloodletting” ceremony was in progress. To my eyes this event was horrific.

In a small clearing we came across a mother, son and father. The young boy was being held by his mother who was deep in a self induced trance. 

The father slowly circled the boy whose right arm was out stretched and tied tightly with a coloured silk scarf above his elbow. The father increased the rhythm of the mantra and moved in closer to his son, suddenly with a downward movement of his hand the cut-throat-razor he carried sliced into the boy’s lower arm. The mother broke her trance and held an enamel cup below the gushing blood.

We could watch no more and squeezed our way back into the thronging mass of people.

We later learnt from Habba that this practice still occurs throughout the country, particularly amongst the Shi’a Muslim community, the practitioners believing that they are ridding the victim of impure blood.

It’s called “Ashura” and is one of several ceremonies marking the death of the Prophet Mohammad's grandson Imam Hussein at the 7th century battle of Kerbala.

That night we stayed in a hotel, the one and only hotel apart from our first night in Mumbai. The budget was restrictive and most of our stops where at hostels that catered for the trade representatives that roamed the country trying to sell their merchandise, These hostels certainly
would not rate a semi-colon let alone a star.

Washing facilities were an enamel bowl and a rather unclean looking face cloth. Latrines were long drops outside, few were a little up-market as they were pig-cleaned. That means a ravenous pig quickly consumed your droppings.

Early the next morning we set of on the final leg of our journey, a drive through the rest of the Western Ghats mountain range and onto the town of Trivandrum.

My bowels were still not in a stable mood although I’d taken some Imodium tablets so I had to request several stops at what I was told were public toilets.

Fortunately we’d learnt to keep several rolls of loo paper in the vehicle as there was never any at these latrines.

All were of the “Stand or Squat” variety and all had a supply of tap water. I was told that this was for the washing of one’s hands, particularly your left hand, as this was the one you should wipe your arse with.
 

I only believed this when I noticed that all the locals, left or right handed, ate their food with the fingers of their right hand.

When I landed back at what was called Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg the first thing I did was rush to the ablution facility and give the attendant a twenty Rand tip after I’d finished using the first flushing Thomas Crapper I’d used for three weeks.

I wish you continued happy bowel movements & use of the loo.

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