A Fresh Anglo Indian Memory

Dan Mullagathanny noticed how many members of his community - the Anglo Indians - often said, they would do anything to go back to the times when they danced to Cliff Richard songs at railway clubs.

They were people who often reminisced of times gone by. Those who didn't know how to reminisce just looked back:

To the days when their English was as perfect as their hockey, which was as perfect as their train schedules, which was as perfectly outfitted as the terry cotton frock with large flowers on it that a girl wore to Sunday church, which was as perfect as the coconut rice and ball curry they gathered to eat later that Sunday afternoon, and then slept till six in the evening, after which, they’d go for a ‘small touch up’ so they could sleep the night off and get up early the next day for a perfect start to the week ahead of teaching English at school, or driving a goods train.

And though Cliff himself spent his entire life hiding his Anglo Indian identity, Anglos were happy to spend their entire memories being proud he was one of them.

They’d be willing to give away part of that coconut rice and ball curry now, just to hear their aunts scream, “I’ll slipper you with my broom.” Nobody in the world knew how to slipper someone with a broom, except a dear ol’ Anglo Indian aunty.

Dan eased in a little closer to catch a conversation he knew was coming to an end.

“And listen bugger, the high heels had the best blinking legs above them, if they were Anglo legs. They rose close to three feet high from those shoes, and were gone beneath the hem, fuckin none of us knew where.”

“You can say that again.”

“But what, nobody else was showing legs in India then, so our legs went uncontested.”

“Ya bugger, many of them had a pretty upturned nose. Of course, since they had fair legs falling gracefully down below the skirt, swishing like fuckin scissors, many turned up their noses.”

“Lucky buggers, you. I couldn’t get a look at the legs on the dance floor - I had to watch for the chords I was playing.”

“Be grateful bra, many an Anglo boy got cut by those blessed scissors.”

“And what’s this “Ooops Moment” girls have at parties these days? Our girls would have wun slip below their dresses, you remember? You wanna see any ooops, you get married first.”

Dan was amused. "How much of life or conversation among dings is nostalgia. If they just hang in there,” he thought, “every few years they could have a fresh stock of fond memories:

Of days when, no sooner they logged onto Facebook than they would read the naughty jokes shared by other dings.

Or join a full blown bitching session about someone who wasn’t even a pucca ding, rather some pariah pretending to be Indian of European Descent. “My big toe, he’s Anglo.”

Or to a certain Ashley Knife, how one ding member remarked, “Bra, your knife gone blunt.”

About one bloke, Desmond Macedo, who used to post humour stories that nobody read, and how they laughed their guts out because,“You can’t jive to that bugger’s stories.”

And, “What fun, every now and then somebody formed a new Anglo Indian Group on Facebook because we dings don’t know how to be polite with each other, especially in a public forum like FB; we’d scrap with the Administrator and our comments would get blocked.”

"What the dickens is a public forum?"

“Remember that group, Anglos United? It soon ran into trouble, and one bugger, trying to take advantage of the gap, opened another group called, Anglos ReUnited. What a farce.”

“What fun it used to be then. Beef was only 100 bucks a kilo. Now it is what mutton used to be. 350.”

Dan Mullagathanny smiled: “For people like us, always living in the past, we just have to wait a while till the future passes by, then enjoy it after it’s gone.”