Written in the Wind

By Thunkoomar Bhayro

Written in the wind, a revised version of the book published in Europe in 2013, ISBN 978 - 1 - 291 - 49267 - 5, under the title of The Life and Times Of a Mauritian Expatriate is about a study of life wrapped around the story of man and his surroundings - his past, his present and his future.
It uses as a vehicle the life of one individual to explore issues, concepts, phenomena and life-events like birth, youth, old age, retirement and death, slavery, the sega dance, indentureship, the Hindu marriage and festivals, the mind, consciousness, awakening and self realisation, dreams, outer space and the bottom of the oceans, the vulnerability of the planet earth and the fickle nature of man, depicting Mauritian life of yesteryears - the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the melting pot of the cross-cultural mix of Europe, Asia and Africa that is Mauritius - and its fast changing nature.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Dec 29, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504994736

Thunkoomar Bhayro

T. Bhayro was born in Camp Malgache, Floreal, Mauritius and educated at Highlands C/E aided school in Mesnil and Presidency College in Curepipe. He emigrated to the UK in the mid-sixties and pursued an extensive career in nursing, squeezing an Hons degree in psychology along the way. He has a daughter, a son and two grandchildren and lives in the sleepy little village of Dennington in Suffolk.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

M auritius, the glossy holiday brochure had said…. a far-away island…. in the sun…. surrounded by the world’s warmest seas… miles of soft, white, sandy beaches…. unspoiled countryside…. friendly, colourful people…. top quality accommodation…. exquisite, exotic food…. full of cultural events…. inspirational…. has everything for a holiday of a lifetime…. a kingdom for leisure and pleasure…. an earthly paradise…. refreshing, invigorating, relaxing, exciting…. what dreams are made of…. magical

Magical, the old man had thought with longing in his heart. Magical! He’d sat back and watched as the bleak winter squalls had whipped the icy rain through the naked branches of the shrubbery, washing away the last vestiges of frost from the night before, sending a shiver down his spine. The British winter can be so demoralizing, he mumbled to himself, feeling the stiffness in his joints, it numbs the brain and dampens the spirits. He’d been away so long he’d practically forgotten what it was like to feel the Mauritian sunshine upon his skin. He’d savoured the thought for a moment, a myriad of pictures flashing through his mind. It would lift his spirits no end….just one last trip…. to paradise.

The brochure could well have said that it was a land sheltered from the worst scourges of the world – war, famine, poverty, ever-bulging refugee camps, widespread social unrest, terrorism, riots, murders, rape, muggings, child abuse, high unemployment, racial discrimination, economic uncertainties and collapse, chemical, nuclear and other forms of pollution and more – much more. It was certainly free from the mindless moronic attacks on the old, the weak, and the vulnerable – one of the reasons for his self-imposed isolation of late.

It would certainly be nice if he could be teleported over without the upheaval of a relocation. He’d moved house too many times to be only too well aware of that.

He found himself taking stock of his life. He seemed to have spent most of it either acting it out or drifting with the current and bending with the breeze. Meanwhile, father time had pressed on – relentless. The older he’d got, the faster time had travelled. If ever he was to consider going back it had to be now. He would certainly do well to be out of the rat race, away from a consumer society gone stark raving mad, where people’s needs and wants were confused and mandatory wastefulness, whether corporate or individual, was considered a virtue and the widespread solipsism - practices that somehow had had an insidious dehumanising effect on the population - away from a land with debilitating permanent winter flu and summer colds and coughs, and catarrhs, building roads blocks around one’s nasal passages making food taste like cardboard, resulting in sore throats that made swallowing feels like one was swallowing razor blades. He would certainly not be any worse off.

* * * * *

It was dark when they’d taken off from London’s Heathrow airport. As the giant Boeing 767 had reached for the skies the old man had craned his neck to have one last look at the land that had been his home for over half a century and, to his mind, he was unlikely to see again. A sudden chill had hit him with this realisation. A billion dazzling diamonds and precious stones had winked back at him from a land that somehow had seemed less appealing from down below. He’d seen picture postcards of London-by-night- from-the-air but this was something else. For a brief moment, watching the headlights of vehicles moving along the patchworks of highways and byways crisscrossing the landscape, he’d wondered about the people down there, just as he’d often wondered about life on the airplanes when he’d watched them from the ground.

He’d been brought back to reality when suddenly parts of the giant beast had started to shake as if independently of each other as it had ploughed through thick banks of clouds. Once through, they had been treated to the most amazing display of every conceivable shade of red on the horizon. Below, a stormy, rough sea of clouds churned soundlessly. The plane had banked sharply and they had been swallowed up by the night.

* * * * *

The unintelligible metallic intonation over the aircraft’s intercom had woken him up. It had taken a little while for him to get his bearings, trying hard to shake off the cobwebs of sleep from his head and the fog shrouding his thoughts. Because of the poor quality of the acoustic system and his state of drowsiness he’d only caught snippets of the information…. estimated time of arrival approximately a half hour…. weather forecast dry, sunny and warm.

He’d buried himself deeper into his seat, shuffling a little. His body ached from sitting in the same position for over twelve hours and from the months of running around, packing and clearing out the house, getting it ready for the new occupants. He’d wanted dearly to close his eyes for a little while longer and sleep…. sleep.

Isolated pockets of murmurs had joined the monotonous, even drone of the massive jet engines, sporadic lights coming on here and there. Slowly all around him was coming to life, like a stage play, at first, in subdued animation. The trickle of activity down the aisle had grown into a steady stream.

A glorious blaze of pink and purple sitting atop the starboard wing had greeted him when he’d finally opened his eyes. Down below, the sea lay shrouded in the dark grey of the impending dawn. Occasionally the aircraft ploughed through what looked like massive balls of cotton wool. The tone of the engines had changed to a more whining hiss as the plane had started on its downward glide.

The first rays of the sun would hit them at any moment now. It would be hot at the airport, not warm. They’d be coming in from the south west, over the Morne Peninsula with the giant rock standing stark and proud and the sea rough and menacing. A little while later the whirring sound of an engine had announced the lowering of the undercarriage as it had started on its downward journey followed by a resounding clunk and a thud as it had locked itself into place.It would be some hours yet before he’d reach his final destination. That would be when the jet lag would hit him. He became vaguely conscious that the Mauritius he would be coming to would be vastly different from the one he’d left behind.

There is something magical about the sight of an island on the horizon, he’d thought, as the familiar shape of the island, ringed by a necklace of dazzling pure white sand and turquoise lagoons had appeared in the distance, bathed in bright sunshine, surrounded by the deep blue of the ocean. A second garland, slightly more uneven, had marked the position of the unbroken coral reef.

It had looked like an island in the sky.

CHAPTER ONE

T he old man sat, as he has done for some months now, in his battered old rocking chair, occasionally rocking gently, imperceptibly, unconsciously and watched, for the umpteenth time, the bright orange disc that was the warm tropical sun only a couple of hours ago, disappear below the dead straight line of the horizon. The sea itself was calm, dead calm, like a sheet of glass, as it often was at this time of the evening during this time of the year.

Some things never change, he murmured to himself, as he felt the first pangs of gentle melancholia wash over him, like the gentle breeze that blew the evening chill into his bones. Eventide did that to him. He was all too familiar with the morose feeling that invaded and overwhelmed his whole being at this hour of the day. It was an old friend, and although painful, he welcomed it. In fact, it seemed that he prepared himself for it and came out to greet it, out of sheer habit built up over a period of time and he would have felt cheated if, for some reason, it did not happen. It was like watching a favourite movie which was very sad but which, at the same time, one could not help watching.

It had taken only twenty seconds for the sun to slide into its watery grave from the time it touched water. Dusk had come and gone almost without warning. Soon it will be bedtime but sleep won’t come easily. Time enough to sleep when you’re dead, he muttered, and you are a long time dead. He often talked to himself and at times even answered himself back. He would sit here a little longer, he thought, as he’d been doing every evening. The night air did not help the pain in his arthritic joints, a legacy of the many long years spent in the cold, damp British climes, but he would not seek extra protection. It was as if he wanted the pain, perhaps because it was familiar, a trusted friend that would not fail to show itself at the appointed hour. It all formed part of his whole mental frame, and he almost enjoyed it. It complemented his state of deep melancholia.

As he sat there he became aware of an uncharacteristic feeling of emptiness and loneliness enveloping him. He’d always thought of himself as a self sufficient and contented man, although somewhat set in his ways, albeit in an anachronistic way. He had been content to let the world pass him by, careful not to intrude on anybody, not wanting his existence to interfere with others. And now this feeling of unease. It wasn’t that he was concerned about his life or his future. He’d given up worrying about those a long time ago.

He’d been through this before and had always managed to shake the feeling off and carried on. But this was something else. With the dawning of this realisation he also became aware that he now felt low, unusually low, in mood, and yet this had a familiar feeling to it. Would it be, could it be, his very old friend from his childhood days – his renowned self- pity – that was resurfacing?

The backward and forward rocking of the chair gradually ceased. He felt a sudden rush of palpitation, with his heart thumping, fast and irregular, the blood vessels in his neck pounding and a familiar sunken feeling on the underside of his diaphragm. Slowly he turned on to his left side, drew up his knees and slipped both hands, flattened against each other in an inverted pyramid shape, between his knees. Curled up in such an ungainly fashion he laid there. A teardrop detached itself, trickled down the side of his nose and onto his withered lips. He wondered how many more times he would have to taste the saltiness of his own tears before he shed his last…. and he wondered… and then he knew that he had not come here to live happily in retirement. No, he’d come back home – no, to the place of his birth, for the final chapter of his life to be written – to die.

He could not call it home. Who knows where home was? He did not seem to belong anywhere, not here nor anywhere else in the world, for that matter. Waves of emotions suddenly began to rise from the pit of his stomach, a tingling sensation travelling up and down the surface of his body, ending up with tears welling up and spilling down his wizened cheeks. His breathing, already laboured, gathered momentum until his whole body started to jerk in spasmodic, open and unashamed sobbing, the pitch blackness of the sub-tropical night, a fellow conspirator, hiding his secret from the world. In the courtyard, the cicadas, belying their inch-long size, filled the air with their piercing whines, carrying with them an uncanny ventriloquistic effect.

Out on the ocean white horses, barely discernible, rode the crest of the waves over the coral reef, following the coastline until they melted into nothingness. Somewhere in the distance a dog, disturbed in slumber by some intruder, barked ferociously, starting a chain reaction, an army of mongrels following suit, the ailing howling continuing along the coastline in the dead of the night. Way up above Aurora Australis kept silent vigil, saddened by the whole melancholic scene.

Gradually, over time, inhaling deeply and exhaling long and hard he settled down, totally spent; emotionally bankrupt, a miserable, wretched soul, pitiful to behold. He felt alone, insecure and vulnerable. It was the first time that he’d experienced feelings of such depth in a long, long time. Age did not seem to have dulled his emotions any. On the contrary, they seemed to be deeper, clearer and sharper at that moment than ever before. Curiously though, he could now consciously analyse his feelings in a cold, clinical and detached manner, as if he was a spectator to his own responses.

CHAPTER TWO

H e fell back on the bed, dazed and enfeebled, spent in body, mind and spirit. The events of the last few days were none too clear. Nights had merged into days and days into nights, the dividing line between nightmares and reality gradually had all but disappeared, living as he had been, in a twilight kind of a world, skirting the edges of consciousness, with dense fog shrouding his thoughts. He remembered vaguely waking up and going to the bathroom and drinking from the tap. He also remembered falling…. falling…. till he’d remembered no more. Then there had been the pain - in his head, a searing, crucifying torture, relieved only when he’d drifted into the merciful abyss of insensibility.

Once or twice he’d emerged from the pit of the black trance-like stupor and momentarily touched the surface of consciousness only to slide back into total darkness again. Desperately, each time he’d tried to hold on to those ephemeral moments of awareness, to banish the penumbral shadows in his head but his mind, like his body, had been in the last stages of exhaustion, held in leaden thrall. Even as he had known that he was slipping back into the blackness, losing his grip on reality, the knowledge was gone and there’d been only the void again. Once, during one of his more lucid moments, he thought he was having nightmares and that if he could only open his eyes the horrors would be gone, but his eyes had remained tightly shut.

The hours and days seemed to have been plucked from the darkest nightmares, endless numbing moments of stumbling and tripping and falling, of pain and thirst, of shivering and sweating. It had gone on and on, for ever and ever…. in and out of this fugue state. His mouth seemed to have developed a thick, unsavoury coating. And that peculiar taste, as vague as it had been evanescent, and yet it bore a certain hint of familiarity

CHAPTER THREE

T he morning sun was riding high in the sky. His eyes followed a bright golden slanted beam of light from the rising sun, stabbing like a long sword from a chink in the curtain, displaying minute particles of almost invisible dust in the atmosphere, right across the bed and onto the floor, and there they came to rest. He could not believe what confronted him. Overturned chairs and other pieces of furniture, items of toiletries, books, kitchen utensils, deck chairs, fishing tackles, golfing equipment and other bits and pieces littered the entire floor. Others had found their way into his bed.

The bed was totally dishevelled, the mattress hanging half off and the bedclothes more off than on. It seemed like he’d been fighting off a legion of demons. What could have driven him to that kind of behaviour? He tried not to think about what would have happened had he gone through the French windows and over the balcony. Had he lost his grip on his sanity? His blood ran cold when he realised that he had hardly been aware of any of it. Perhaps it was more merciful that way.

He was also coughing copiously.

He reached up above the headboard for the only item in the room that did not seem to have been disturbed – a picture frame, about twelve by eight inches in size, showing a set of foot prints on a sandy beach with the sun setting on the far horizon. Fishing out his glasses from the bedside cabinet drawer, he glanced at the text even though he knew it by heart. It read:

One night a man had a dream.

He dreamed he was walking along the beach with the Lord.

Across the sky flashed scenes from his life.

For each scene he noticed two sets of footprints in the sand, one belonging to him, the other to the Lord.

When the last scene of his life flashed before him, he looked back at the footprints in the sand. He noticed that many times along the path of his life there was only one set of footprints. He also noticed that it happened at the very lowest and saddest times in his life.

This really bothered him and he questioned the Lord about it.

Lord, you said that once I decided to follow you, you’d walk with me all the way. But I have noticed that during the most troublesome times in my life there is only one set of footprints. I don’t understand why when I needed you the most you would leave me.

The Lord replied: My precious, precious child, I love you and would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering when you saw only one set of foot prints, it was then that I carried you.

The old man knew that there had only been one set of foot prints on his last stretch of sand as pools of bitter tears welled up and overflowed, forming rivulets which seeped into his pillow. His hands fell to his chest, still clutching at the picture frame and before he knew it, he was halfway through reciting Our Father, who art in heaven…. He’d gone right through the prayer three times before he realised what he was doing. He also realised that he had not wavered or stopped to ponder, as he‘d always done, when he’d reached: And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. He’d always had a problem with the second part of that line. He’d always had to stop to check to see whether he’d forgotten to forgive somebody or other.

He remembered someone once saying that the Lord’s prayer were the words of Christ Himself to God the Father and that they should not be embellished by having bits either taken away or added to them. As a result he’d concentrated doubly hard on them ever since. It was only when he was in desperate trouble that he resorted to desperate recitation, and he was troubled now – all the way down to his soul.

He also remembered what that peculiar taste in his mouth was. Once, a long time ago, he’d had cause to take some Valium, a sedative, to help him through another troubled time and the after-taste was etched deep in his memory. Now he could taste it again. He knew that he had not taken any kind of medication. There was no Valium in the house. It was his body’s reaction to trauma, its own defence mechanism, the breakdown of its own chemicals that had produced the taste. Going into the kitchen he drank, long and deep, from the tap, coughing and spluttering in the process.

A while later, he dressed himself, after a fashion, and stepping outside, pulled the front door behind him.

CHAPTER FOUR

T he winter rain, so typical of the high altitude region surrounding Curepipe, in the district of Plaines Wilhems, was coming down in horizontal sheets as he steered the old car up the steep incline. In a couple of minutes, he would be negotiating the sharp S bend that would eventually take him onto the road that encircled the extinct volcano. If anywhere could be called home, then Trou-aux-Cerfs would be it. He was born here, just about four hundred yards on the lee of the crater.

To his right, the terrain fell away and, through the driving rain, he could see myriads of rooftops where once wild gladioli grew so freely under the constant battering of the wind. Beyond, rain-swept Curepipe lay sprawled as far as the eye could see. To his left the high concrete wall, which ran part way along the length of the straight stretch of the road, provided privacy to the Zildoires’ family dwellings. They had been there for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t help wondering whether the old house, not visible from the road, was still there and about the family who always showered kindness onto him ever since he was barely out of swaddling clothes.

He drove slowly, dazed and much weakened by the recent events, avoiding pot holes and the ditch that ran between him and the wall, past the grotto that housed the Virgin Mary and child built into the wall. A solitary candle burnt within the confines of its glass protection. The concrete wall gave way to a thick, high bamboo hedge, rendered hardy by the constant wind, rain and sun. Then he was nearing the top. The rain was now teeming down in blankets which were sent swirling into the gathering wind. He slowed right down to take the U-bend even though the road was quite wide at this point. He kept the old car in low gears until he’d negotiated the bend and climbed all the way to the top and joined the road that ran around the crater in an almost perfect circle. Up here the pine forest in front and to the left of him and the crater to the right lay shrouded in a fine mist. For the old man Trou-aux-cerfs had always had a feel and a smell all of its very own.

In the distance, through patchy visibility he could discern woodlands as far as the mist allowed him to see. He knew that the high electricity pylons at La Marie and the vast expanse of clear water of Mare-aux-Vacoas lay somewhere to his left and Grand Bassin further on towards the south.

The undulating road took him past a small crater, barely a hundred feet deep, on his left. There did not seem to be any way in or out of the structure with its concrete inner walls. He never did find out what purpose it had served when it was built, if any at all. The road dipped for a hundred yards or so, travelling clockwise, and when it levelled out a huge white concrete building, the size of a block of flats five storeys high, with a huge dome perched precariously atop, loomed up in front of him. This monstrosity, a carbuncle on a beauty spot which had epitomised the essence of countryside preservation, bore all the hallmarks of being abandoned and seemed to be striving unsuccessfully to fit in with the spirit of the place. Another dip and a further couple of hundred yards brought him to the kiosk on his right with its aqua green top and cream coloured knee-high walls. The car slowed down and eventually seemed to come to a stop of its own volition.

It wasn’t any great surprise for him to find himself beside the old kiosk. He couldn’t remember ever driving by without stopping here and walking over to the edge of the crater to look down past the old gum tree a hundred feet down the slope, to the glimmering, shimmering pool of water down at the bottom. Anybody wandering around at the water’s edge looked like ants from up here. There had been many a time when the little lake down at the bottom had dried up when he was a young child. In his youth they’d tried throwing stones from the top to see if they would reach the water at the bottom but nobody ever even got close. He’d often wondered how deep and wide the crater was, and had always marvelled at its perfect symmetry, created as it was, like a funnel. A mile across and a mile deep, someone had told him once.

He felt weak and inexorably tired. Through a daze he heard the click-click-click of the handbrake as the lever came up. A twinge of nausea was rising in his stomach, the burning sensation creeping up his oesophagus precipitating a coughing fit, starting his already fragile head thumping again. He waited for the spasms to die down and, taking in great gulps of air through his mouth, succeeded in controlling his breathing. In time he settled down, breathing easily through his nose, resting back, head wedged between the windscreen and the headrest. He laid there for a long time, the howling of the wind proving too strong over the combined efforts of his noisy breathing, the purring of the engine and the toing and froing motion of the windscreen wipers locked into the intermittent mode.

Smidgeons of the events of the last few days kept popping up into his head. None, however, was either very clear or very ordered. He slumped forward over the steering wheel as a new wave of coughing threatened to engulf him. Breathing through clenched, yellow-filmed teeth he sucked in great gulps of air, years of clogged sinuses and chronic catarrh making breathing through his nose impossible, trying to stave off the paroxysm that threatened to choke him, to drown him in his own sputum.

When it came it was barn-storming, the all-consuming and endless, lengthy spasms and rasping wheezes shaking him violently and continuously until in the end each cough was just a silent excruciating abdominal spasm with less and less intensity until there was no more breath left to exhale. His breathing ceased altogether, got stuck in his throat. He could neither inhale nor exhale. A complete blackness engulfed him. There was a tremendous pounding in his temples. His head shook from side to side. He panicked. He tried to call out but the stillborn words never left his larynx. His head was shaking more violently now. Then with one more cough through tightly clenched teeth, bearing down hard on his stomach muscles, his airway relaxed allowing life-giving air to rush in.

He drank, great gulps of it, his pounding heart hammering against his chest wall, engorged jugulars fit to burst, his body a pain-wracked heap. Hands pressing hard against his ribs, trying hard to deflect yet another onslaught on his already aching sides he started to cough again, surrendering to the sharp stabs of shearing pain shooting through his temples to the roof of his head with every cough, his breath miasmic. More gulps of air, still more coughing drove the last ounce of struggle out of him. Still holding on to his sides tightly, chest heaving, he fell back in his seat and closed his eyes momentarily.

No sooner had the shutters come down that bright pinheads of light appeared, coursing across his visual field like shooting stars. He squeezed his eyes tight, trying to banish the images and felt the bulging eyeballs pressing against the lids. The pinheads of light changed into mushrooms, blossomed and exploded like so many firework rockets on a dark night and he was left with an oily psychedelic pattern flowing sluggishly hither and thither. Intra-ocular pressure always affected him in that way. Somehow he knew that he would be all right in a little while. He felt fragile.

How long he’d been there in that position he didn’t know. Eventually, dragging fluttering breath into quieted lungs, his breathing settled down into some semblance of normality. Taking out a disposal paper handkerchief from his pocket he wiped the trickle of saliva from the corner of his mouth. Folding the tissue over he rolled down the window and, reaching out, dropped it into the litterbin nearby.

The cool air was very welcome. Familiar musty smell of wet grass and decomposing pine needles wafted in and for a moment, one precious, elusive moment, he was back to his childhood days again, running barefoot in pools of clear water over a bed of fine hillside grass. And then it was gone. He tried to hold on to that image, to retrieve that feeling by recapturing those long forgotten smells, to no avail. It was only the first impact of the scents on his olfactory nerve that was able to trigger memories buried so deep and long forgotten. It was already too late. Habituation was already following the process of desensitisation.

Wiping oily beads of sweat from his forehead, he dry-washed his face, coarse skin on the palms of his hands grating against still coarser stubble of beard a few days old. An instant shiver travelling down his spine made him reach out and wind up the window.

He did not see the bloodstain on the handkerchief.

CHAPTER FIVE

H e must have drifted into one of his dozes, which he had taken to doing quite a bit of lately. When he came to, there was a faint glow of light, diffused through misted windows, shining into the car. Shuffling slightly he closed his eyes again, allowing himself to drift into a state of semi-consciousness.

After a while – he could not tell how long – he stirred gently. Through heavy hooded lids he could faintly discern that the light was still there. What was more, it was static. For a moment he did not move. Then, his curiosity pricked, he forced his eyes open and lifted them up to the rear-view mirror. Light grey plastic stared back at him. Straightening up he peered into the mirror only to find the rear window heavily misted up. He was halfway through winding down the window when he spotted the source of the light through the wing mirror. Some twenty yards behind him stood a lamppost, arm reaching out into the middle of the road, from which hung the culprit, all on its lonesome and with a slight tinge of yellow. He did not know there was street lighting up here, he realised.

The mist had lifted, he noticed. And the sky was clear – clear and crisp. The countryside was in the folds of the first vestiges of dusk. And with darkness imminent, ominous and menacing, he could feel, deep inside him, the icy fingers of that old, familiar melancholic feeling reaching for his innermost being. Lacklustre eyes strayed over to the far side of the crater. More yellow lights adorned the deserted road at regular intervals. Inside him, the embryo of an eerie sort of loneliness and isolation developed… and grew. He felt ill at ease. Way ahead of him, across the land, isolated pinheads of flickering lights began to spring up like so many stars on a cloudy night.

I’ve got to get out of here, he was thinking, but the thought did not get translated into action – not there and then. Uncertainty was creeping in where natural ability to handle the car had existed. His confidence was slipping away from him. It felt like he had not driven a car for a long time. This had happened to him once before, years ago, and it had proven hard to shift. He knew he had to get the car started – just had to – otherwise….

He heard the roar of the engine above his uneven breathing, felt a wave of nausea rising as he leaned forward and ran his forearm over the windscreen in a half-hearted attempt to clear a spot, enough to allow him to drive. He slipped the car into gear, trying hard to ignore the awful feeling, the beads of sweat on his forehead and the weakness in his limbs. He moved off, down the gentle incline, without bothering to look in the mirror or use his indicator.

A few hundred yards along the road and he could see Curepipe splayed out in front of him, shrouded in semi-darkness. He thought of the thousands of people scurrying along its streets and of the cars and buses and the shops. Below him, to his left, lay Floreal - Floreal, neither village nor town, just a sprawling residential area where the poor lived alongside the rich. Wealth and status still packed a very powerful punch on the island.

Floreal, where he was born and where he spent his childhood and a large proportion of whose population was related to him or were considered as relatives because they were referred to as uncles, aunts, cousins, granddads, grandmas and so on - unless they were of a different race, that is. He had always felt that he had some sort of right to lay claim to Floreal as the place to which he belonged. It certainly felt like he was one of its sons. And yet a sense of alienation seemed to pervade his soul, clinging to his fragile being by a peduncle of time passed.

The car slowed down in a dip in the road and stopped. A clump of bamboo and some camellia bushes by the roadside pinpointed the spot where stood a solitary unmarked grave, ringed by azalea and camellia bushes. He very much doubted whether anybody could tell whose remains they were or when they were laid there to rest but as a young child, he could remember always putting flowers on the grave and the bright, happy atmosphere that always surrounded it.

Whatever happened to that child, he wondered? He could see him now, barefooted and scantily dressed, laying the flowers on the grave with reverence because it was the done thing. And what of the people and things that made up his world then – a world of bright, endless sunshine, open spaces, abundance of fruit, laughter, and games. A world that provided the most panoramic of views of hills, mountains, lakes, fields, sugar factories with smoking chimneys, bellies of low-flying airplanes overhead and ships in the far-off harbour. And permanent parents – always there. And not too far away, uncles and aunts, cousins and grandparents who had been all too ready to pick him up and carry him around and spoil him. No matter how old one gets one never forgets that part of growing up, he thought. He would come back on a brighter day and see if he could find that child again.

It was all such a long time ago, the happenings of a different era. The winds had blown. There had been much water under the bridge and the stains