Tiffins & Chanawallahs: A Childhood Journey

By Oonagh Prettejohn

Oonagh’s story takes us on a vivid journey through her post-colonial childhood in India, full of color, vitality, and unforgettable memories. However, as she leaves her birth country in 1962 to move to England with her family, Oonagh’s cherished childhood recollections take on a surreal quality. Determined to rediscover her roots and emotional identity, she embarks on a poignant quest.

From the roots of her maternal family, where ‘Staying On’ was in her grandmother’s blood, to the adrenaline-fueled excitement of gleaming gun barrels counted and stacked in pillars by the light of hurricane lamps, Oonagh’s journey uncovers both the beauty and harsh realities of her homeland.

Through her Ayah Ruth’s captivating stories, she experiences the intoxicating fragrance of jasmine on the day of Rinqu’s marriage, and the deep bonds of love and loyalty that define family life in India. With rich detail and compelling prose, Oonagh’s tale takes readers on a breathtaking journey of self-discovery and a celebration of the cultural richness of India.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9781398488052

Oonagh Prettejohn

Oonagh Prettejohn was born in India in 1948, the year after Independence, and spent the first 13 years of a magical childhood there. She has lived in the UK and Hong Kong and is presently living in Tropical North Australia with her husband, Rob. They have been involved in eco lodges for nearly 40 years. Essentially, a short story writer of fiction and non-fiction, she has been published in anthologies and online. Oonagh has travelled extensively. In all the places she has lived and visited, it is the people who have fascinated and stayed with her most.

Book preview

About the Author

Oonagh Prettejohn was born in India in 1948, the year after Independence, and spent the first 13 years of a magical childhood there.

She has lived in the UK and Hong Kong and is presently living in Tropical North Australia with her husband, Rob. They have been involved in eco lodges for nearly 40 years.

Essentially, a short story writer of fiction and non-fiction, she has been published in anthologies and online.

Oonagh has travelled extensively. In all the places she has lived and visited, it is the people who have fascinated and stayed with her most.

Dedication

In memory of

my mother, Mickey Hennessy,

and

my ayah, Ruth

Copyright Information ©

Oonagh Prettejohn 2023

The right of Oonagh Prettejohn to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781398488045 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781398488052 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Many thanks to my husband, Rob, for his patience and support, Gloria Webb from Jabiru Publishing, Kit Carstairs from Manuscript Appraisal Agency, Sasi Victoire for her amazing artwork. My daughter, Kim, for the wonderful artwork on the front cover and the friends who cheered me on.

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time like dew on the tip of a leaf.

Rabindranath Tagore

My mother, Mickey Hennessy, was born in Colonial British India in 1922 and delivered me into a post-colonial, independent India in 1948. Thirteen years later, every connection with my country of birth was severed. I waved goodbye to the Gateway of India from the deck of a P&O liner and was swallowed up in the excitement of being destined for a foreign land called ‘Home’.

When my mother died, I felt an enormous need to define my emotional identity and rediscover my childhood.

Chapter One

Take up the White Man’s burden, send forth the best ye breed—go, bind your sons to exile to serve your

captives’ need.

Rudyard Kipling

Mickey

In the year 1922 when Mohandas Gandhi was arrested for sedition and the young Prince of Wales, Edward VIII, accompanied Her Highness the Begum of Bhopal to the Durbar Hall in Calcutta, my mother, Mickey, was delivered into the world at 133 Lower Circular Road, Calcutta.

She was the third of five children born to Beryl Eileen and Arthur James Hennessy. On closer inspection of the wrinkled scrap, her father was heard to explode, Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Beryl! It’s another bloody girl!

Michael was the name awaiting the longed-for boy. My mother was nicknamed ‘Mickey’, although christened Blanche Rose Hennessy. The son eventually arrived last in line and was named Arthur!

My grandfather, at that time a wireless operator with the India Post and Telegraphs Service under Director General Sir William Maxwell, guarded his home and his family, particularly his daughters, with tyrannical zeal. Family life teetered from the exhilaration of parties where memsahibs flaunted fashions filched from catalogues a season or so late and run up by the local ‘derzi’, to heart-thumping fear of the leather strap of discipline meted out for any perceived unseemly behaviour. A young woman’s reputation was easily sullied, and the lessons were better learnt early!

My grandmother, from all accounts, as well as from my very early childhood memory, was a gentle soul who unfortunately lacked the resilience to temper his extremes in discipline. She was the granddaughter of Delmerick Cranenburgh, a prominent lawyer in Calcutta, and lived a life of constant change as she followed her husband to his postings throughout India.

Beryl, if you don’t keep a closer watch on these girls, they’ll end up married off to some bloody fufu player.

He would replace his belt to his waist and storm about in a fury. The girl in question was invariably Mickey, her great defender was her eldest sister, Hettie, and the ‘fu fu player’ reference was to the awful spectre of a third-rate musician of undesirable race or class.

They are just having fun, Art. My grandmother would smile apologetically with a fidget of fingers.

Arthur’s fears with regard to Mickey were well-founded.

I remember being treated to the story of my mother dressed up as Shirley Temple singing ‘Animal Crackers in My Soup’ with her hair still smoking from the improvised curling irons used by a well-meaning sister! She spent hours honing her performance skills with a brass standard lamp as a microphone. She shared the lamp with the odd parrot (Peter or Paul) that found it equally desirable as a perch.

The Song Bird

When she was seventeen, my mother and her two elder sisters ran away from home and made their way from Madras by train to her birth place, Calcutta.

It was a time when the King George VI image was being pressed on coins at the Calcutta Mint, the world was on the brink of war, and the Indian Nationalist Movement was mobilising. In 1939, India was impatient, and there were incidents of attacks on British civilians by extremists.

As a child I lay in bed watching the flicker of mischief in my mother’s dark chocolate eyes as she told the story of the three sisters secretly ordering a getaway wardrobe from the tailor in the local bazaar. During months of walking to and from engagements, they hoarded rickshaw and tonga money, as well as any small financial allowances afforded them.

The morning of their flight would have begun under cover of darkness in the tonga, brought to the back compound gate by the dhobi’s son. There the trunks, secreted the night before, were loaded and covered by the day’s washing, and the chota memsahibs whisked away to catch the Grand Trunk Express.

Charged with the excitement of my mother’s tales of their exploits, I could smell the ink, and see its stain on my fingers as the runaways folded back the sheets of the Calcutta Statesman in search of jobs as funds ran low; none had any practical training, and this left few options and the terrifying prospect of a return to an unforgiving father.

One morning, they flipped over the announcement of ‘Churchill to lead Britain to war’ and came across an advertisement for a singing competition to be held at the Grand Hotel. The tomboy, Mickey, was a gifted singer and had honed her repertoire of songs on those happier occasions when her mother played the piano and Mickey sang for party guests.

The first prize was a recording contract with His Master’s Voice. Mickey was a little on the skinny side. Her sisters managed to pin her into one of their evening dresses, and they all piled into a tonga to set off down Chowringhee Road. They watched her teeter towards the bright lights of the Grand Hotel on very risqué two-inch heels.

She won the competition. The recordings were scheduled to take place in a makeshift studio at the Grand Hotel.

That first morning, she crossed the marble foyer and clung to the sheen of beeswax on the balustrade that took her to the first floor. She stared at the number on the door until the polished brass 95 was etched on her retina, and then tapped lightly. There was no answer, but she could hear voices. There was time to run, and her feet itched, but she tapped again—too loudly. The door opened.

Her very first ‘real’ microphone stood before her, glistening—a honeycomb of chrome and black with the image of the HMV dog, ears cocked attentively, in front of a great horn. The long chrome stand was adjusted to her five foot five inches, and she went on to make four recordings with HMV. Her very first was ‘South of Pango Pango’ with a lot of Hawaiian guitars!

She won contracts to sing with some of the jazz greats in India at the time, one of whom was American Bandleader, Teddy Weatherford. Her stage name was Mickey Hennessy.

India provided a base for American operations in support of China, and the influx of American troops created an environment in which the Indian jazz scene thrived. The troops needed entertainment, and the jazz scene was ready to provide it.

It was also a time when India was divided on support for what they saw as Britain’s war. The Indian National Congress, the largest political party, demanded independence before it would help Britain. London refused.

As the war progressed, Mickey was recruited as a ‘crooner’ to the British Concert Part, ‘The Aces’, to entertain the troops that poured into Calcutta and Bombay from all over the world, on their way to a battlefield somewhere.

‘The Aces’ toured Ceylon, and while singing at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, in the heightened fervour of wartime emotions, she met and fell in love with a dashing young Captain of the Kings African Rifles. They had two weeks together, and then he was to return to East Africa. He proposed. She was under twenty-one and needed her parents’ permission. She had to wait to follow him.

In her diary she writes, There was a war on, people were doing crazy things—impetuous things.

Asking her father’s permission was not an easy task, but he came up trumps. A Captain rather than a fufu player would have been a great relief!

Oh, Art, a CAPTAIN in the Kings African Rifles! Isn’t that nice, dear? Beryl would have wrung her fingers and felt absolved. In fact, Art was so impressed that he used all the influence he could muster to ensure his daughter had all the paperwork necessary for her journey to Kenya as soon as possible.

Mickey married Ian Adam in Kenya where my brother, Michael, was born. Sadly, the marriage failed. Perhaps she was too young; perhaps she couldn’t cope with the heady social life that Kenya offered and Ian embraced. She took refuge in England, travelling by troopship to Dover. A bittersweet moment on the journey was to hear her recording of ‘South of Pango Pango’