Back then
behind the bedrooms,
in the house-sized cut in the hill
that rose up to where the plant nursery was
there was a bed of strawberries
not the giants you get in the West
but small ones, wild and imperfect.
At dinner I used to like to crack open chicken bones
or chew the soft drum-stick ends and suck out
the thick savoury marrow.
Sometimes we used to get fresh cow’s milk
from the Cow Baas down the hill
It tasted so different from the powdered version,
especially if you let it cool,
and the filmy skin grew thick and tangible
on the surface.
Underneath its wooden floors
Hatton bungalow is criss-crossed by a series of deep drains
As a small child I’ve gotten into them and thought
maybe I could creep through.
Mysterious pipes from the bungalow,
emerge in the guava grove
heading down towards the lake
Tall sepia walls, whose corners disappear into darkness,
floor cold to the touch of slipper-less feet.
Musty smell of store-rooms.
Warped wood in the pantry floor.
From the children’s bedroom
there is also access through a missing ceiling board
into an attic-like space .
My mother used to write stories
about a pack of mice who used to live in the Lata Pata (junk) room
behind the cook’s bedroom
The Lata Pata room was always a place of mystery
full of random things
We used to spread talcum powder
on the floor of the lobby
until our feet slid and we would “skate”.
We never did manage to furnish Hatton house
they way it once must have been
but the sitting room was warm and
the shelves full of books
One day my parents
called-in a priest to look at the house
he followed the swinging of a cross
on a string
and dug up a small silver foot
washed it in a basin
within it my family says
were the ashes of human remains
it was a “Hooniyama”
Something placed there to ensure no person who set eyes on that bungalow
would get to purchase it
my mother says they bought the house without visiting it
and maybe that's why they got to buy it.
(Hatton was the reason we could not flee when the riots happened
all my parents savings were tied up in it)
I often wondered about this incident
How much of it is true
I remember vaguely
the image of the priest in his white smock
and the washing of the little metal foot
in a basin of water.
I used to walk down the stone steps in front,
next to the gnarled cypress tree
to the half moon shaped lawn
unruly grass
little anthills popping up everywhere on the periphery
stand at the edge and gaze over the greenness of the lake.
When tea is planted in estates
hills have furrows cut into them
burrowing all the way to the bottom
down which water can escape
slicing through ring-shaped ditches circling the hills
When I was a boy playing cops and robbers,
we used to scrabble through the twigs
until we found something vaguely pistol-shaped.
hide in the ditches, slide down the furrows.
I discovered
that the way to not get caught, shot
is not to move at all
to lie quietly in a ditch
and look at the sky
through the leaves
of tea bushes.
At night, after a day of playing
we used to bathe in hot water
triggering the wrath of a hundred maana-
grass scratches
combat-injuries sustained
during hours playing
on the hillsides
In the smooth tea bushes that look like curly hair from far away
The rasping serrated leaves
of maana bushes
on unplanted hills.
The slopes ranging down
from Hatton bungalow
to the lake
to the right of the crescent-shaped lawn
had guava trees terrace after terrace.
We used to spend hours on those trees
our bare soles
rubbing shiny spots of familiarity on the knobbly tree trunks
choosing just the right guava fruit
not too soggy after rain (they taste watery then)
not too soft and ripe
because they might have gone bad.
Occasionally we’d build a tree house
planks slotted into clefts in the larger guava trees
I used to be fascinated by the idea
of building something autonomous, that you could live in
somewhere to eat, safe from the rain
it felt like an earthy, tactile magic
And bonfires. We had bonfires
We used to thrust knobbly potatoes into the embers
and the ash covered wood
sometimes wrapped in foil, sometimes not
they would come out burned, blackened,
mostly inedible
There is a picture of me and Shehan on holiday in Hatton
we are chewing on sausages
stuck on sticks
It reminds me of those long days
full of play
behind the bedrooms,
in the house-sized cut in the hill
that rose up to where the plant nursery was
there was a bed of strawberries
not the giants you get in the West
but small ones, wild and imperfect.
At dinner I used to like to crack open chicken bones
or chew the soft drum-stick ends and suck out
the thick savoury marrow.
Sometimes we used to get fresh cow’s milk
from the Cow Baas down the hill
It tasted so different from the powdered version,
especially if you let it cool,
and the filmy skin grew thick and tangible
on the surface.
Underneath its wooden floors
Hatton bungalow is criss-crossed by a series of deep drains
As a small child I’ve gotten into them and thought
maybe I could creep through.
Mysterious pipes from the bungalow,
emerge in the guava grove
heading down towards the lake
Tall sepia walls, whose corners disappear into darkness,
floor cold to the touch of slipper-less feet.
Musty smell of store-rooms.
Warped wood in the pantry floor.
From the children’s bedroom
there is also access through a missing ceiling board
into an attic-like space .
My mother used to write stories
about a pack of mice who used to live in the Lata Pata (junk) room
behind the cook’s bedroom
The Lata Pata room was always a place of mystery
full of random things
We used to spread talcum powder
on the floor of the lobby
until our feet slid and we would “skate”.
We never did manage to furnish Hatton house
they way it once must have been
but the sitting room was warm and
the shelves full of books
One day my parents
called-in a priest to look at the house
he followed the swinging of a cross
on a string
and dug up a small silver foot
washed it in a basin
within it my family says
were the ashes of human remains
it was a “Hooniyama”
Something placed there to ensure no person who set eyes on that bungalow
would get to purchase it
my mother says they bought the house without visiting it
and maybe that's why they got to buy it.
(Hatton was the reason we could not flee when the riots happened
all my parents savings were tied up in it)
I often wondered about this incident
How much of it is true
I remember vaguely
the image of the priest in his white smock
and the washing of the little metal foot
in a basin of water.
I used to walk down the stone steps in front,
next to the gnarled cypress tree
to the half moon shaped lawn
unruly grass
little anthills popping up everywhere on the periphery
stand at the edge and gaze over the greenness of the lake.
When tea is planted in estates
hills have furrows cut into them
burrowing all the way to the bottom
down which water can escape
slicing through ring-shaped ditches circling the hills
When I was a boy playing cops and robbers,
we used to scrabble through the twigs
until we found something vaguely pistol-shaped.
hide in the ditches, slide down the furrows.
I discovered
that the way to not get caught, shot
is not to move at all
to lie quietly in a ditch
and look at the sky
through the leaves
of tea bushes.
At night, after a day of playing
we used to bathe in hot water
triggering the wrath of a hundred maana-
grass scratches
combat-injuries sustained
during hours playing
on the hillsides
In the smooth tea bushes that look like curly hair from far away
The rasping serrated leaves
of maana bushes
on unplanted hills.
The slopes ranging down
from Hatton bungalow
to the lake
to the right of the crescent-shaped lawn
had guava trees terrace after terrace.
We used to spend hours on those trees
our bare soles
rubbing shiny spots of familiarity on the knobbly tree trunks
choosing just the right guava fruit
not too soggy after rain (they taste watery then)
not too soft and ripe
because they might have gone bad.
Occasionally we’d build a tree house
planks slotted into clefts in the larger guava trees
I used to be fascinated by the idea
of building something autonomous, that you could live in
somewhere to eat, safe from the rain
it felt like an earthy, tactile magic
And bonfires. We had bonfires
We used to thrust knobbly potatoes into the embers
and the ash covered wood
sometimes wrapped in foil, sometimes not
they would come out burned, blackened,
mostly inedible
There is a picture of me and Shehan on holiday in Hatton
we are chewing on sausages
stuck on sticks
It reminds me of those long days
full of play
