Tales of Treselda Cottage

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 10). Harold and Leonard.  After Bridgette had left Africa and returned to her hometown Anjengo, Leonard continued to be immersed in his work on the estates. The young Harold D'Costa who had travelled to Africa with Bridgette, become Leonard's shadow of sorts on the estates. Leonard had taken to the eager young man and showed him all aspects of tea-making, setting him up at the factory. Harold had discontinued school in Anjengo at an early age and lacked the finesse that a Jesuit boarding school education had given Leonard and other young men from the community. But he was a fast learner with a keen sense of observation and soon took to both the discipled rigour of long hours of work and the relaxing bonhomie that Leonard and his friends slipped into easily in the after hours. Perhaps because he felt a lack when it came to communicating well in English, Harold strove to make up for it, taking every opportunity to listen and learn, and over-compens...

Tales of Treselda Cottage, Part 4. Treselda Cottage as Ava remembered it, had a constant stream of visitors. Relatives, close and distant, would drop in and spend hours with Mama. There was Uncle Freddie, always immaculately dressed, who came with a b unch of Morris bananas for the kids one day, and ate up all the fried fish roe, a rare treat that Ava was waiting to fight over with her brothers for, at lunch. "We can get some again, but Freddie might not have had fish roe for a long time now", Mama had said. A spoilt only son of Margaret's childhood companion June, Frederick had a string of unfortunate events in his life, culminating in the mental instability of his wife. He took care of her in their old, crumbling, once-grand house, barely managing to hold things together. Aunty Vivette visited occasionally from the Anjengo convent. Orphaned at a young age, she was brought up in the convent. She had short, curly hair parted straight through the middle and neatly pi...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 9) Margaret Cottage. Margaret Cottage, the old family house that was presided over by Sophia Moreira, Ava's great-grandmother, was long gone. Margaret, after who the house was named, remembered a thatched version of it. Over the years, roof tiles replaced the thatch. And then, much later, after Sophia's time, it was torn down to make way for a new house, when Margaret's younger brother Terrence took over the property on his return from Africa. Margaret had moved to Treselda Cottage then. A part of Margaret had gone with the old house, literally, as the name board, "Margaret Cottage" was removed and a new one, "Lorraine's Nest" came up in its place. Ava had visited Lorraine's Nest several times with Mama. It was considered a "grand" house, modern for the times, though it was rather modest, looking back now. It was single storeyed, with a flat concrete roof and sunshades, and had little concrete fins surrou...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 8) Bridgette and Leonard. It was said that Bridgette D'Souza's holdings of coconut plantations in Anjengo were so vast that harvesting happened non-stop. A team of seasoned coconut pickers would begin harvesting from one end of the plantation and by the time they had reached the other end, the first set would be ready for harvest again and the cycle would continue. The coconut plantations thrived by the waterways, their lifeline. Once the coconuts were husked, they would be sorted into lots for sale and for drying into copra, from which oil would be extracted. Husk would be gathered in bales along the water's edge and would be taken by plantation boats to the main jetty, from where they would be carried by larger goods boats to the factories of Allepey to be turned into coir. The copra and husked coconuts would be sent to mills to extract oil, and to the city markets for sale. Bridgette, it was said, had taken a keen interest in the pl...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 7). On the Call of the Sea and a Wedding by a Lake. When Conrad, Ava's eldest brother was very small, he had travelled by boat to Anjengo with Mama. Ava loved Anjengo. The little town was home to her father's family. She would listen starry-eyed to Conrad's vivid description of the journey. The boats would set off from Chakkai Vallakadavu. Chakkai was then the hub of trade and commerce, as goods were brought in on the waterways, off loaded at the pier and stored in bales in warehouses before being taken by bullock carts to the thriving market places of Pettah and Chalai. Mama would pack the red and cream woven reed basket with snacks and their overnight metal trunks with clothes and essentials for their stay in Anjengo. They would buy hot roasted cashew nuts in paper cones while they waited for the passenger boat, watching all the goods being loaded and offloaded into small open boats, manned by skilled oarsmen. Conrad and the other olde...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 6). On Grief. When Oswald Fernandez passed away, a silence seemed to have descended over the whole neighbourhood. People were respectfully making their way to the funeral house. Ava remembered visiting Uncle Ossie once with Mama, on their way back home from Baroda Bank. Mama was returning a sum of money her son had borrowed from his son, in Madras, a long time ago. Uncle was sitting on a rattan easy-chair, in the verandah. The house was thatched, the broad verandah, defined by thick, evenly spaced, cylindrical columns. The floor was laid with small, red terracotta tiles, worn out in patches. The linear precision of the tiles was broken by a beautiful circular pattern in the verandah, right in front of the large main door. The hall inside had two low Diwans and a few rattan chairs. The customary picture of the Sacred Heart on the wall had no special altar, just a dim, flickering bulb that lit it. The showcase half-heartedly displayed knick-knacks from ...

Tales of Treselda Cottage, Part 5. Janaki. Ava felt a sudden twinge in her heart. What good friends they had been. They were in and out of each other's houses in those days. Janaki's house was set in a large compound, full of trees, on the road at the start of the lane that led to Treselda Cottage. She would join them on their walk to school, where she was one class senior to Ava. In the evenings, Mama would let Ava spend time in Janu's house. They would sit together on the low verandah wall, chatting, speckled by the shadows of leaves of the Mango tree. Or they would be on verandah floor, playing Five Stones. Janu had a collection of smooth, light stones for this game, just big enough for five of them to fit into a small palm. They would scatter five stones onto the floor, and like jugglers, throw one up and scoop up a set number in time to turn the palm and catch the falling stone. The game had more complicated variations as it progressed, and the girls considered the...

Tales of Treselda Cottage, Part 3 Margaret had a pot of tea ready on the table, kept warm with an old, worn out tea cosy. On a plate, she had laid out some Kannakkubol from Queen's Bakery. "Here, your favourite", she said, passing it to Ava. The Kannakkubol was crisp and light, crumbling slightly at Ava's bite. Trivandrum's version of shortbread cookies. Mama's tableware wasn't fancy. She had a few beautiful pieces gifted by relatives from England on their visits back home, but Ava remembered that she never considered them prized possessions, worthy of display. She was a practical woman, not given to frills and flounces, or fussy tableware. Treselda Cottage never had the "showcase" that was the pride of most other houses then, filled with souvenirs and foreign crockery. Whatever she owned was put away in closed cupboards, taken out and used when needed, and given away if not used. The cottage belonged to, and was named after, Margaret's s...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 2). The solid, long rosewood table at Treselda Cottage would be buzzing with activity on school days, as the children would gather around for breakfast. Mama would have mixed Puttu into even-sized balls with bananas, butter and sugar. The children would help themselves to it, four balls each for the bigger ones and two or three each for the small ones. Breakfast was never Ava's best meal, but that was the one she remembered most from the old days. The taste of butter, coming through the steamed rice flour with every chew, the crunch of grainy sugar that spiked the gooey banana bits. To wash it down, there would be hot milky tea for the bigger ones and milk for the smaller ones. On most days, she would eat her share up in a flash. She remembered the day when it wouldn't go down and she had to keep sipping her tea to swallow her food. Her mind had hurried out of Treselda Cottage already, and was on its way to school, down the lane, past the roa...

Tales of Treselda Cottage (Part 1) The lane was rain-washed. The stone compound walls were moss-green in patches. Ferns peeked out of crevices, curling their way carefully upwards. Crotons and flowering shrubs spilt out from compounds, over the walls, unable to contain their exuberance. Ava's cheek brushed against a shoe-flower as she passed by, damp pollen leaving a hurried trail through her hair. She was nearing the bend. Just after it, there would be the Jambakka tree, dropping its baby pink fruit heavily onto the tar. Further up, there'd be the pot-hole, which someone would have laid stepping stones across when the rains had started. She'd cross it on tip-toe. She could run home then, straight to the little house at the end of the lane - Treselda Cottage. Taking a quick, sharp breath, Ava picked up speed. Nothing had changed. She'd run down this lane countless times in her childhood and it still held the same feel. She had told herself that the lane was too narr...