March 6, Mum’s Birthday — Back to School Week

Mum would have been 99 today but,  mercifully for her, she died five months ago.  She was a tough lady, our mother.  Love was a four letter word displayed in countless actions, seldom in words.

The first week of March was when we, the  children of privilege, would be taken by our parents, usually by train,  to a central collection point for a nine month separation from our family.  The best schools were “in the hills”,  several days away, and that was where we were going.  I was eight and a half the first time it happened.   I was terrified.

It was not until her last year, when she was 98 years old that she confessed to my wife how much it hurt her and how hard it was to put her first born on that train in March.   She would next see me in December.

What sustained the Empire?  Women like my mother.   A few kids (the “covenanted” ones) went back to school and relatives in England for many years.  Rudyard Kipling, another Anglo-Indian, was born in Bombay.  He was only six and a half when he was sent to boarding school in England.  He returned to Lahore 11 years later.  Most of us went to “Hill Stations” in India for nine months of the year.

Kipling was miserable in England; I kept my upper lip stiff in the Aravalli Mountains of Rajputana, and the foothills of the Himalayas.  At the end I do believe I even began to enjoy boarding school — at least that is what my mother said I told her.

On Spontaneous Arab Revolutions

Re my earlier musings on the “spontaneous” revolutions in MENA countries here is a copy of an article by an internet analyst I respect:

Poll: Most Americans Strongly Oppose U.S. Intervention in Arab Countries from Washington’s Blog:

The U.S. started mobiliziling forces in the Middle East/Northern Africa area during the Egyptian protests, and American forces have grown larger in response to Gaddafi’s murderous attacks on his own people. And see this.

The Pakistan Observer reports today:

The United States, Britain and France have sent several hundred “defence advisors” to train and support the anti-Gadhafi forces in oil-rich Eastern Libya where “rebels armed groups” have apparently taken over.