A Colombo brooch: globalisation, international brats (1910 edition), and imperial backwash
A week in Colombo and a chance discovery reminded me of my grandmother's tough life as an 'international brat' in the 1910s and ideas of 'imperial backwash'.
I was in Colombo last week - a week of work in a country that I have visited more or less once a decade since 1989. This was my first ‘proper’ focus on Sri Lanka. Most of my visits have been holidays, or regional meetings, though they have always been touched by the Sri Lankan politics and security, and the geopolitics of the day.
My first visit was as a student in 1989. It was punctuated by curfews and conflict (with the JVP) in the South, soon followed by the government’s capture and killing of the JVP leader, Rohana Wijeweera. While we were there, Saddam Hossain invaded Kuwait (the first Gulf War). The plane that would have flown us home was seized on the ground in Kuwait by Iraqi forces and so after a delay we came home via Pakistan at the goodwill of the Pakistan airline PIA. All good anecdote fodder for a shaggy haired British student safely insulated from the real action (yes, I still cringe. Cheap holidays in other people’s misery1 and all that).
Why mention this? Well… discovering a Colombo brooch.
Over the last few months my brother, sister and I have been clearing and trying to sell our late parents’ house - our childhood home - in a small town in Oxfordshire, England (if you know your Agatha Christie, it is Wallingford, where she spent her last decades living relatively publicly but quietly. There is a new statue of Agatha Christie, sitting on a park bench gazing across the Kine Croft (the Krinny if you are a local).
Our parents were children of post war rationing, and hoarders. Everything might have a future use. If you had space to store it, you kept it. Amongst the final treasures that we cleared was an old jewellery box with a silver filagree brooch inside.
The box is labelled ‘Don Theodoris and Co, Jeweller, Chatham Street, Colombo’.
How did it get to Wallingford? Well, the logical explanation is that my great grandparents bought it, or were given it, when they (or someone they knew) were on their way to, or way back from, Madras (Chennai) and the ship called in at Colombo.
My great grandparents had upped sticks from Kilkee, County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland to become teachers in Tamil Nadu, India. My Granny - Maureen - was the youngest of three sisters, and was born in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, in 1904, whereas her elder sisters (Eileen, Kathleen) were born in Dublin before the family emigrated (so no Irish passport for me).
Her parents, and one sister, spent their lives teaching in Tamil Nadu, and are buried there. In those days, the ship from Britain to Madras and Calcutta called in at Colombo, which I assume is how the brooch from Don Theodoris travelled, eventually gathering dust in Wallingford.
So, when I was a student I flew to Sri Lanka twice in 12 months and suffered the minor inconvenience of a cancelled flight. My mum had been a bit worried (curfew, car crash, Gulf War) and picked me up from the airport.
In contrast, my Granny was put on a boat from Madras to London, alone, at the age of four2. On the journey she was left in the care of an elderly missionary travelling back to England. Little Maureen saw her parents only once after that - when she was 15 or 16, when they made their sole visit to Britain. Then never again.
Granny - Maureen - spent her childhood in a ‘Church Missionary Society Children's Home’, in Limpsfield, Surrey.
Some called these ‘mission orphanages’ - a mix of real orphans and children who had been sent across the world by their Missionary parents. Maureen spent her holidays with assorted retired missionaries who were willing to put her up for a few weeks.
Another sad little treasure in Wallingford was my Granny’s school pencil case - wooden with multiple drawers. The original owner’s name on the bottom (O. Thompson) has been crossed out and her name - Maureen Ardill - inked in. I know that she was at the Limpsfield home as this is also scratched on the pencil case.
It was a tough childhood and we perceive that she bore the emotional scars through her life. Of course, talking about the negative experiences of white folk who were part of the imperial system is pretty far down the pecking order of noteworthy exploitation, damage, misery, and indignity, but I think worth a small footnote. Imperial backwash perhaps3. Positionality… and we felt our granny’s enduring pain.
I would have liked to have known my great grandparents for many reasons, but one trivial one is to have heard their accents. My granny had the accent of her childhood - boarding school in England in the 1910s, but I assume her parents sounded ‘County Clare’.
Geopolitical fancy dress
The Colombo brooch was one of a range of bits and pieces from India (and Colombo) which were features of my grandparents’ house and then my parents’ house - much mass produced for the Victorian market, the old school version of the ‘ethnic tat’ (a cruel put down) that we also have also accumulated at home.
The Wallingford hoard includes various bolts of cloth - one of which I wore for the Wallingford Carnival in 1976 when my Mum dressed me up as Indira Gandhi, with a badly draped sari and big lipstick Bindi. Happily, no photos survive. In my defence I was about eight. My parents had a knack for children’s fancy dress with a thread of global politics. I like to think that the carnival outfit reflected Indira Gandhi being a regular feature on the TV news during India’s Emergency.
Another fancy dress costume was me as a ‘Watergate bug’. There is a photo of this one4.
Closing loops, and looping the loops
My Dad - who grew up in North Wales - had his own India hook. The Welsh footprint overseas is now better understood, going beyond the romance of Welsh speaking communities in Patagonia, with more recognition of Wales’s and Welsh people’s part in the slave trade.
As a child, his connection to India was in Chapel when they collected pennies for the Welsh Calvinist mission in the Khasi hills of Meghalaya (see here - ‘Gwalia [archaic Welsh name for Wales] in Khasia’).
One of Dad’s life ambitions was to visit the Khasi hills and, via me marrying an Indian, us having half Welsh/half Tamil daughters5, and living in India, he did so.
By the same intergenerational loop, my Mum also realised her ambition of seeing the school in Tamil Nadu where her grandparents lived, taught, died, and visited their graves.
One uncomfortable aspect of my Granny’s world view was… being a bit anti Welsh. This was not uncommon in her generation and at least partly reflects this English nursery rhyme which still irritates today (Taffy was a Welshman, Taffy was a thief…). In turn, my parents also visited Kilkee, County Clare in the 1990s. I asked my Dad how it was. He said ‘I can understand why they left’. Cruel, unfair - we all dish it out. My brother, sister and I are going to see Kilkee this spring (when we have finally sold the family home). Kilkee looks lovely (on google maps).
Our daughters - my Granny’s great grand daughters - are modern ‘international brats’ and grew up in India, Malawi, Bangladesh, and India again, before moving to the UK (moving ‘to’, not ‘back to’). International brat can be used as a cuss or claimed in self empowerment. International brats are a curious breed and they tend to spot each other from 1000 yards. As a small town boy from Wallingford, I am quite jealous of the modern variety.
If this Blog made you wince at the anecdotes of privileged travel in other people’s countries, and reminiscing about family roots in the ugly imperial and missionary past… welcome to our regular family arguments and heated debates!
‘Cheap holidays in other people’s misery’…. whether you are an old punk or a situationist).
This is the family legend but I have just found a photo of Maureen and her mother with Maureen described as ‘age 5’.
I wrote ‘Imperial backwash’ and then googled to see if it is a thing - and it is, but a brand of those big chairs you get for having your hair washed in fancy hair salons….
The Watergate bug - Wallingford 1973. I’m imaging Agatha Christie admiring my outfit. Or maybe she saw me walking through Wallingford market place as Indira Gandhi in 1976… I can feel some very bad fan fiction coming on. Although… I have never read a single Agatha Christie book.
Those with a genealogical bent will notice the personal myth making here. How can I have an Irish granny, and yet my kids are half Welsh? It’s the quarter English bit that gets edited out of my personal story, and the kids become half Tamil / half Welsh as it makes the story simpler.