LIFE BEGINS AGAIN AFTER EVERY STORM

St. Jude's Day Storm was disruptive

CYCLONES AND TYPHOONS WREAKED HAVOC

As we put our clock back an hour for extra daylight in winter, urgent warnings were broadcasted of a severe storm approaching the UK, which put the whole country on full alert. When the storm arrived with hurricane-force winds, wreaking havoc on trees, cars and roofs, it caused widespread disruption to air, sea and road travel.  "St. Jude's Storm" peaked at 3A.M. on Monday, feast of St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes.  Black-out ensued for hundreds of families where power lines came down, buses, underground tubes and trains were cancelled until debris on railway lines could be removed.

Firemen assessed the damage

All emergency services were deployed, and insurers poised for serious damage to homes and business. Fortunately, timely Met. Office warnings to everyone to batten down the hatches and stay indoors, greatly helped to reduce damage and loss of lives, lessons learnt from the great storm of 1987.

A week after our storm, Cyclone Phailin swept through the Bay of Bengal, across the states of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, over 90 towns and 35,000 villages, with a turbulence spanning 1,000miles, and wind speed of 125mph.  9ft-high waves surging up the east coast, destroyed homes and slum dwellings in its path.  Again, timely warning from the Meteorological office persuaded many to leave the area before the cyclone arrived, saving hundreds of lives, unlike the super-cyclone of 1999 that ripped through Orissa, killed over 10,000 people, 400,000 farm animals, and displaced 1.5millions from the poorest regions of India.

Haiyan destroyed this child's home

Even more horrendous was Typhoon Haiyan that ravaged the Philippines last week, narrowly missing its Capital of Manila, and totally destroying the whole town of Tacloban. This was the 28^th typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, survivors were stunned and shocked, subdued by weariness and desperately in need of food and drinking water.

Millions homeless in Tacloban

The death toll rose to several thousands, many still not accounted for, and no news yet from some areas that took the brunt of this super typhoon.  Devoid of sanitation, food and drinking water, survivors would need immediate help to relocate to clean and safer regions, before any healthcare could be administered.

We are very fortunate in England to seldom see such typhoon, cyclone or tsunami of the magnitude that had destroyed so many beautiful places around the world, but we must not be complacent, storms are getting more frequent, and threatening our green and peaceful land, especially as global warming was already affecting every country on earth.  

Picnic at the Botanical Garden

In 1950s' India, I remember enjoying long, sunny days with bright, cloudless skies, especially in Calcutta and much of Southern India, but when the monsoon came, dark, ominous heaven would suddenly open wide its portal, with huge deluge of rain, thunder and lightning that cracked around us with frightening speed, often if you were out, you would find nowhere to hide and simply resigned yourself to getting soaked to the skin.

As a large family, we always seemed to be planning for weekend outings or swimming at the Ordinance Club, walks along the busy thoroughfare of Chowringhee, or taking a rest on the green grass at the Maidan. Sometimes we took a picnic to the Botanical Gardens, or visited the impressive marble edifice of Victoria Memorial, a veritable treat for most visitors to Calcutta.


At least once a month, my Mum would book tickets for a cinema in town, as she loved Hollywood musicals, films and drama.  Also there would be a birthday or two to celebrate most months, and without any excuse at all, we would have a party, or get together a few tables of Mahjong players on Sundays, when the girls would be called on to serve tea and sandwiches.  We always found something to do, or something to look forward to, at home or school.

Just after our youngest sister Katy was born, my father decided to find a larger home for us, and managed to find a lovely colonial house with thick walls that kept us cool, high ceiling in all five ensuite bedrooms on the ground floor, around the dining room and an enormous lounge-sitting room, that stretched across the whole width of the house.  An upright piano and two mahogany units filled with LPs of some of the best classical music that money could buy, were left to us by the previous owner, a widow who returned home to England.

The double gated entrance was flanked by a two-storey building with two maisonette flats on the right, and a small doorman's dwelling on the left, in which we housed our sweeper's family.  The front yard led to a few steps up to the main house foyer, a flight of stairs up to a three-bedroom flat with a terrace, which was rented out to an Anglo-Indian family.  As they were sitting tenants, we left that well alone. My father saw the potential of the back garden being used partly as a soya sauce factory, with space for all the vats and jars for fermentation of soya beans, along one side of the garden, leaving enough space for flowers and the guava trees.

Macbeth was performed in the garden

Reflecting back to that period, my father must have had notification of a wide Trunk Road being proposed, that would sweep through the so-called Chinatown area where we lived, because in under ten years our grocery shop premises would have been demolished to give way to that road.  My father wasted no time in getting our new house ready for occupation.

First he had a large shed constructed along the garden wall with its back entrance.  Next he designed a large furnace for the eight-foot diameter wok to cook ingredients for the soya sauces, with a smaller stove for making chili sauce.  An artesian well was drilled to the side of the house to get our own supply of water, a large amount needed for washing and bottling as well as for fermentation of the soya beans.

My father was quite an architect in the renovation of the main house, a new teak front door was flanked by two toughened glazed windows with strong iron bars, allowing for air flow in summer, plus another door similar in style, added to the front bedroom, both opening into the foyer, making the entrance quite stunning and modern.  The one thing that I did not agree with my father, was when he had two victorian free-standing bathtubs taken away from the two main bathrooms to install showers, which he said would use less water. I really fancied those bathtubs.

Family photograph taken on the patio

My father's most creative concept had to be the beautiful pink concrete patio, built along the whole width of the back of the house, with seating built around the raised outdoor sitting area, giving us so much pleasure for years afterwards, for parties, moon festivals and just generally keeping cool during the hot, humid season. From here, two steps down to the paved path led to the sauce factory, passing the garden on the right, behind which was the kitchen outhouse.

Whilst all this work was going on, my Mum and Dad, elder brother Yee Leong and myself moved into the house to deal with the interiors. I was in  my element, so happy to be in such a wonderful surrounding, with space I had never dreamed of in my fourteen years of life.  We chose colours for the rooms and doors to be painted by decorators; Mum and I measured for curtains, bought fabrics from various places in town; and on Sundays our Singer sewing machine would run up miles of fabric for so many windows!

Speak to you again soon in a few weeks.