Mahinda’s Little World

Last weekend, I went down to London to see the folks, but the primary purpose was something quite different.

"Aunty Hosana" was in hospital. Now, she’s a social "aunty" rather than being related to me but, in years gone by, she’d been closer to me than all but my direct family. I use the perfect tense (possibly past perfect continuous) because I’ve seen precious little of her during the last decade or so, which is a shame.

She was our local GP when I was growing up in Kensal Green*, and literally lived across the road from us. As a fairly sickly child (I had certain problems, I gather, that I’m not going to go into here), I suppose mum had plenty of dealings with Aunty in her professional capacity, and that spilled over into firm friendship. Aunty’s son, Saleem, is a couple of years older than me, and I spent most of my early life hanging out round his place — after all, he got all the cool toys like Transformers, He-Man figures, an Atari 2600, and so on…eventually working up to an Amiga, Sega Megadrive, etc.

* That Wikipedia page contains stuff I never even dreamt of — for instance, the local library, where I spent a significant part of my life between the ages of 5 and 10, was opened by Mark Twain himself!

As a result, many of my childhood memories involve Aunty Hosana and Saleem, complete with a supporting cast comprising Rajesh, Rubel, Martin, Tariq and associated parents.

But I digress. Aunty used to walk Saleem and me to school in the morning, testing us on little maths questions as we walked. I don’t think I wrote about it, but this was Chamberlayne Wood JMI School, which recently had a narrow escape from a tornado! If you look at the pictures on the BBC News site, you may spot it a few yards from one of the totalled houses. Like your average south Brent state school, it wasn’t exactly a pinnacle of educational prowess, and Saleem ended up in Gower House, a small private school in Neasden with a truly awful uniform — maroon blazers are fair enough, but was the lemon yellow piping really necessary?!

It was Aunty Hosana who pressed for my parents to put me in Gower House as well, and (lemon yellow piping aside) I never looked back. She, more than anyone else except my mother, was responsible for me getting a decent education. I reckon. She was always someone I could go to for advice and support. Even after we moved out to Hertfordshire, she was always there for the whole family.

As the years rolled on, I saw Aunty and Saleem less and less. Since graduating, I’ve spent very little time in the company of my folks — six to eight weekends a year or fewer, in fact — and, as a result, I’ve hardly seen the pair of them. I’m not exactly great at keeping in touch with people, either.

The last time I saw Aunty was over a year ago, and I was appalled to see how this sharp, wise woman had degraded into someone who drifted in and out of her own world, amazingly lucid passages interspersed with fuzzy recollections where she didn’t realise what year, or even decade, it was.

Age catches up with everyone, unfortunately. Thanks to being far away from my direct family and friends thereof for the last dozen years, I’d been insulated from that sort of thing. Older relatives were all halfway across the world, so I’d never witnessed any decline in them either.

A little while back, Aunty suffered her second stroke, and has been in hospital since. Mum told me that she didn’t think the woman had too long left (mum’s an experienced nurse, so probably has an eye for these things), so I dropped all plans and headed down for the weekend.

Mum and I visited on Saturday evening, and it was really hard. Aunty had all but wasted away, and was incapable of speech. The flicker of recognition was there, and she was trying to tell us things, but we just couldn’t understand. We both came away with lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes.

I’ve been trying to get hold of Saleem (after he left me a voicemail, the week before last), but to no avail. I’ll keep trying…