Announcing

BAGLADY-IN-WAITING

Waiting on the Court and Commons of the world

Flipping the dice on Life's Board-game of Snakes & Ladders. When last we saw Ashley Grimes, she was stranded along with her fellow travelers beside the ruins of their refuge from the street.

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THE BAGLADY CHRONICLES

READ INSIDE THIS BOOK

BAGLADY-IN-WAITING

I am Baglady-in-Waiting. I wait upon the Court and the Commons of the World. I wait for my suspended life to resume or to end.

Am I selfish? Indeed I am. I've had a supreme Life Tutor in the Art of Self-ishness, my artiste mother. During those early days in Auld-Hallows, did I wish to sacrifice the remains of my paltry life in the service of anonymous others? No, the notion was hideous to me. Appalling. Yet would I do what was asked of me, would I do my duty? Indeed, I would.

Actually, despite my gratitude and best of intentions, by the end of that day I was fancifully thinking of deserting my blessed refuge at the Church-house, my cozy 'private apartments' that Mrs. Mazhar had so benevolently arranged for me. Even Mervyn had gone AWOL. The sight and sound of the multitudes queueing up to register for language lessons had driven him out of the ground-floor hall which had become a transient Tower of Babel. Like me, maybe he was thinking to jump ship; perhaps he was chilling out in some cheerful pub, swapping tall-ship tales or contemplating his future in a fug of despair.

But then, with reluctance, I recalled my stint across the ocean, aeons ago, as wayward Mothercomfort to immigrants and refugees. And what of my enforced tour-of-duty, striving to impart fragments of the Anglo lingo to the stationed intern troops? Well, my finest hour it was not, but could these past travails have some worth, after all? Was this to be my new mission? Despite the odds, hadn't I landed on my feet like a giddy hurricane making landfall? Shouldn't I also extend a hand to other life-travelers following in my wake?

Demoralizing thought. Right then, I was feeling too bone-tired and selfish to find the notion uplifting. I dragged myself to the corner Bakeshop, trading a few spare coins from Mrs. Mazhar's slush fund for a tuna salad roll before closing time. And then, trudging back upstairs, I filled the electric kettle from the deep square service sink and managed to make a half decent pot of tea. My quaint lily-shaped lamp burned bright, whereas the stained-glass arch overlooking the side alley was utterly dark. At eventide, the deserted building was as quiet as the grave. No matter. Most of the time, I tried to perceive my refuge as a cocoon of protection. If there were any visiting ghosts, they must be beneficent, I thought, this being a Church-house, after all, a hallowed space.

Even so, as I finished my solitary supper, exhaustion prevailed. During the past seven hours, non-stop, I had tested the Anglo proficiency of exactly 57 souls speaking every native language and dialect imaginable: Tamil, Malayalam, Russian, Ukrainian, Albanian, Turkish, Kurdish, Urdu, Bengali, Amharic and Oromo, Hindi, Portuguese, Lingala, Farsi, Arabic, and however many more. In hindsight, I probably could have marked them all as neophytes except for the rare few: the formerly wealthy Iranian, Nazhin, who had studied at a boarding school in Lucerne but whose parents had met their catastrophic end during the dying days of the Shah. Also, the brilliant Doctor D. hailing from South India, who was trying to qualify as medic for the National Health Service here in the Borough of Auld-Hallows. What harrowing experiences all these life-voyagers carried with them. What stories they were destined to share, once the language of the host country ceased being an opaque mystical code.

And just like them, all I had was a borrowed shelter, a raftered cell in a draughty church building surrounded by a handful of keepsakes. And the truth was, despite my wishful optimism, deep down, there were times when I mirrored the creeping melancholy of the place. Outside of my tiny lamplit enclosure of a sanctuary space, the old brick and timbers breathed mildew, rot, antique history. The solitary balustrades, trefoils and passageways reeked of graveyards and wooden trenches. And yet, for me there was simply no way out and no way back. What was my life, other than a trail of scorched earth and ashes, this lone path on which I stumbled through the mist.

On a happier note, thinking back, I still marvel at the way Mrs. Mazhar was able to detect a pressing need and then move heaven and earth, sometimes the expanding universe, to accommodate it. The sight and sound of all those yowling babes-in-arms on registration day sparked a shower of synapses in her brain.

"I'm arranging for a crèche for the children, while you teach the mums," she said.

"A crèche, what do you mean?"

"We've cleared out the empty space beside your classroom. Of course, it's temporary, but it will do for the first few weeks, don't you think?"

"But who's going to—?" I had the dreadful fear that she thought I could manage this as well.

"I've found a wonderful lady called Satya; she's going to set up the crèche herself as an independent project and I've already—"

"—started work on a fundraising application."

"Exactly."

And so, with impressive speed, a makeshift crèche was set up to accommodate the first contingent of ladies. Tentatively, one by one, despite a lot of infantile resisting, fussing and screaming, the children were entrusted to Satya's care. And then, dogged by hesitation, the ladies swarmed into my narrow rectangular space, which was equipped with a long wooden table, a scrappy blackboard and plain metal folding chairs. I suppose they felt reassured that the crèche area, housing their precious darlings, abutted directly on the other side. It must have eased Separation Anxiety a little, all around. Cheers! Now, Mrs. Mazhar was not a person who fixated on problems. No, she gazed right over and above these so-called problems, fixing and twisting, groping and hoping, until eventually a solution appeared. If not, well these same problems became regrettable facts of life.

And so, at first I was taken off guard. How, in tarnation, was I supposed to transmit to these hopeful learners the barebones of the language. I soon wisened up, though, in the manner of Pavlov's famous hound. I got conditioned into squeezing the crucial elements of my repertoire into the first frantic twenty minutes. Then came the pervasive racket of chanting and wailing until the raucous crèche population quietened down for its collective nap. Never mind, I learned to tolerate the disturbance, for once I laid eyes on three-year-old Aqib, who belonged to a lady named Khalida, I fell inanely, insanely, in love. More about that later.

I was soon introduced to the crèche manager, Satya, and her husband, Ramesh. Offering himself as a volunteer, he too had materialized out of the aether at just the right moment to assist Mrs. Mazhar in her mission. Here was this dark, handsome God-fearing Christian who looked as though he carried in his genes a direct lineage to the tragic Dravidian kings. Ramesh had already moved (in a manner of speaking) into the Church-house, arranging bits of furniture, stuffing a bookcase with books and binders, and wiring up some outdated electronics. For a personal touch, he pinned a life-sized poster of a celebrated Indian sage-healer, Sai Baba, on his office wall.

"The Lord guided me from my home, my original Garden of Eden," he told us, in a rush of confidences, as we were sipping tea and getting to know one another around the refectory table that afternoon. "Although it may seem like banishment, this is not so. Still, my dear mother wept as I left. She had already chosen a bride for me from an excellent family and begun the negotiations for our union. Mother, I told her as gently as I could, it is the Lord who decides the forthcoming steps of my earthly life. And my first step will be to travel to the Mother of all Colonial Empires, the city stronghold of great London itself. Surely, is a destiny there for me—!"

This was when Ramesh couldn't help turning toward Satya with a compulsive smile of adoration.

"—It was indeed so, for soon I was to meet my beautiful Satya at the High Street EconoMart, in the Tea Section. In an unheard-of liberty, I actually approached and spoke to her, invited her to Tea (with respect, not the bland British variety but a mix of fresh scraped cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, peppercorns and ginger) the kind of spiced tea that makes you float from the feast table, such a celestial kick-start it gives you, you have the impression you are walking on air. Anyway, it was with this Transcendental Tea that I first wooed her. Did I care one paisa whether she owned costly saris, silver or gold for her dowry? I knew she was to be my blest life's companion. I could not ask for more."

Satya, who was more reserved than her husband, sat beneath the stained-glass arches, a glaze of sunlight upon her asymmetrical features and creamy dark-mocha skin. I was intrigued by the delicate engraving of faint pox scars on both cheeks, her gleaming black braid of hair and single ruby nose jewel. As a twentieth-century migrant, she channeled her legendary gypsy ancestors in the voluptuousness of her beauty. Only one thing marred their bliss, admitted Ramesh. Sadly, they had as yet no children. "But we accept whatever is God's will," he said, with a strained, melancholy smile. As he said this, Satya turned away, staring at the amazing luminous stained-glass windows. I could not divine her expression; it was neither a smile nor a sigh.

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