Snapshot: My loving, devoted grandparents
This picture of my grandparents, she wearing her trademark floral sari and he a white kurta pyjama, was recently found in the house of one of my great-aunts. No one in the family knows for sure when the picture was taken, but the consensus is it was not long after they were married in 1940.
It revealed a new dimension of their relationship to us – there is the vivacity of youth and romance as they gaze into the camera, he embracing her in playful affection. By the time I got to know them, they were already in their 60s and their marriage had evolved into comfortable companionship, born of familiarity, shared interests and a shared vocation.
My grandparents’ marriage, though traditionally arranged, was a late one by the standards of the day – my grandmother was 21 and my grandfather was four years older, because both had gone to university. She had a BA from Lahore and he an MA in English literature from Agra.
They settled in a remote town in Rajasthan where my grandfather became headmaster of a school. My mother, their only child, was born there. At the age of five, she was sent to relatives in Delhi so she could study in a Catholic convent. It was highly unusual in India at that time for anyone to have just one child, and to send a girl away to get a good education was almost unheard of.
In 1960, my grandparents moved to Mussoorie, a hill station in the Himalayas, where they started their own boarding school on the site of a ruined Victorian orphanage, which they gradually restored. Together, they ran Pinewood for a quarter of a century and it became a well-known institution with up to 100 residential pupils from all over India.
They had no head for business, though, and the school did not make much money. Whatever they earned, they spent on books. Over the years, my grandfather collected hundreds of leather-bound volumes that he ordered from England each month and his library was his pride and joy.
As children, my sister and I spent our summer holidays at Pinewood. Despite their busy schedules, our grandparents showered us with love and attention, regaling us with old family stories each night, playing card games with us and treating us to lavish 4pm teas. We had free run of their library and it was there that we developed our love of reading.
My grandfather died at 92, immersed in his beloved books until the very end, and my grandmother followed just over a year later. Theirs was a remarkable partnership spanning 67 years. We remember them for their love of learning, their idealism, their resilience, and the spirit of adventure that made them so unusual in the India of their times.
Kanika Hope
Playlist: Song that softened the blow of losing my job
Gone Fishing by Chris Rea
“You can waste a whole lifetime / Trying to be / What you think is expected of you”
I was made redundant from what I had always thought was a job for life, which included a company car and all the usual perks that went with the position. The company was taken over and the redundancy was swift and savage. I had worked long, hard hours in the job, most of the time away from home, fully committed to what I was doing.
We had two young children and a mortgage and I was now on the way home to give the family the bad news.
We had always been big fans of Chris Rea and when I arrived home, Gone Fishing was on the kitchen radio – it was very apt and somehow seemed to soften the blow. Whenever we’ve heard the track since, it has been a hairs on the back of the neck moment.
Phil Edgar
We love to eat: The honey cake I always baked for Dad
Ingredients
225g unsalted softened butter
150g soft light brown sugar
5 tbsp orange or lavender blossom honey
4 large eggs
2 tbsp Greek yogurt
2 tsp vanilla extract
260g self-raising flour
40g self-raising wholemeal flour
Pinch of salt
Place all wet ingredients plus sugar and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Beat wet ingredients plus sugar until smooth. Fold dry ingredients into the wet in two stages. Beat to ensure all ingredients are thoroughly incorporated. Pour batter into a lined 9in spring-form cake tin. Bake for 45 mins at 160C or until a toothpick comes out clean. Dust with icing sugar and sprinkle with lavender flowers.
When I was 11, this was my signature cake. When his deep Isaac Hayes bass laughter filtered into the kitchen, I knew my dad was coming to tease me about my latest baking efforts. “You making cake, Lou?” Voice full of expectation, then bass laughter again.
“I’m making a honey cake!” I’d say.
“All right,” Dad would reply, content to wait for the first warm golden slice and confident that another would cheer up his packed lunch the next day.
We loved baking when he was in the right mood on a Saturday night, and Dad would make Johnny cakes, a kind of simple bread consisting of cornmeal, flour, water and a little fat. This type of staple probably originated with the diets of early Native Americans throughout the US but was also prepared and eaten in Jamaica. Like scones, everyone has a version.
Being inspired and encouraged to bake by Dad made me feel special. He enjoyed baking but was an engineer, steadfast and conscientious in his strong work ethic. He came to England from Jamaica in the early 1950s as a skilled craftsman, who retrained as a mechanical engineer alongside his older brother, who chose civic engineering. I was told Dad had bought his first house within the first few years of settling in near Walworth Road in south London.
The honey cake was my invention, but inspired by Dad. It was sent to aunties and uncles far and wide, from Bedfordshire to Hammersmith, in heavily taped cardboard boxes. Fast forward a fair few decades and I am running an artisan cake business in the centre of London selling my creations. This simple cake, always the first to sell out, became an all-out star in the firmament of my cake stall.
Lois Lawrence
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