One kiss on the cheek, one kiss on the nose, one kiss on the other cheek’. This was Marjorie’s bedtime ritual in Delhi with her Indian nursemaid, her Ayah, who had been her primary carer since the age of seven months. This gesture was in clear defiance of her mother’s orders to her: ‘You must not kiss Ayah goodnight. She’s a servant and an Indian’. By the age of three Marjorie had navigated her way between the powerful emotional bond she had formed with her Ayah (she was called Byah) and the duty and obedience she owed to her mother. She rapidly learned to comply with her parents’ chosen status but at the same time to cherish her attachment to Byah who cared for her till she was eight when they were abruptly separated forever.
This is the story of Marjorie’s journey from the arms of her Ayah to her highly conformist, institutionalised period in a boarding school on her return to England, followed by her much later-in-life unravelling and processing of her early life distress and resistance to the racism around her. Her life story reflects aspects of the British empire and colonial life and its legacy that are now being extensively re-examined by both colonial and colonised generations.
Marjorie was born in England, in 1937, and at the age of seven months, travelled to India where, embarking from the ship on the quayside, her mother handed her over to Byah who had already been looking after her older sister for four years. Her father totally embraced how the colonial system encouraged a sense of rigid superiority—there was no other way to rule. Marjorie was aware of this contradiction from very early on: ‘In my heart was this nasty racist stuff I was brought up around. I loathed it. I loved Byah’.
Life with Byah was one of routine and safety: the two sisters were woken, washed, and dressed by Byah, before going to breakfast. Every afternoon they went to Lodhi Gardens, the huge park in the middle of Delhi where the children, accompanied by their Ayahs, would play and explore. The contradiction whereby the British colonials handed over their parental duties to native servants they regarded as inferior and uncivilised meant that the children often had a very different, more relaxed experience. The children were then returned to the homeland to go to boarding school.
The big change and emotional rupture for Marjorie came when her father was posted back to England. “The war ended on May 8, 1945. My father came back from work and said: ‘We’re going home’. My Byah asked, ‘And what is going to happen to me?’ She had already been with the family for 12 years. My father did nothing to keep her with us.” The parting was appalling: ‘The next day Byah left in a rickshaw facing backwards. My sister and I stood, howling our eyes out, just watching her disappear into the distance. And that was it. There was no sense of being able to stay in touch with her.’
The ‘homeland’ Marjorie came back to was an immediate post-war Britain, struggling to recover from damage, challenged by economic hardship, and with basic necessities in short supply. Marjorie’s ongoing relationship with her mother continued to hit unexplained and harsh barriers: ‘A letter came and I said to my mother “It’s got Indian stamps. Is it from Byah?” And she took the letter out of my hand, and said, “No, Byah is dead”, and walked out of the room’. That brusque revelation of Byah’s death further terminated Marjorie’s hopes of somehow being reunited with her. Much later Marjorie found her mother’s address book and saw an address for Byah. Her mother had been in touch with Byah but had chosen to terminate the bond and never told her daughter that her Ayah was still alive.
Between 1890 and 1940, over 1,200 Ayahs entered Britain on international ships as British administrators travelled back and forth to India. Their subsequent destitution was noted by concerned white British women, who felt that Christian duty should be applied to these: they decided to create a refuge that would not only give them a roof but also civilise the heathen ‘other’. The first hostel for Ayahs was founded in 1891 in Aldgate in East London. In 1921 the Home was moved again to a larger house in King Edward Road in Hackney. This Ayahs’ Home had 30 rooms and could accommodate over 100 women. The Home not only gave sanctuary to the Ayahs, it also served as an ‘employment agency’ finding return passages with new families.
In 2009, Marjorie went back to India with her daughter. When she entered Delhi Airport, tears streamed down her face. When they went to the hotel close to where she had lived, the doorman at the front said, ‘Welcome to the hotel, Madam’ and Marjorie responded, ‘But I’m coming home!’ The next day she asked how to get to the Lodhi Gardens and he showed them on a map how to walk down the central roads towards the park’s principal entrance. However, as memories of her childhood routine surfaced, she turned away from the main streets, followed by her daughter, and worked her way down a busy lane, then another, till she was in front of a doorway. She reached out and opened the door into the back of the familiar, unchanged Lodhi Gardens. Using her memory of the shortcut, she was back in her place of play and safety. Time stood still: she could bring all she had surfaced, shared, relearned, and processed to a place in her mind of love and care. With Byah at her side.