A Lady in a Sari...
In 1897 at the peak of the reign Queen Victoria and the British Empire, a letter arrived at the home of Ginney Street in the English midlands. A letter from her sister and husband in India,the written contents of which are unknown, the enclosures of photograghs taken in an Indian studio survived in the family through the years.
Two were of Ginneys sister and her Husband in normal English
dress of the period and one
of thelady in more formal wear. The third is a photogragh of the spinster
second sister Aggie
at around the same time ,both were missionary ladies
,possibly non conformists.Aggies dress was in the form of an Indian Sari.
Aggie is the mistery lady and a lady with a secret,
' A lady in a Sari'. The photograghs lay quietly in an albu111somewhere and eventually into the posession
of Gertrude Isabel Lucy Birch the daughter of one of the three sisters, who married William Edward
Mason , the writers mother and father.
The photograghs lay almost
forgotten as many family documents do for the many years, through the nineteen ; tens;
twenties;and thirties, then history began to assert
itself with the birth of daughter Joyce Veronica in 1930 , followed by Malcolm Edgar in 1935 both in the month of August
..the
second world war brought families
together and sometime
in the fourties we met the sister
who wrote the letter
and enclosed the photograghs, Aunt Maggie a lovely lady,her
husband died about then and I was given gold cuff links and collar studs worn by that man
and I still have them in their grey box. We never met the spinster sister
Aggie or come to think of it, mention of her
in conversation of our parents , thus she remained just a photogragh hidden somewhere, this mystery lady 'A Lady in a Sari' . Itwould
take another fifty years before she
had her moment in the sun and
a secret unlocked.
Aggie would have been Malcolms great aunt and would not have been of importance to him and his sister, had not Malcolm become involved in the Indian sub continent or more precisely the part which became Pakistan after partition a place where Malcolm was to feel so at home during his business visits in the nineteen sixties.
By the late nineteen fifties Malcolm had gotten through mastoids, Polio and his basic education and ready for the big time. The age of fifteen it was Malcolm who said to his parents Gertrude and William (Ted) ,I want to go on to College to study Mechanical Engineering, dad replied, oh dear how do you propose doing that, easy dad and together we set out to achieve my ambition,, college university and to the Austin Motor Company later to become The British Motor Corporation and the lauchiung of Malcolm onto the World stage of travel to over seventy Countries.
The early nineteen sixties
saw Malcolm on a number of visits
to Pakistan, of course in Karachi; Lahore ; Rawwalplindi; Peshsawah and the Swat valley.
Friends I had made whilst at the factory the son and workshop manager of the Austin distributor were back home and
we worked together
at there setting up of their assembly plant and Truck ,marketing. Ivisited many other distributors factories etc in all continents, it was Pakistan
that was so familier to me and where
I felt so at
home.
Fast forward to 1996.------------
I was walking past the post office down the main street of
our maintown
of Batemans Bay , New South wales , Australia just 275 kilometres south of Sydney at the mouth of the river Clyde
and the sea, our home being about 36 kilometres upstream. There sitting
outside of a cafe was·an Indian lady and her daughter and as I approached she smiled and I smiled back, which was very nice I thought . Not ten minutes later
I was about to pass again and goodness me, the good lady stood
up and said may I speak to you, certainly
came my reply, intrigued to say the least. She explained that she saw me in my light tan clothes,
battered brief case and walking stick that so reminded her of her father.
It was then that I told her of my association with Pakistan and how I felt at home there, Goodness me she said, because her family after partition moved east to the India as we know it today and she and her husband were visiting, in fact he was in the estate agent just by. Being me I then proceeded to expound on my stays in Pakistan and by chance I told her that my favourite city was Peshawar. To both our astonishments, she announced that it was in fact that vey city that her family came from, all thoses years agoe, 1948 I think .. I will curse the day or some such saying, that I did not ask the ladies name, I think it was because husband came to say hello, a big chap one of those tall seroius faced fellas and the darkness off the southern areas. Anyway he was very nice and we parted and she gave me a peck on the cheek, probably remembering her dad and her childhood- A Lady in a Sari.
Around this time Patricia and I remembered that when visiting
my sister Joyce in England,
we had seen some photograghs of relatives past, who had been missionaries in India in the late nieteenth centry. A letter
to my sister was called
and done, May 1996 saw the arrival of her response
and the first real indicators of my mothers side of the family involvement in India. There were three photograghs sent to one of three
sisters none as aunt Maggie,
the photograghs made in Bombay were dated 1897, amazing the year after the land where we live here in Australia was first surveyed.
Once again the lady in a Sari lay in the quiet darkness of an envelope in a file here in Australia, until that is Malcolm and Patricia attended
a local spiritual centre in the Australian spring of 2009, the events that followed
were extra ordinary,to say the least..
A medium stood up and a talked on her life
and spiritual journey
,following this she began to give the group messages
from spirit and in due course she came to me. She looked at me quietly
for a minute and then said that an older gentleman was with us, possibly
your grandfather who passed over many years agoe and wished you well. Then came the question, was he Indian as his image was certainly of the Indian subcontinent.
When I recovered from what the goodlady had said, I repeated in brief my connection with the area and said that one day when she returns to the centre I will bring some photograghts of long gone relatives, but ever present in photographic form.
The lady medium, a one Mrs Rita Terrant from near Bega in the far south coast
of New South Wales, returned
to the spiritual centre in late summer
february 2010, no reading for malcolm this time ,but after the meeting she said ah the Punjabi
man, Malcolm isnt't
it . Hello again I have brought
with me the phoptographs I mentioned last time you were here and we sat down with Rita and a fella medium.
The three photographs, one of Mggie;
one of Maggie and her husband and one of the mysterious
Aggie were laid out and immediately Mrs Tarrant
was drawn to the one of Aggie, The Lady in a Sari
and said without hessitation this women has a secret
and it comes from within the Sari. This was followed by the second medium
who said similar
words.
The million dollar question is therefore , was Aggie pregnant and was she the real mother of Malcolm's Mum Gertrude Issabelle Lucy Mason. In the Victorian era it was quite possible that Aggie came home had the baby and was brought up by Ginnie Street, then Mrs Ginnie Birch. Of course my grandfather a gentleman from the Punjab or the border tribal area of north west Pakistan, to Malcolm it certainly feels that way.
