was a second marriage. And while their family were atypical in being urban Indo-Trinidadians, many were surprised at her in-depth knowledge of the life of Indians in the countryside. Few also knew of the Naipauls’ precarious finances, never seeing beyond the smart dresses they sewed themselves or the polished wooden floors of their home. What I also discovered from The Naipauls of Nepaul Street was that the self-effacing woman in front of me had sacrificed her own education and intellectual fulfilment several times for what she saw as the greater good of her family. Akal possesses a deep sense of duty and loyalty to her family <strong>—</strong> a loyalty that meant she always kept Ma close, nursed her dying sister, and loves her youngest sibling fiercely, even if that baby sister, Nalini, is now herself a grandmother. Even as Akal exposes the chaos and uncertainty of their upbringing, it is clear it comes from a place of love. The quiet of the house is interrupted by her eldest son Rai dropping by for an unexpected visit. Her charming husband appears, and announces teatime is over. Would I try one of his famous martinis? And, just like that, I am welcomed into their daily routine of a dry martini, as we watch the sun set fire to the sky. n In Nepaul Street An excerpt from chapter three of The Naipauls of Nepaul Street, by Savi Naipaul Akal My father had bought the house in Nepaul Street from a young man and his mother, named Nieves. Of Portuguese descent, Mr Nieves worked as a solicitor’s clerk. He had supervised the building of the house, where sills and frames were often crooked (I know, because I made the draperies). Apparently his aged mother was no longer able to climb the steep and uneven steps to the upper floor. Our home, which seems so small today, was bright and beautiful and inviting. A two-storey building, the bedrooms and the bathroom were on the upper floor, while the livingroom, dining-room, and kitchen were on the ground floor. Upstairs, between the two bedrooms and facing the street was an open-sided gallery on the southwestern corner which was immediately turned into a half-bedroom for Vidia. The wooden partitions between the rooms had open woodwork grilles at the tops. The windows remained open except during rain, and the winds skipped through both bedrooms. The openness of the ground floor, with its lattice panels on which a bleeding-heart vine grew, mitigated the smallness of the house and allowed plenty of light and good ventilation. No part of that small, compact house was dark or claustrophobic. Our parents’ bedroom had its SlumberKing bed, with the hat-rack pinned on the back of one of its doors. A tiny desk was in the corner and later they would add a cypre wardrobe with a full-length mirror. The girls’ bedroom had a tall iron four-poster with a smaller bed in which Kamla and Shiva slept. There was room for a decent corridor between the beds. We also had a bureau with four drawers to hold our belongings and a draped makeshift cupboard behind one of the doors that held our dresses, with shoe-boxes on the top. The two-tiered cotton curtains, graduating from cretonne to broderie anglaise over the years, allowed privacy and easy laundering. All laundry was done by hand over a washtub by our mother. With Pa’s gardening skills, through each bedroom we could view greenery: the hills and acacia tree to the north, our neighbours the Sudans’ breadfruit tree to the south, and our struggling plum tree to the east, which finally grew into view bearing few fruit but shiny leaves. That the property faced west into the afternoon sun was a definite drawback. But with everyone out of the house except on weekends and during the school holidays, we managed the heat of the early afternoons. We had a very small yard with a curved driveway to the garage. In retrospect, the size of the plot made it easier to manage, with a tiny garden on three sides and a back area for the laundry lines. Our arrival at 26 Nepaul Street was unforgettable. There was a hubbub of activity involving only our family. Pa and Vido had to mount the beds while Ma and Kamla were putting up the salmon-pink draperies and encasing the cushions of the Morris chairs with matching flowered cretonne. The Morris chairs had come as part of the deal with the house. With polished floors and matching rugs, a small table and a shining brass pot with three legs and the heads of lions, and the smell of new linoleum on the kitchen floor, we were buzzing with joy and experiencing a lightness that would carry on for days. Mira, Shiva, and I had nothing to do but keep out of the way. Sati must have been doing some kind of pleasurable chore like hanging our teacups on the cup-hooks left by the previous owners. The Rediffusion box on the wall in the gallery upstairs provided news and music, and our world seemed complete. (These boxes, or closed-circuit transmitters, rented by the month and operated by Radio Trinidad, were everywhere in homes before radios became cheap and the government granted licences for other stations to operate.) With time, the old kitchen table that held our pots and pans would be replaced and Ma would enjoy working on her two-burner kerosene stove. We as children were happy and carefree, but we had no idea what this, our new home, would have meant to our parents, who had struggled over the years to get to home base. The Naipauls of Nepaul Street (ISBN 97818452323648) is published by Peepal Tree Press 56 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM
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