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1948 -2008 |
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Mike was such a
dear friend to me. We first met a long time ago in 1955 when we were just seven
to eight years old in Scottish Canadian Cottage and it so happened that we
were in the same class, 3rd Babies as it was known then. Third
Babies would be the equivalent of Class 1 in the Kindergarten. Those were the days
when the world was at our feet. We had no worries; the cottage aunties would
take care of our comfort and security and if you could call it “worry”, the
only fear we had was being rejected by our girlfriends or rather the girls we
had a crush on. Life was beautiful; the future was ours for the taking. Life in
Kindergarten was enjoyable and what fun Mike, John Doyle and I would have.
John was another friend of ours also in the same cottage. I can recall the
times when we would sneak into the Teacher’s Common room during morning
break and help ourselves to a teaspoonful or two of sugar which we would
share behind the classroom wall. It was all great fun and it never occurred
to us that we were doing wrong but that it was plain mischief. About 1959, Mike
and his eldest brother Wilfred were shifted to Wiston Cottage but Mike
and I maintained our friendship all those years until the early sixties when
there was an exodus of Anglo Indians from India and Mike’s parents also
decided to leave for England. We kept in touch by mail for several years but
Mike not being a great correspondent, gradually stopped writing and we lost
contact. I learnt about Mike
again some ten years later in 1972 when I met Eddie Lamb in Kalimpong
during the Home’s Birthday celebrations. Eddie and Mike’s father Hector
happened to be friends and contemporaries in the Homes. It was during my
first visit to England in 1975 when Mike and I renewed our friendship. By
then Mike had returned to “Civvy Street” after a spell with the Royal
Air Force, mostly in Cyprus. I should mention here that his brother
Wilfred, who was both his hero and mentor, had died tragically in
an accident in the early 1960s while serving in the Royal Air Force. He was
only 20 at the time. We kept in touch
ever since and every year or so when I would visit London, we would meet up
in his house or in London in some of the quieter pubs and drink beer to our
hearts’ content and talk about old times, our families and children and of
course about other things that men like to talk about! As I had my three
children educated in England, I needed a local guardian and so it was that I
turned to Mike to be one of my children’s local guardians and he did a
tremendous job. Those were happy years when Mike had a beautiful home with
wife Janice and the two children Paul and Tammy. Whenever my children
returned to India for the holidays which were as often as three times a year,
Mike would pack a whole lot of goodies like chocolates, sweets and video
cassettes that he had recorded from TV programs, as movies on video cassettes
were very limited in those years. The popular TV shows were The
A-Team, Knight Rider and Air Wolf, and I still have these in my video
library. Mike was a man who
kept his personal problems to himself. He never once mentioned to me that his
marriage was in trouble until one summer when I visited him at his house to
find that Janice had left the family house. They had separated. I could see
that it broke his heart but somehow he kept it to himself. However, whenever
we met, he would still call Janice over the phone and later would ask me
to speak with her as well. He never thought of remarrying but kept
himself busy with his grand children. The last time Mike
and I met was in the summer of 2007. We met several times in the various pubs
of London off Oxford Street. My daughter Jeannette, who had become very close
to Mike invariably, joined us. She was in our company often and Mike enjoyed
teasing her and also having great debates on the current affairs of the
country, over several pints of beer and a plate of bangers and mash, (my favourite pub food) we spent time together! My last pub meeting
with Mike was in one of those on Paddington Street where we watched beautiful girls pole dancing. Mike
always looked on the happier side of life and that’s what I admired about him
and that’s how I would like him to be remembered. On the night of
Monday the 10th of March 2008, I received a phone call from his
son Paul informing me that Mike had had a massive heart attack on Sunday
night, at about 9.30 pm, from which he never recovered. Mike
was 59 years old and just approaching his 60th birthday. I could
not make it to his funeral on 19th March, but by daughter
Jeannette was there to represent me. Curiously, she met Mike’s elder brother,
John, for the first time, but she
felt listening to John speaking was so much like listening to Mike!
He will be much missed by his family, children,
grandchildren and friends and especially by his mother Beryl with whom he was
living. I too shall miss Mike enormously. There was a very special
bond between us. He was more than a brother to me; he was my very special
friend. Robert Street (A
Friend) - A member of DGH Alumni dot com |
