Frau P - With Needle, Hammer And Tongs
Some dialogues, or rather whatever strange
game was being played, with Frau P, were quite extraordinary.
We had our first surprise with life in Germany
with the washing machine. Used to the American system, I went to look at the
wash in about forty five minutes. No deal. The trips repeated a dozen times
until in about three hours it was done. No one had thought of telling us, and I
am glad it was not the beautiful duplex apartment with about six large rooms on
the third floor we had liked, since then it would have been trips four or five
floors down out of the apartment. This was the house with four floors including
basement and attic, all equally large. So the trips consisted of one floor down
from living level to basement at a time - within the privacy of the house, with
no need to dress up for the climate.
When we talked it over with other people some
of them told us of the other side - that when they visited U.S. they were
totally convinced the wash was not good enough, and repeated it two or three
times until it was closer to the three hours they thought it needed. But Frau P
was another story. As I was talking to her about how washing machines in India
are based on American model, and not only wash but - special adaptation for
India - spin dry as well, within an hour, she suddenly interrupted me and asked
if we were homesick.
Well -no, not yet anyway, and this was not the
first time abroad for either of us, having spent considerable number of years
abroad. I asked her why she asked. She candidly said, it did not make sense
that washing machines (or anything else for that matter) was better in India,
we must have been deluded by homesickness.
That surprised me in turn, and we talked it
over, and I assured her my talk about the machines was based on facts. She was
surprised at that. How could anything be better than German? That too in India,
of all the places? This theme continued, with her coming at various angles at
us, and the hurting attempts got more explicit and undisguised later.
She once talked of how tropical flowers do not
smell so good "perhaps because they die too soon and do not have time for
scent to develop"!
Now we expats from India had spent forever
talking over the lack of rich flavours and scents in U.S. and Europe, those are
sort of either delicate or simply less, while India hits you with richness
everywhere of scent, smell, flavour and taste. (Anyone with doubts on those
scores try mango and jackfruit season, or even roses and jasmine. Be anywhere
around a major city market or anywhere on a bus near the major markets of
Mumbai.) Our thinking was that it takes the scorching sun to bring out those
flavours, tastes, scents. And Europe has no contradiction to offer, in this
respect. And certainly mango harvest suffers if summer is interspersed with
cool wind and rains that bring relief to those who cannot stand the heat.
Lotuses are best in colour and scent with heat, too.
In fact if one compares the Indian indigenous
variety of anything, with another that is either imported or hybrid, guess
which one has more flavour, taste, scent ... ? Indian of course. Coconuts of
hybrid sort grow fast and give big size fruit in five years' time; Indian
variety, twenty years to grow and bear smaller size fruit, but oh, the taste,
the flavour!
So we responded with all this we knew, and she
said - but orchids in Venezuela were without smell. We had to explain that we
did not know and could not explain about Venezuela, and orchids are perhaps not
the best example to compare scent richness in different places.
In fact later on in winter my hibiscuses went
lighter colour in winter on the window sill, from deep red to pink to finally
white, since they got no sun and the only heat was from room central heating
that kept them alive. So we understood the importance of sun in bringing out
rich colour, too.
Another time I talked over with something of a
more personal nature with the neighbour who said she was not acquainted with
these others - the driving instructor or Frau P - and the next time Frau P came
over she went on repeating a clue word from my conversation with the neighbour.
That was quite suspicious, and I kept ignoring her clues and not giving her
whatever it was she was trying to be clever to get, but it did arouse
suspicions that what was going on was more of a KGB sort of keeping an eye on
the foreigners and double checking everything with two seemingly unconnected
sources.
We were told that most people did not wish to
rent to foreigners, and a colleague from Wales had the experience of being told
that he was "not that sort of foreigner". Another foreigner, an
American woman (of the right colour) married to a German, talking with him at a
train station in English had the curious experience of being told "why
don't you go back to Turkey"! And then there were the bunch with young
families who told us we could not use the elevator, we had to walk down the
stairs - and pushed us away physically.
What the country has been through is not a
change of heart overall quite so much as a defeat, and consequent obedience to
the masters who were temporarily there to tell them what to do and to think,
but now they have gone and people are coming our with true colours, some good
heart and some old guard, some new consciousness and then again some who have
not finished fighting the war, only they are trying to find new grounds to win
it on. They do seem to think that the new ground is psychological, with most
people in Asia and other gullible places easy to dupe.
Frau P told us right in the beginning that
although she does not wish to rake up the past she has told her children that
since they benefit from the state they share in the sins of the past before
them, and so she was willing to answer any questions we might need to ask about
the holocaust. We had none, but I thought of something in a minute and said -
"by the way, what about the paintings and so forth that were taken from
the Jews sent to concentration camps, where are those things?" She was
more than taken aback - and a little huffily said, they were returned to the
same people after the war. Since that was impossible for those who were massacred,
six million of them, it was not a true picture but it was either accept the lie
or have an acrimonious beginning with her and the country. We did not dispute
it in words then, but she understood that we had not accepted the blatant and
convenient lie.
Once in later times when it was refered to,
she explained that although she was born after the war she had some background;
and the persecution of Jews stemmed from the church telling the people for past
centuries that they were to blame for the crucifixion of Jesus. This had been
told us in Germany by another person too, not long before that; and it was the
same obfuscation and lie in both cases - we pointed out that His relatives and
followers were Jews who went weeping after the procession to the execution, and
claimed and tended to His body later; while it was the occupying power, the
Roman Empire, who carried out that and other such executions to subjugate the
people, and to blame them who in fact suffered before, with and after Him was
as convenient a lie as a husband claiming his wife forced him to have children,
or worse.
To explain more, it would be akin to British
blaming Indian soldiers or policemen for Jalianwala Bagh, blaming Indian jail
employees and therefore India for various political executions, and even Indian
National Congress for execution of Bhagat Singh since they did not go on an all
out war against British power then to prevent it, and so forth. That would be a convenient lie to divide and massacre people, but no more, nothing but a lie. And so is blaming the crucifixion on Jewish people, the relatives and friends and original disciples and generally people of Jesus
subjugated by Rome that inflicted and carried out executions and tortures, crucifixions and more, of more than one Jewish person in that era, until driving them out post the massacre at Masada.
Later some time she said something about the
issue of people cannot be forced to get along or something to that effect - and
I made one important distinction clear by saying, you don't have to marry
everybody, we don't want that either, but you do have to have civility in
behaviour, and that includes abstaining from violence in physical and other
terms. It seemed to be a distinction that was new. Then again it was so in
other cases, where the distinction of may and must is not clear to them
perhaps. For example the weekend rules.
In Germany all shops close on Sundays and are
open only up to four p.m. on Saturdays. Weekdays are not much better, with the
result that every working person needs a wife to shop for him or her. One must
finish all cleaning and so forth on Saturdays and any work you are seen doing
on Sundays is illegal and neighbours frown - all a bit scary. Besides, if you
run out of some necessity such as milk for a baby, it is no go, it is hard to
think of any place other than possibly a gas station (petrol bunk) shop; or if
one needs a medicine for anyone you have to look up which particular pharmacy
in town is open that particular day, and hope you are within hours for that.
I pointed out that this was a severe
inconvenience and not quite today's spirit, and I was told "you cannot
object to religion".
(Those who object to anything of our religion,
please note this answer. Nothing in our religion would ever deprive a bay of
milk or a patient of medicine.)
Anyway, I pointed out that many Germans did
fill tax form as "atheist", and besides there are others whose
religious day is not Sunday but either Saturday or Friday, and the point is to
let them open shops on days they could and close when they must. She came back
with "such freedom will close small shops and keep only big ones
open", and again I pointed out that this was not necessarily true. The
difference is of must and may, and those who can would and those who would not
are fine too. That idea seemed new. (It works fine in Britain though, as it does in
India.)
Then it was time to trot out the family card.
Sunday is when families must be together, and employers should not ask them to
work. The contradiction is that one thing always available on Sundays even late
is pubs and bars and restaurants, and there is no shortage of alcohol. So there
goes the family theory - since those workers must have families too. And what
sort of a holy day bars milk for babies, medicine for patients but not alcohol
for drinkers?
Once she brought her youngest daughter over,
and I gave some Indian snacks - kadbole - to her, with milk following her
feeling the taste of minuscule amount of chili powder. She - the daughter -
went on to have more, and exclaimed how the snack was "sharp but very
tasty" - sharp means what in English is confusingly called hot but has
nothing to do with temperature of food - and was very happy. Frau P later came
back with how happy her daughter was, and exclaimed "you have some ability
with children" - I wanted to tell her, it is only a clear heart and love,
that is all. Children see more with their heart, their souls are not yet
obscured by world's muck. I refrained from stating the obvious though,
unwilling to fight against starting another murky path she would try to tow us
into.
Soon after she did find something to go after
us with that provided a wound lasting for a while. It was unnecessary and quite
nasty, evil, even. It was a personal attack on personal choices and/or gaps or
deprivations in personal life that had nothing to do with them, certainly. I
wondered later if it was due to her feeling of inadequacy after meeting us.
She had been good at and keen to do science
but no women went for it and she felt alone in class in college, and changed,
and then met her future husband and so did not switch back, she had explained
in the beginning. So she had graduated, married, had four daughters (she gave a
lengthy explanation about her husband being so wonderful as to not be upset
about it even though his fellow men taunted him about not producing a son, she
told us) and worked as a teacher to foreign students.
Perhaps some of this - about four daughters
and no sons and so forth - was about manipulating us to speak about such
matters in India and how people are about them. She dangled the hook and we did
not bite. Then she went on about how people do not want responsibility and want
only fun, and it was hard to imagine what was fun without children, so I asked
her, perplexed, "do you mean disco every night or something?" - she
did not clarify.
Then she went on and on about various relatives
of hers, once going to the extent of how unfair it was that the state provided
for all old people equally whether they had children or not - and I was really
disgusted, thinking, did you not love your children, are you so desperately
poor you could not feed them, if not why this
state-should-pay-us-for-having-children?
As it is Germany does encourage having
children hugely and there are various discounts or free tickets with "two
adults and any number of children" and so forth. But this vendetta against
a relative who did not have children and so forth - I really wanted to ask, if
you regret having yours why blame others, and if not why are you so vicious
about them enjoying their life? I did not, of course. She did not refrain from
her attacks, and I went on retreating from any obvious exposure of her nature.
I now know where the source of all those
attacks was - philosophically it was the Kitchen Children and Church diktat of the pre war regime, the
philosophy that dictates people should reproduce so that various authorities do
not lose power; personally it was another matter, and there had to be more than
a network reporting about us, there were those who were directing those spars
she came at us with from time to time.
I wonder - perhaps if she were left to herself
she would be a good person, but she was afraid of seeing the truth and had gone
to find a support to hold on to, and was instructed as to how to attack, with
hammer and tongs and needles.
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