Brightlands
I’m meant to be working but, sod it, I’ve hit a wall. Being self-employed, sometimes I find it incredibly hard to motivate myself and at the moment I’m still a little distracted by the shoebox. Anyway, let’s carry on from where I left off…
My grandmother and her brother and sisters grew up in a house called Brightlands in Insein, a borough within Rangoon. Annie had died and so a fleet of servants and maids looked after the children, mainly Burmese residents from Indian backgrounds who spoke Hindi. They would fuss and coo over the four of them as if they were their own and taught my grandmother to speak Hindi too. My great aunties would share fond memories of being taken to school in chauffeur driven cars and having all of their meals prepared for them by the servants. This might explain why my granny was such a terrible cook. The girls were also given a narrow gold bangle for every birthday up until the age of 21. My grandmother had tiny thin wrists, which was handy, otherwise she would never have taken these bangles off. That said, when she died she still had all 21 of them on, so she rarely removed them. Sadly, my mother has only retained 3 or 4 of these bangles but to me they’re of great sentimental value.
My great grandfather, Andrew, was very protective of the children, in particular the girls, and I remember my granny telling me about how he refused to let them swim in Hwlaga Lake as he was scared they’d drown. As a result my grandmother never learnt to swim but was always very taken with the English seaside when she came to the UK, must have been the novelty factor.
You can see a photo of my grandmother in her school days in the post below, taken whilst she was attending a girls convent school in Rangoon. Apparently it was run by the Daughters of the Cross, a religious order that also run several Catholic girls schools in the UK. She, Edna and Anne all attended that school whilst Rennie was sent to an all-boys British run boarding school in India. Rennie was an excellent cricketer and whilst at school was asked to join the Indian national team. However, as in those days Cricket was not a ‘professional’ sport and Andrew had high academic hopes for Rennie, my great grandfather didn’t allow Rennie to take up the offer.
