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Youpee, or UP: My grandparents’ formidable landlady: An Excerpt from my Memoir-in-Progress, I Lift up my Eyes to the Hills

By Anita Mathias


51 Chimbai Road was an old house, its yellowing “white-wash” molting flakes that my sister and I surreptitiously peeled, poking their jagged edges beneath our nails with a nervous pleasure in their sharpness.  In the narrow strip behind the house and the high back walls, banana and papayas fell unharvested, their sweetness wasted.
 “He never accepted a bribe,” my father said of his father-in-law.  “And everyone else goes into customs only for the bribes;” deliberately turning blind for cash while smugglers introduced gold, synthetic sarees, watches, perfume, western music, juicers, or the coveted “mixie-grinder” into India’s protectionist markets.  
“And so,” he continued, “his colleagues own huge beach houses, but he still rents”—the lower floor of the rambling two storey house facing the sea, in which my mother was born. 
Their formidable old spinster landlady, Cissy (Cecilia) Valladares, lived in her lair on the upper floor of this house she’d inherited which—despite Bombay’s rent control laws—provided her with a comfortable predictable income, and the consequent ironic fate of becoming one of those un/fortunate people whose days are abysses of infinite space with no Jacob’s ladder of work across them.
When the Coelhos talked about her, they metonymically spelled out her name UP so we children wouldn’t realize who was being talked of, and so, with  traditional Indian good manners, I called her Aunty Youpee, and a new code had to be invented. 
She had once blocked my path, her face, a map of warts and wens beneath her Medusa curls.  “What mischief did you do that you got those?” she pointed at a bruise on my tom-girls’ face.  I pointed up in turn, and asked, “What mischief did you do that you got those?” 
She gasped, my grandfather gasped, pulling me away, though he, shy, correct, unfailingly polite could barely conceal his merriment.  “Anita!” my mother, grandmother and Aunt Joyce cried!!
My grandfather said—proudly, “See what answers she gives at five. What answers will she give at twenty-five?”  My father laughed with gleeful pride and enjoyment.
                                       * * *
Youpee stalked out increasingly infrequently until she no longer could.  When I went up with Uncle Mervyn–her sole visitor—to read her the newspaper, the fearsome witch of my childhood lay helpless in her own excrement.  Her around-the-clock ayahs malingered, squatting in the purer air of the balcony, absently sieving rice, far from her faint old woman voice. Her only relatives, three nieces, were invisible. We hollered, the ayah turned her over; the bed-sores on her bottom and back were chasms of pink raw flesh, almost reaching the bone.
She died, leaving the sprawling house to her now-visible nieces (that old, strange, stronger-than-water business) who in the Gotterdamerung that made the landscape of so many childhoods the landscape of memory, pulled down 51 Chimbai Road—a plummy location, opposite both the beach, and the huge St. Andrew’s Church, nucleus of the suburb’s Catholic social, cultural and religious life.  “Bayside” went up in its stead (making them instant multi-millionaires)–twenty floors of apartments, no room now for quirky mansions with flaking paint.  The old order yielded to lego block symmetries, boxy flats, to the left, to the right, on top of, below each other,
 two hundred families living in a patch of earth which had housed two.  And in this world where neither the good nor the evil get quite what they deserve, the aunt, shunned alive, gave them, dead, munificence they could never have dreamed of, growing up in sleepy Bandra.
And, as compensation for their torn down rented house, my grandparents were given a free flat in the posh new Bayside: a seaside residence, like their peers–through the interventions of providence and the current socialist legislation which protected long term tenants against radically raised rents or evictions—but without the stress, humiliations, and subterfuges of dishonesty. 
The wages of honesty: not so bad after all.   


Goals
Start Date—August 27th, 2012
Completion Date—September 1st, 2013
Word Count Goal-120,000
Words per day Goal—425
Progress (Aiming to write 6 days a week, excluding Sundays)
  Day 16—6650—150 words short


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Wandering Between Two Worlds: Essays on Faith and Art

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The Story of Dirk Willems

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Premier Digital Awards 2015 - Finalist - Blogger of the year
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Recent Posts

  •  On Not Wasting a Desert Experience
  • A Mind of Life and Peace in the Middle of a Global Pandemic
  • On Yoga and Following Jesus
  • Silver and Gold Linings in the Storm Clouds of Coronavirus
  • Trust: A Message of Christmas
  • Life- Changing Journaling: A Gratitude Journal, and Habit-Tracker, with Food and Exercise Logs, Time Sheets, a Bullet Journal, Goal Sheets and a Planner
  • On Loving That Which Love You Back
  • “An Autobiography in Five Chapters” and Avoiding Habitual Holes  
  • Shining Faith in Action: Dirk Willems on the Ice
  • The Story of Dirk Willems: The Man who Died to Save His Enemy

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What I’m Reading

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance
Barak Obama

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H Is for Hawk
Helen MacDonald

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Tiny Habits
B. J. Fogg

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The Regeneration Trilogy
Pat Barker

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anita.mathias

Writer, Blogger, Reader, Mum. Christian. Instaing Oxford, travel, gardens and healthy meals. Oxford English alum. Writing memoir. Lives in Oxford, UK

Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford # Images from walks around Oxford. #beauty #oxford #walking #tranquility #naturephotography #nature
So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And h So we had a lovely holiday in the Southwest. And here we are at one of the world’s most famous and easily recognisable sites.
#stonehenge #travel #england #prehistoric England #family #druids
And I’ve blogged https://anitamathias.com/2020/09/13/on-not-wasting-a-desert-experience/
So, after Paul the Apostle's lightning bolt encounter with the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus, he went into the desert, he tells us...
And there, he received revelation, visions, and had divine encounters. The same Judean desert, where Jesus fasted for forty days before starting his active ministry. Where Moses encountered God. Where David turned from a shepherd to a leader and a King, and more, a man after God’s own heart.  Where Elijah in the throes of a nervous breakdown hears God in a gentle whisper. 
England, where I live, like most of the world is going through a desert experience of continuing partial lockdowns. Covid-19 spreads through human contact and social life, and so we must refrain from those great pleasures. We are invited to the desert, a harsh place where pruning can occur, and spiritual fruitfulness.
A plague like this has not been known for a hundred years... John Piper, after his cancer diagnosis, exhorted people, “Don’t Waste Your Cancer”—since this was the experience God permitted you to have, and He can bring gold from it. Pandemics and plagues are permitted (though not willed or desired) by a Sovereign God, and he can bring life-change out of them. 
Let us not waste this unwanted, unchosen pandemic, this opportunity for silence, solitude and reflection. Let’s not squander on endless Zoom calls—or on the internet, which, if not used wisely, will only raise anxiety levels. Let’s instead accept the invitation to increased silence and reflection
Let's use the extra free time that many of us have long coveted and which has now been given us by Covid-19 restrictions to seek the face of God. To seek revelation. To pray. 
And to work on those projects of our hearts which have been smothered by noise, busyness, and the tumult of people and parties. To nurture the fragile dreams still alive in our hearts. The long-deferred duty or vocation
So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I So, we are about eight weeks into lockdown, and I have totally sunk into the rhythm of it, and have got quiet, very quiet, the quietest spell of time I have had as an adult.
I like it. I will find going back to the sometimes frenetic merry-go-round of my old life rather hard. Well, I doubt I will go back to it. I will prune some activities, and generally live more intentionally and mindfully.
I have started blocking internet of my phone and laptop for longer periods of time, and that has brought a lot of internal quiet and peace.
Some of the things I have enjoyed during lockdown have been my daily long walks, and gardening. Well, and reading and working on a longer piece of work.
Here are some images from my walks.
And if you missed it, a blog about maintaining peace in the middle of the storm of a global pandemic
https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/  #walking #contemplating #beauty #oxford #pandemic
A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine. A few walks in Oxford in the time of quarantine.  We can maintain a mind of life and peace during this period of lockdown by being mindful of our minds, and regulating them through meditation; being mindful of our bodies and keeping them happy by exercise and yoga; and being mindful of our emotions in this uncertain time, and trusting God who remains in charge. A new blog on maintaining a mind of life and peace during lockdown https://anitamathias.com/2020/05/04/a-mind-of-life-and-peace/
In the days when one could still travel, i.e. Janu In the days when one could still travel, i.e. January 2020, which seems like another life, all four of us spent 10 days in Malta. I unplugged, and logged off social media, so here are some belated iphone photos of a day in Valetta.
Today, of course, there’s a lockdown, and the country’s leader is in intensive care.
When the world is too much with us, and the news stresses us, moving one’s body, as in yoga or walking, calms the mind. I am doing some Yoga with Adriene, and again seeing the similarities between the practice of Yoga and the practice of following Christ.
https://anitamathias.com/2020/04/06/on-yoga-and-following-jesus/
#valleta #valletamalta #travel #travelgram #uncagedbird
Images from some recent walks in Oxford. I am copi Images from some recent walks in Oxford.
I am coping with lockdown by really, really enjoying my daily 4 mile walk. By savouring the peace of wild things. By trusting that God will bring good out of this. With a bit of yoga, and weights. And by working a fair amount in my garden. And reading.
How are you doing?
#oxford #oxfordinlockdown #lockdown #walk #lockdownwalks #peace #beauty #happiness #joy #thepeaceofwildthings
Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social d Images of walks in Oxford in this time of social distancing. The first two are my own garden.  And I’ve https://anitamathias.com/2020/03/28/silver-and-gold-linings-in-the-storm-clouds-of-coronavirus/ #corona #socialdistancing #silverlinings #silence #solitude #peace
Trust: A Message of Christmas He came to earth in Trust: A Message of Christmas  He came to earth in a  splash of energy
And gentleness and humility.
That homeless baby in the barn
Would be the lynchpin on which history would ever after turn
Who would have thought it?
But perhaps those attuned to God’s way of surprises would not be surprised.
He was already at the centre of all things, connecting all things. * * *
Augustus Caesar issued a decree which brought him to Bethlehem,
The oppressions of colonialism and conquest brought the Messiah exactly where he was meant to be, the place prophesied eight hundred years before his birth by the Prophet Micah.
And he was already redeeming all things. The shame of unwed motherhood; the powerlessness of poverty.
He was born among animals in a barn, animals enjoying the sweetness of life, animals he created, animals precious to him.
For he created all things, and in him all things hold together
Including stars in the sky, of which a new one heralded his birth
Drawing astronomers to him.
And drawing him to the attention of an angry King
As angelic song drew shepherds to him.
An Emperor, a King, scholars, shepherds, angels, animals, stars, an unwed mother
All things in heaven and earth connected
By a homeless baby
The still point on which the world still turns. The powerful centre. The only true power.
The One who makes connections. * * *
And there is no end to the wisdom, the crystal glints of the Message that birth brings.
To me, today, it says, “Fear not, trust me, I will make a way.” The baby lay gentle in the barn
And God arranges for new stars, angelic song, wise visitors with needed finances for his sustenance in the swiftly-coming exile, shepherds to underline the anointing and reassure his parents. “Trust me in your dilemmas,” the baby still says, “I will make a way. I will show it to you.” Happy Christmas everyone.  https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/24/trust-a-message-of-christmas/ #christmas #gemalderieberlin #trust #godwillmakeaway
Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Look, I’ve designed a journal. It’s an omnibus Gratitude journal, habit tracker, food and exercise journal, bullet journal, with time sheets, goal sheets and a Planner. Everything you’d like to track.  Here’s a post about it with ISBNs https://anitamathias.com/2019/12/23/life-changing-journalling/. Check it out. I hope you and your kids like it!
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