Continued from #10736 page 537, the adventures of a five-year-old in RAF Poona, 1946
POP, our Indian bearer, is a wonderful story-teller. Sometimes Mummy and Sgt James next door listen too as Pop tells how the Lord Shiva fought lots of battles, the monkey god Hanuman gets up to all sorts of mischief, and the elephant god Ganesh gave me a ride on his back when we went to the circus in Poona.
Pop shows us pictures when he tells the stories, one god is a very cross lady sticking out her tongue which I'm not allowed to do, she has lots of arms so she looks like a spider. Pop says she is called Kali and she is a friend of Lord Shiva. The Indians have lots of gods but the padre tells us in Sunday School that we have only one god, so we seem to be missing out.
My close escape from the cobra causes a stir in our little European community, and at the RAF school the headmaster calls us all together to warn that Indian snakes are very dangerous, if we see one we should keep well away and call a teacher. In Sunday School the padre says that the Lord must have been looking after me, so today we are going to have a lesson about the serpent. He says the god put two people called Adam and Eve in a garden with a serpent. We all ask what is a serpent and the padre replies that it is a snake. Now I get it, I say, Mannassa the snake god put the people there and didn't bite them, but the padre says there is no snake god, the Lord protected you from the cobra. Relieved, I agree that the Lord Shiva protects me as long as I don't go under the bungalows where he can't see me.
No no no, says the smiling padre, Shiva is an Indian god, it's our good Lord who protected you from the cobra. But the Lord Shiva stopped the snake from biting me, he was a very bad snake, koborrah sneep bahut burraburra hai. I figure that I'd better throw in some Hindi just in case Lord Shiva is listening and feels left out of the discussion. We speak in English here, says the padre, now you're being a little naughty. For Lord Shiva's information, I translate naughty: yoo ********* ****.
The padre's eyes widen, the Sunday School teacher turns pale, I'm seated in the corner until Mummy arrives to collect me, the padre speaks to Mummy in low tones and her face turns red before she hustles me homewards and bedwards. You're a very bad boy and you can't go back to Sunday School again, she says. Thank you Lord Shiva, I say as my bedroom door closes, and I fall happily and deeply into sleep.
Next instalment: Geriaviator ( aged 5) concludes his memories of RAF Poona 1946 with the day he was bitten by the aviation bug. Alas, 70 years later, he has never recovered.