Heritage

I'm a bit wowed this morning. At a dinner party last night at my parents' place, elements of my heritage were revealed that I didn't know about. Of course you knew I was Anglo-Indian, didn't you? Truth is I never knew where the 'Anglo' came from. In my mind, I'd attributed it to a great-great-grandmother having relations somewhere along the line with a soldier back in the days of the British Raj and, voila, here's our family.


Last night, the soldier was revealed!


He is Jack Pearson from the 42nd or 46th (I'd had too many white wines by this stage) Lancashire regiment. He fathered children with my great-grandmother, of which my grandmother, Doris was one of them.


I'm quite gerschtumped today, to tell you the truth. I've always been quite used to a hodge podge of family history and, never once, did I stop to look at those family tree things becasue I always suspected that I would never get to the truth. Well truth revealed itself to me between prosciutto wrapped prunes and fried haloumi with lemon juice at my Mum and Dad's place.


I've never asked about my family history because I'd naturally assumed that no-one knew. I was also very suspicious of anyone who said that they did know, puttin git down to the probability that 'someone' was just painting the canvas the way they wanted to view the painting.


By pure deduction - and you really don't have to be a genius to get to this hypothesis - I worked out that our Anglo-Indian sub-culture was formed by soldiers from the British Army creating new families - intentionally or, as I suspect, otherwise - during their occupation in India. Once India gained Independence, they returned to Great Britain to resume their old lives. I further suspect that a vast majority of these soldiers already had well-established families waiting for their return and so their placebo families in India were left to survive on their own. It would be poignant to note now that there is not social security system in India so one was always left to rely on realtives and immediate family for support of all types.


When that support went back to Britain, these women were left - much like their Vietnamese counterparts during the Vietnam War - to fend for themselves. God knows how they did it. My grandmother, Doris, was one of these children - created by circumstance.



So.........in search of Jack Pearson - here goes!