by Girija Madhavan

The other day I saw two nuns at a stationery shop in Mysuru — one dressed in a simple brown sari, with a crucifix around her neck and the other in a dress with a veil half covering her head. They were so different from the nuns I had known in 1943, when, as a five-year-old, I joined the Good Shepherd Convent of Mysuru as a day pupil.

In those days, the nuns were mostly English women, wearing the traditional nun’s attire… a white habit belted at the waist with a woollen cord to which a rosary was fixed, a long panel of cloth over the habit called the ‘scapular,’ a tight fitting wimple framing the face, topped by a black veil. A chain bearing a heavy crucifix hung over the scapular. Stockings and sensible flat shoes completed the outfit which was stiff and crackling with starch. Mother Dominic was a stern disciplinarian and could use her cane too. Mother Martha taught the piano and was given to outbursts of temper. Young Mother La Salatte was gentle and sweet tempered allowing small children to sit on her lap, hold the crucifix or even to stroke her clipped hair under the wimple.

I had special piano lessons with Mother Martha and learnt to sing and play two lines:

‘Little birdie on a tree

Shakes his head and

looks at me.’

The notation as I remembered it, went C B C D C B C. But I am told that could not be right. The lessons ended in floods of tears after Mother Martha ‘accidentally’ poked me in the eye. Another song that all the children sang together was, as I later learnt, a hunting song.

‘Do you ken John Peel, do

you ken John Peel,

At break of day, with his coat

so gay,

Do you ken John Peel?’

The last line went into the upper octave and I loved shouting it out with no idea what it all meant.

In those days of the World War, some Anglo-Burman children lived in the Convent. I was fascinated by Pauline, who always wore white stockings. I so longed for such a pair that they were ordered from Bengaluru for me. I put them on without a belt or garter and by the time I walked into class they were forming pouches at the knees and soon drooping down in sagging folds. I began to cry. Children then had their faces powdered with talcum, the popular one being Johnson’s. Soon my face was streaked with runnels of grey and brown where teats washed away the powder. Pauline was beside herself and everyone was tittering until Mother Dominic settled them in neat rolls around my ankles. One remembers a shame into old age!

Years later one of Mother Martha’s successors, a nun who was an excellent pianist, did some innovative work on the piano. This was Sister John Britto. She belonged to a Railway family of the Dorechettis, who had Pondicherry connections. Years ago when we went to visit her at the Convent, she received us in the Music Room and played a few bars of Raga Hamsadhvani for us. The tune was recognisably that of the Kriti, ‘Vatapi Ganapathim Bhaje,’ the room with the cross and the pictures of saints on the wall, an unusual place to hear this composition. Sister John later held a full concert of Karnatak music in Jaganmohan Palace. The piano was set at an angle so that the pianist had her back partially to the audience but her hands were visible to the listeners. She was accompanied by musicians on the mridanga and the ghata as well as a sari-clad lady who kept the tala. Surely this was a Catholic with very Catholic tastes. At 91 years of age, she no longer plays the piano but lives in Bengaluru with a community of nuns who work for St. Martha’s Hospital.

The nuns were very dedicated to their work. They asked for no favours, only asking children who had gardens for flowers for the altar, help with the reredos, or, rarely, to ask the loan of a car for medical appointments. I never knew what became of them because I myself fell ill and stayed in bed for a whole year and stopped going to school to be tutored at home. Our tradition is to acknowledge every teacher, however, short the learning period. To the distant memory of these teachers I tender my salutations.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Feature Articles / Sunday – June 07th, 2015