The Town Square

One day in the morning during the summer holidays having nothing to do in particular and hating to stay at home where my mother and elder brother would have asked me to do home work on my lessons or ask me do some odd jobs that mother would give me I sneaked out of my house to the road when I saw Papna my friend coming towards me. I asked him whether he could come with me to the town square near the railway station. ‘To the town square? It is too far away. Have you ever gone there?’ He asked me looking a bit troubled by my invitation. ‘Plenty of times. You just come and see. Nothing like that even in the Cantonment area.’ I said. Now cantonment area was the boundary of our world beyond which boys of our place never dared to go. Papna hesitated. ‘Why not play foot ball?’ He asked me. I did not like that idea at all playing foot ball in the morning and thought of going to the town square alone if he did not agree. ‘You just come and see’ I said hoping he would come. ‘Allright we will go!’ He said finaly. It seemed to me he was scared of going beyond the Cantonment area though he was older than me because he did not want to look scared in front of me.

I discovered the town square while I was accompanying Sunnychayan my brother to the railway station one day walking past the town square to receive one of our uncles coming from a distant town I had never gone to. During that first visit I saw crowds everywhere watching many things going on there an acrobat swinging on tight rope held firm on poles a man balancing a long pole on his head a child of my age climbing it all the time the man balancing the long pole and at another corner a man swinging snakes around his neck as if they were garlands. I stopped to see what was happenning but Sunnychayan snatched me away from the town square . ‘Don’t stay there! Too dangerous for boys! Come!’ That first visit to the railway station showed me many things are happenning there I had never seen before and I was determined to go there alone even though it was farther away from the cantonment area. That was whenever I was unhappy about nothing in particular but I knew it was not good to be unhappy about nothing in particular and the only way to drive away that unpleasant feeling was to walk around the town square near the railway station that offered spectacular shows I could not see anywhere else in our town even in the Cantonment area. If this unpleasant feeling I spoke about struck me at school I would cut my class and run to the town square where nobody could whip me for faltering in the recitations of Malayalam poems that was too complicated and tongue twisting for me to understand or faltering the cursed multiplication tables. That thin and little book with only twenty eight pages of tables alone kept inside my bag that I carried seemed to tell me ‘How stupid you are!’ whenever I climbed down the steps of my school with great anxiety. Going to school was a perpetual anxiety verging on terror especially about faltering the multiplication table which I was certain to make getting whipped by Arumanayagam Sar my class teacher for that who would not allow even a small mistake by us and was waiting cane ready in his hands to make us small boys like me to falter reciting the multiplication tables. He seemed to enjoy to see us writh with pain as he whipped us. The town square was a real escape from such unpleasant situations but only for the time being because I knew I would get whipped anyway for my cutting classes. A boy has no chance to escape from things he disliked to do at home or in the school. That was the bitter lesson I learned as a boy.

The town square was full of crowds throughout the day standing around peddlers vendors and showmen of all types there was no end to the crowd but they were not the busiest men in town who would be in their offices or shops by then all looking very important doing important jobs and hectic buying and selling of expensive things going on in important streets of the town but the crowd in the town sqare were people with no important jobs to do who could walk leissurely and were curious to see the spectacles in the town square and if possible buy odd things cheap they could never get anywhere in the town. There were people from the villages and sight seers drifting into the town square and all sorts of people who had no important jobs at hand loafers and truant boys like me. They simply drifted into the town square because it was not a very busy place of offices or shops selling expensive things only vendors and peddlers who sold many rare things not very expensive things one could never get in any other part of the town. There were half naked men and women with oily dark skins who came down from the forests spreading on a reed mat dead and dried peacocks and bear skins with fat extracted from it in bottles that had great demand among the crowd deer skins talking forest mynas giant squirrels and lizards dried forest herbs and roots oils from peacocks and fat of bears that were in great demand and they never shouted about the things brought from the forests they just sat there for people to come to them not like the handsome and well dressed medicine man who wore dark glasses oily hair combed straight back with hawk like face who kept bottles of green and red medicinal oils of all kinds and he would shout at the top of his voice about the power of his medicines to cure any desease one can name asking the crowd with a bottle of cure for all diseases held high in his hands to buy and test it.

There was the vendor of plastic toys of all kinds and colours and ingeniously made metal toys like cars and bikes that he would rush on the ground and it would run fast for quite a distance before it stopped in front of the crowd and I was so fascinated I bought one day a yellow car with the little pocket money grandmother gave me but when I took it home with great hope to show to Lucy my sister it did not run when I rushed it on the floor an Lucy said I was cheated and told me never to buy such cheap things. Same thing happened with the cheap violin that gave good cinema music when the vendor played it but when I played it only screeched and groaned gave some freak music occassionally but not as the vendor played it so smoothly. Such frustrations apart that vendor showed many things that worked well that a boy could never get in the Cantonment area. There was a vendor who was a boy almost of my age who displayed roasted peanut whole or split and kadala heaped up on wooden trays on the table top standing on wheels who deftly rolled a paper cone and filled it with roasted peanuts whole or split and kadala and gave it to the boys at a price that was not high but he did not stay there till evening but would push his cart away to any other place he wanted to go in the town.

And there was the friendly vendor of many coloured fizzy lemonades sherbeths cigarettes match boxes soaps of all kinds betel nut and leaves and many other things people wanted neatly arranged in wooden shelves in the crowded town square his shop was a fixed one at a corner of the town square far from where the showmen were in action and when it was dark he pumped hard on a petromax lamp that gave flaring white light unlike most of the other vendors who had no petromax lights or had no business when it was too dark they would pack up their displays and move away when it became too dark. Then many other vendors would step in who had petromax lights to sell cheap clothes of all types and colours but I could never stay so late in the evening to see that but what they vendored was of little interest to me either.

There were showmen of all types one could never see in any other parts of the town acrobats magicians astrologers gymnastic families whose children could bent their bodies like rubber snake charmers playing flutes and when the lid of the flat and round wicker basket was opened a cobra would raise its hood spread out and swaying in tune with the play of the flute. He had other snakes too poisonous kraits and vipers kept in wicker baskets. He woud take them out swing them one after the other around his head like garlands shouting to the crowd the kraits and cobras had deadly venom and asking them to keep a safe distance from them. He would go around dark pebble like things in cupped hands telling the crowd a poison stone could suck out blood from even the most poisonous bites if kept on the wound. He had a hectic time selling them and I thought he made more money for those stones than by all those snake dances. The bird astrologer who kept a parrot in a cage was a big attraction the green bodied and red beaked parrot had the divine gift of picking up the right card from many kept in a row to tell a man’s fortunes but the bird astrologer always insisted on the man seeking predictions to put the money before he opened and read the folded card the parrot picked out with a deity’s figure inside it.

The magician’s place was always crowded he walked around in front of the crowd very fast talking at the beginning of every show and the things he showed were such it will need a book to describe everything. He ate crushed glass thrust swords straight through his mouth spit fire drew endless ribbon from his mouth and many other things that kept me spell bound. There were some dangerous shows he said he will perform such as killing his own daughter kept on a table covered with a dirty cloth from head to foot and sharp knife at hand he would look at boys like me saying we should stay away if afraid of blood but I stayed because my curiosity was greater than my fear of blood but Papna would go out because he was afraid and would return when everything was over at the end the girl came out of the ordeal happy and the magician would ask us boys to clap our hands lustily as she walked around collecting money. Then there was the monkey man who kept a most miserable looking red faced macaque monkey in chains sitting on his shoulders that kept looking at the boys with suspicion and showed off his aggressiveness by scratching his head furiously and opening his mouth and showing his dirty teeth at boys like me who tried to be friendly with it by standing near and trying to touch it. That macaque monkey could mimic any one Inspector of Police Ladies Going to College Old Men Going to Kasi on command from the monkey man who kept a ring in front asking the macaque to jump through it every time it completed a show successfully. He wore ragged clothes his face and hands grimy and had a small face like the macaque monkey and wildly grown beard and unmanageable mustache too big for him his lips wet and red by betel juice. I had seen him carrying the monky everywhere from house to house boys from the street following him everywhere shouting and whistling his monkey show was quite a draw wherever he went. There was a circus men like the cyclist who rode an odd shaped cyccle three girls sitting on his shoulders one over the other going round and round the girls spreading their arms out and arching their body in fantastic poses and the acrobat swinging on a tightly bound string going round and round and turning and somersaulting always coming down on his legs gracefully.

I often wondered where these peddlers and showmen lived because I never saw them making a great deal of money to live in the town I saw none of them walking around the town streets either except the peddler of peanuts and toys who could push their wheeled carts everywhere in the town streets. Perhaps they too might have homes to go back to make food and sleep may be far away in villages and they must be walking quite a long distance to reach the town square I thought.

One day while I was standing in front of the snake charmer watching him playing his flute head swaying and the snake too swaying its spread hood often striking at his out stretched knees a huge crowd around him I was cautioned by a man who stood near me about pick pocket men who moved among the crowd but I had no money with me so I had nothing to worry about pick pocket men and I doubted whether they could pick a fortune there as most of the people did not look rich enough to carry a lot of money in their pockets. There were several other equally interesting people all in one place the town square near the railway station doing fantastic things that one could never see in other parts of our town except the pick pocket men who would roam everywhere in the crowded places like the Cantonment area and the town market and bus stops where they had thriving business though I never saw one in my life except once when I had a flash of a man fleeing like a deer near a bus stop near the temple where the crowd of devotees from many places came to worship and return by bus where my brother and I were waiting for the bus a crowd following him shouting ‘pick pocket! Pick Pocket! Catch him!’ throwing stones and chappals at him in vain because he vanished leaving no trace in the crowded street. There was a lot of excitement inside the bus on which we rode and I was surprised by the lively conversation inside the bus for a long time by the men inside who usually kept silent and aloof during bus rides. They told excitedly about bitter experiences of pick pockets in action some one among them loosing a wallet full of money and their devious ways and escapades and while they were talking excitedly about pick pocket men the man who lost his wallet quietly walked away not having any money for his travel every one staring and pointing at him excitedly and shouting ‘There! There! That is the man who was pick pocketted.’ doing nothing to help him.

When the sun rose high and it was hot I would return home thirsty and hungry unless I had some little money grandmother sometimes gave me as pocket money and then I would go to the vendor of lemonades who had jaws like a frog face full of pits and bulging eyes who was very friendly with me and I would buy the orange coloured lemonade that would fizz and gush as he opened it with a sudden jerk with the opener and pour it on a long glass the foam growing up to the brim as he poured it and it tasted good with a slight fire in it when I sipped it slow. That lemonade was special I never could taste anything like that orange coloured fizzy lemonade the friendly vendor of drinks gave me at the town square when it was noon and I was thirsty. If there was any money left I would buy a paper cone of roasted peanuts and munch it on my way back home to be there on time for lunch. On the day I took Papna to the town square and I showed everything happenning there it was past noon and we were both thirsty I had money for only one drink and I asked the vendor of lemmonades to split it in two glasses but he was very friendly with me and offerred two lemonades telling me I could pay later. The vendor of lemonades told me anytime I wanted lemonade I could get one and pay later but I used his generosity only if I was too thirsty because I did not want to ask money from grandmother.

When I returned to my house that was near a gully a large house it seemed to me with white washed mud walled house large and friendly and down below our house the gully ran down into the paddy fields where there was a row of houses of Pattanis their men in the Maharaja’s cavalry. Titus our servant boy too lived there whom I used to come across the town square watching many things like me and he spoke he will never tell Sunnychayan about meeting me there and I should not speak to them about him. He knew many tricks and taught me how to swim in the pond near the stream and how to catch fish with the rod and gave me many advices all very practical and useful to me. In that large mud walled house where I lived with grandmother mother Sunnychayan and Lucy Tailor Gopalan usually came in the morning to talk to grandmother both freedom fighters sat in a corner of the large front room he would look at me in an amused manner whenever I returned from the town square tired but excited but he would ask me nothing about where I had gone. I suspected he knew where I had gone but wanted to keep it a secret since he liked me and told me many big things a boy of my age could not get from the school because he knew many big things by reading a lot of Malayalam books though he was only a tailor I liked the way he sang the poems but though he took great pains to explain them to me I understood very little of them but I listened to all that he told me I could sing whatever he sang to me and he told grandmother I am a bright boy and had a great future but I did not know what he meant by having a great future. They are beautiful lines he sang to me and l knew they were of more important things than what was in my Malayalam text book. Tailor Gopalan quit tailoring long before I was born leaving his shop to his younger brother and he joined the freedom struggle got beaten up and jailed. Ever since his freedom fighting days every one continued calling him just ‘Tailor’ with respect. That was told to me by Lucy my sister she said she heard it from mother.

He kept a small and shining black box made of buffallow horn that was told to me by Sunnychayan one day that he would often take out of his pocket open and take out a large pinch of snuff that he would draw into his nose close it tight and carefully put t back in his pocket shaking his head a little and wiping his nose with a kerchief. He had a large nose with big cavities a lean brown face his curly hair comped back with a parting on the left side. He wore brown khader juba and white mundu because he was a true freedom fighter like grandmother. Other rooms where mother grandmother Lucy and me slept were smaller not so bright as the front room except father’s room that was almost empty but bright and spacious he was in Burma fighting for the British whom grandmother hated dearly because of the freedom they did not give to us. She too would look at me like him and say ‘Monay go and take a bath. Your face is red and you are perspiring. Where had been you been?’ She would ask me in a low voice not expecting a correct answer unlike mother who asked sharp questions and wanted clear answers and would scold me or even beat me if she thought I was covering up my adventures.

Grandmother would look at tailor Gopalan and continue talking to him about freedom that would come soon about future Chief Minister and other ministers and the things they had to do on which tailor Gopalan had a good grasp and about her anxiety about return of father from Burma father being in the war that she hated as she hated the British for not giving us freedom though I could not understant what it meant. When one day I told Ravi another friend of mine living near our house studying in a church school far from my school whose father too was in Burma he gave a sidelong glance at me that showed he knew much more than me ‘The British! What you think of them? they will throw those Japanese out in no time and our fathers would come back soon. I don’t know about freedom fights. But in our school we are dead scared of the congress men. They go marching shouting and when the police start beating and firing guns they run into our church and keep shouting.’ When he said of those brave words I felt happy. I thought war was a thrilling game that happenned at our back yard and I would listen at night when gun shots were heard and I dreamed of father coming home smiling with his gun one day. All that I wanted was for father to return home from Burma. Mother luckily would be always in the kitchen cutting pealing and slicing things to cook so she wouldn’t see me coming in I would go in and sit with Lucy my sister to tell all that I saw there in the town square and she would give me proper advice on what to say if mother asked sharp questions about my wanderings.

In the evening some days not always when I should have been playing foot ball that Papna liked more than me I would go to the town square that would be a quiet place by then all the show men except the vendor of fizzy lemonade who had a fixed shop with bright petromax light in his shop that he would pump and light only when it was too dark there would have packed up and gone somewhere I did not know. There I would wait for the Salvation Army soldiers trooping in from the street in great pomp like real soldiers in red coats and orange coloured pants marching their arms swinging straight ahead the two drummers beating huge drums hung in front of them on tight leather belts over their necks both hands holding beating rods with balls at the tips and beating the drums in a particular way and the musicians holding huge bugles and trumpets their brass shining like gold who played the music their cheeks puffed up blowing the air into the pipes that was an impressive sight to watch.

As they came into a corner of the town square they formed a half circle their chief a Captain I was told standing in front holding a Bible a prayer book and song book and he would ask the band master to come forward and the band master would come forward holding a stick that he would raise and drop it and suddenly the drums would start beating and the trumpets playing one at a time according to the stick the band master held it was such a huge attraction for boys like me and a crowd would start forming while the band played. The Captain would wave his hand as soon as the crowd was big enough and the band master would suddenly lower the stick in his hand and the band would stop. Then the Captain would start speaking slowly at first and then he would shout quoting the Bible looking up in the sky and then he would ask some of the soldiers to start reading from the Bible only some parts he knew exactly where and then he would biggin to speak about the love of God and the punishment he gave to erring persons like those evil persons described in the Bible the soldiers read out and telling the crowd to take those warnings seriously and to keep away from falling into temptations the Devil set for people to fall into but the boys like me sitting in front were impatient for the band to start again not understanding anything the Captain said about love of God and the Devil’s devious ways to tempt people to commit sins.

Now the stories he quoted to prove his points were not new to me either because many of those stories I heard already from Saramma teacher in the Sunday School and grandmother who showed me the pictures of Moses the Pharoa Samson king David and Goliath prince Absalom Prophet Elijah scolding King Ahab at vineyard of Naboth for killing Naboth all those pictures very impressive though it was an old dog eared book with those pictures in violet colour and grandmother used to tell me all the stories in that old book with violet coloured pictures. She told me of Moses and the Pharoa who tried hard to drive away the Chosen People of Jehova God of Israel who helped them to fight and kill their enemies and of David as a boy loved by God how he killed the giant warrior Goliath of the Philistines with a sling. That was a most rxciting story and I admired David for his bravery as a boy. But many things he did as king I did not like. My sympathy was for Uriah the Hittite who was husband of Bethsheba whom King David wanted for himself and how he got Uriah killed by sending him to the battle front and of Price Absalom son of King David most handsome and brave young man in all Israil how his hair longest in the whole of Israil got caught in the branches of a tree as he rode beneath it and how he got killed by King David’s soldiers in that helpless condition and for Queen Isabel who was killed in a most treacherous manner by Jehu a favoured captain of Israil because she wanted to help her weak husband King Ahab to grab the vineyard belonging to Naboth and I wondered why King Ahab himself could not do it all by himself not leaving to queen Isabel and I thought Jehova God of Israiel was unfair on such occassions to favour King David and Jehu. Now all these I said here is based on my impressions from those violet pictures and not reading the Bible and so I may be mistaken somewhere I do not know where.

When I told about my doubts to grandmother she told me it was the Devil who entered into my mind and made me doubt God’s intentions and as I was a good boy God loved me and I should believe all that were told in the Bible. Grandmother looked at me with her grey blue eyes though beautiful to look at they were were full of concern about me because I spoke to her against God of Israil. She had silver grey hair and a sharp nose with pink moles here and there in her soft wrinkled white face and hands and ear lobes with ruby studs on them. I told her the God of Israel was partial to them in every fighting even if they fought against their own neighbours and wondered why God was determined to destroy other people by any means and that he judged people sometimes very unfairly. When I told her I loved her more than God she was shocked and said ‘Never speak like that Baby! You do not know anything about God’s love.’ In spite of Grandmother’s words doubts lingered in my mind about King Ahab and queen Isabel who was killed by treachery and of Prince Absalom King David’s handsome son with long hair who too was killed in the same manner. She told me it was not good for a boy like me to question the wisdom of the Bible and so I thought it better to believe what grandmother spoke about the love of God because God loved boys like me and that I should not not have any sympathy for the people God punished. In the nights before supper we would have prayer and grandmother’s prayer would be a long tirade against God’s indifferrence to the poor and sick still she prayed because he was a kind and powerful One and she would hold her hand on her chest look up tears in her eyes telling Him to return her son our father from Burma. One day when Lucy asked mother why grandmother prayed so long tears in her eyes mother laughed it away and said’It is the gummy black thing she smeared at the bottom of the porcellain bubble before pouring over it her daily evening ritual of drinking black coffee that did the trick. But I still believed grandmother loved God and shared her anxieties with him.’The Old One must be blind and laughing when I pray.’ One day I overheard her telling mother when we got up from the floor after prayer.

Now the Salvation army Captain spoke more about Jesus and prayed and shouted with his Bible held high asking people to prepare for His second coming that I had already learned in the Sunday School. Then all the men began singing in chorus and the band of drummers and trumpet men followed the chorus. When the chorus ended I knew it was time for them to stop the show. It would be sun down by then and they would pick up all their things and march off as they came. I liked to play the trumpets and beat the drums so one day told mother I wanted to join the Savation Army thinking she would agree because they spoke about God and Moses King David and Jesus but mother looked at me sharp stopping her work ‘What did you say? Joining the Salvation Army! Where you got the idea?’ I lied to her that I saw them marching past the school singing and I heard them talking about God and king David in the road junction not far from our house. ‘We have our own Church! It is enough you go there with Lucy and me. Are you not learning enough about Moses and King David from the Sunday School? Your grandmother tells you Bible stories most days! Are they not enough? Joining the Salvation Army! Go and do your home lessons your teacher gave you.’ She said angrily and I walked away from her.

I did not tell her anything more and never spoke again about my wish to join the Salvation Army but I spoke about what I saw in the town square in the evenings to Lucy my sister and about my wish wear the red coat and beat the drum and play the trumpet and she said it was a good idea but I must wait till I grew up. She advised me how to avoid mother’s wrath that gave a chance to Sunnychayan to kick me in the back though it did not hurt very much but it was too humiliating to me so I kept away as soon as I came in from the town square from Mother and Sunnychayan and stayed in grandmother’s room not telling her any thing I saw in the town square or what the Captain said but I would tell her about what I saw going on in the street in front of our house. Lucy had blue eyes she was very fair like grandmother always pleasant and smiling much taller than me and always gave proper advices to me so I could carry on my secret visits to the town square without Sunnychayan or mother knowing about it.

Where the Grass is so Green

O! Greedy towner!
you wish to build a city here
where the tall brooding trees
give us in summer their shades
don’t cut away their branches
and crush those flowers

O! greedy towner!
you wish to build a city here
don’t rip apart this meadow
with your monster machines.
Here the grass is so green
so green!

This is where first we met
this is where first we kissed
this is where first we made love
this is where we made our vow
to live together
this is where he lies buried.

This our quiet village quite content
this the little house I live alone
with sad thoughts of my beloved lover.

Greedy towner!
you wish to rip apart this village
with your monster machines
and build a city here.
Do not tread over our grassy meadows.

Spare our little village.
spare our streams
that sparkling flow

spare our little houses
studded on this meadow
spare this ground
hallowed to me
where he rests in peace
spare our rolling meadows
here the grass is so green
so green.

Lanney The last Tasmanian Aborigine

The first time I came to know about Lanney the last full blooded aborigine male of Tasmania who died in March 2 in 1869 was twenty four years ago when I was living in Rosebery a remote mining town in the deep jungles in the heart of Tasmania. I was on a visit under UN fellowship to study gold mining in Australia-I was an exploration Geologist at that time- and I was very keen to make a visit to Tasmania. That interest in Tasmania has a history going back to my schooldays. One day my geography teacher showed us the map of Australia and told us about Tasmania the cone shaped island at the bottom of the bulge of the continent. I did not know why I was so fascinated by Tasmania. In the atlas there were several other equally or more remote regions. But it was Tasmania that kindled my imagination. I dreamed of going there one day. Thirty five years later I could make that dream come true!




Lanney-The last TasmanianAborigine

Towards the end of 1984 I got an opportunity to go to Australia on a UN fellowship to study the mining operations for gold. I stayed about a year in Australia studying gold deposits that were being mined in Western Australia and Victoria and sapphire mines in New South Wales. These study tours gave me an opportunity to have a glimpse of the vast Australian country sides where these mining centers were located. But Tasmania of my childhood imagination that stayed with me was not far away from Melbourne where I had a week’s stay before the end of my tour in Australia. I had an irresistible urge to go to Tasmania. Somehow I could manage to get an opportunity by persuading my sponsors to allow me to visit the famous Rosebery mines in Tasmania that was only about 400km across the sea from Melbourne..
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I reached Tasmania on a summer day in December by flight from Melbourne - being farther down under, winter time in northern temperate zone is summer time in Australia!- and landed at Burnie the nearest city to the mainland Australia. The drive from Burney was by car and I could see some of the densely forested hills of Tasmania that reminded me of the greenery and hills of Wyanad! Rosebery, where I stayed was not far from the mines after which it was named. The team of geologists and mining engineers were very friendly and were eager to help me to study the complex ore deposits of the mines. In the evenings after hectic work in the mines I used to go out exploring the town walking alone along the narrow streets. One day I saw a small bookshop- of all places in a mining town far removed from any urban centers!- and curiously browsing through the books on display I saw a book titled ‘The Tasmanian Aborigine’. Being more interested in the history of people in exotic places than enticing places of spectacular scenic beauty, I was attracted by that book. From the book I learned that there was an Ice age lasting till about 30000-20000 years ago and a tribe of aborigines could travell across the land bridge that connected Tasmania with the mainland. Soon the Ice age came to an end and the glaciers retreated raising sea level closing the land bridge. The aborigines of Tasmania began to develop a culture of their own to adapt to the new environment.
It was in that book I read about the story of Lanney the last Tasmanian aborigine. There was a photograph of Lanney sitting his hands cuffed, legs sprawling in front of his body and two smiling white sailors standing beside him. The caption read ‘Lanney the last Tasmanian aborigine’. Nothing more. Neither the year nor the name of the photographer. He was described as a hardened drinker of liquor the sailors generously offered him, a hard working whaler who jumped ship whenever he got a chance. I could not take my eyes off Lanney. It was not only the terror in his eyes but the look of paralyzing shock in the eyes of a human being subjected to unutterable violence and evil he had to suffer during his short life. His image and those eyes haunted me and stayed permanently etched in my mind. I bought that book and started reading about their absorbibg story.
That book was with me for several years till one of my friends, only casually interested to read something took it away and never returned it. (to my bitter experience I found that well meaning friend’s have that good habit!) All my efforts to retrieve it or buy a new one from a book shop in India failed. Neither could I reach out to my old colleagues in Rosebery mines way back in 1984. Lanney remained a disturbing dream in my mind and I felt as though he was inviting me to share his pathos. He became a friend to me though his figure remained a shadow.

Many years after my visit to Tasmania, that was twenty three years ago, I told my son about Lanney the last Tasmanian aborigine and the lost book. He offered me help. I am not a computer bug and had only a poor opinion of the internet. How wrong I was! In front of me he clicked a few buttons and out came the page on Lanney the last Tasmanian aborigine! There he was! Lanney! Not in a sailer’s garb but alone in one photograph and in another one Lanney leaning on tarunganini his third wife! I was immensely happy like a child who could retrieve a toy loved so much. Lanney appeared to remain the same without any wear and tear by passage of time with that haunting glint in his eyes still there. The photograph must have been taken some time in 1860’S about 150 years ago!

When I speak of Lanney the readers might feel what is so great about an aborigine in Tasmania who died long ago. I have no explanations to offer for my fascination nor do I expect the reader to be interested in him as much as I do. But I feel his story is worth telling because he represents the history of a race of doomed community that lived peacefully for about 40000 years and was wiped out of the face of the earth in a short period of sixty years since the arrival of British colonialists in Tasmania! It was the shortest carnage, a total wiping out of a people and their culture in recorded history. Nothing particularly interesting if you look at that photograph in a casual manner as most people tend to look at old photographs. But you can also look at in a different w

ay as I do. History written so large and clear on such faces as in those photographs are easily forgotten histories. To me that photograph taken long ago by an unknown photographer tells the poignant story of destruction of a race and man’s inhumanity to man in a most telling way.

A brief history of British colonization of Tasmania would not be out of place here before I talk about the tragic life and death of Lanney. The island is named after the Dutch navigator Abel Jansoon Tasman who discovered the island in 1642. It came into the hands of British colonialists by 1802 and next year the British Government send a ship full of convicts sentenced to lifelong imprisonment whom they could not accommodate in British prisons. The convicts were a group of traumatized and many of them almost deranged and hardened criminals, homicidal maniacs and all sorts of men who stopped at nothing to get a chance to butcher the natives to satiate their blood lust. They ran amuck in the virgin island of Tasmania where from several thousands of years ago the native population lived in harmony with nature. The aborigines were not well equipped to resist this onslaught like the war like red Indians of North America.(They too were decimated but only partially because they were spread across two continents and it took a much longer time to reduce the different tribes) It was a carnage, a blood bath, cruelties most fowl and beyond description.

The British colonial government did nothing to stop it. In fact they encouraged it! The cunning and crude weapons of the aborigines were of no match to the knives, axes, and guns the criminals used against them in the most gruesome manner once they were let loose in the island. The British government sent out its troops to kill them wherever and whenever they were spotted in the jungles and in 1808 the government proclaimed the infamous martial law that gave legal sanction to the settlers of convicts to kill aborigines. They were not accepted as human beings even by the civilized government of Britain. The colonial government even paid monitory rewards for the ‘bounty killers’ as they were called, for the bodies of dead aborigines shot by them A lot of people, all of them convicts, made good deal of money out of bounty killings. Shooting bashing of brains burning them alive slaughtering them as dog meat went on at a large scale. A few missionaries took a few remaining aborigines to nearby Flinders Island to convert them into Christians. That proved to be the beginning of their ultimate fate. The living conditions were too hard at the missionary camps that most tried to escape the tyranny in the name of Jesus Christ. History written mostly by English historians recorded that most of the Australian aborigines died because of alcoholism and venereal deseases. (They did not mention that these wonderful gifts were given to them by white settlers- a mor suble way of destroying them.

Lanney along with a few Tasmanian aborigines were moved to a concentration camp at Oysters cove. He escaped but was soon captured and abducted by the crews of a whaling ship. Lanney died in the age of 33 on March 2 in 1869 at the Dog and Partridge Public House in Hobart, capital of Tasmania. By 1975 the carnage was over, by the death of his wife Tarunganini who outlived him until her death in 1876. The last two members of Tasmanian aborigines belonging to the family of man ceased to exist.

Even in death Lanney could not escape the cruelty and humility at the hands of the colonialists who were gradually taking control of all Australia in the name of God and the King of England. His head was dismembered, his hands were cut off, to preserve in the name of ‘Science’. Another man’s skull was stitched before the body was given to his half bred relatives for ritual burial. There was an unseemly fight to grab his body by the Royal Society of Surgeons in England and Tasmanian Society of Scientists. A dead aborigine so mutilated was very valuable to humanity than a live one! In the name of ‘Science!’ You cannot read these gruesome details of the decimation of the aborigines of Tasmania in officially approved history that island. The true story is silenced by many deceptions. Their tragic end remain erased for ever from history.

Truganinni, William Lanney, and an unidentified woman

Readers may wonder why these aborigines were clothed in nineteenth century Victorian English dress. Lanney whom you find clothed in a Jacket and trousers was turned into a sailor and paraded as the last male aborigine before the royalty in Britain. These aborigine men and women who were the last among their tribe were captured men and women who survived the carnage and turned into Christians. But that did not help them to survive because life in boarding houses under the missionaries care was worse than living in the bush where they could have lived happily like their ancestors. Civilisation as they could experience was a strange and repulsive way of life that only helped them to live as slaves to the white man.