Yes, it’s Friday again

It’s Friday, the thirteenth. It’s frightening Friday, and it’s just that way, because it was meant to be. So I have written, and so it will be. “The stone’s in the midst of all”, said the poet, and no matter what we do, or what we say, the “stone” will always have its way.

You’ve almost guessed it—I’m cuckoo. Many will nod their heads and say: “I told you so”, but I’ve not had my say yet. And the truth must out, because only the truth can set you free. And where does such truth come from? Only from “the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”.

Many years ago I wrote a short- story, with the ostentatious title: “In the beginning”. It was meant for a competition, on Amazon, which didn’t take off. They went ahead and published it, though, and it’s somewhere in the Amazon archives, if you are interested. Ironic, isn’t it? I had taken words from the Holy Bible and twisted them to suit my purposes. But the same words came to my rescue when I gave the name EREHWON to the protagonist of my story—my very own home in my most beloved Veteran Lines.

Who makes a character out of bricks and mortar? I did, and I don’t regret it. When the world was created, long, long before my home was constructed, the underlying earth may well have been millions and millions of years old. So, was I wrong to choose a character that has withstood the test of time? True, my protagonist is not of flesh and blood, but it was there in the beginning. Who can say me nay?

It is fashionable, in our time, to attribute familial qualities to the land we all walk on. “Victory to the Fatherland” we chant, “Hail to our Mother Earth”, we shout out aloud, all the while despoiling, desecrating and destroying humanity’s common heritage. Soon enough there will be no lands left to conquer, nothing “to live or die for” because our planet is its own master and will set things right, all in its time. “All things must pass” decrees the album by one of the Beatles, and all that is left to us is to howl and bay at the serene, silent, silvery moon.

Stands to reason, that if the earth beneath my feet is almost the same as when our planet was created, there is a pattern somewhere. That self-same pattern brought me back home, to my roots in Veteran Lines. That happened in 1986, when I happened to visit the Lines for the first time. I knew, from that moment on, that I had found my eternal abode, in the place I deliberately named EREHWON. From nowhere to Now here, I found my roots in my own paradise, not consciously, but inscrutably, by some force that led me here—to find my origins and my destiny.

I am now going to speculate on “origins”. Since no one, so far, has come forward to delve into the “Peppin” name in its Indian avatar, I am going to claim it. The oldest record of a “Peppin” in India is to be found on a grave in the St John’s Church (now Cathedral), in Tiruchirappalli, which was earlier known as Trichinopoly. The grave, a little weather-worn, can be seen on the left corner of the church, just outside the altar. It bears the name of “Gilbert Robert”, the infant son of “ Arthur Bedford Peppin Esq., Garrison Surgeon of Trichinopoly, and his wife Caroline, who departed this life on the 23rd of September, 1825, aged 10 months. The loss was too much to bear and Arthur Bedford Peppin chose to return to Somerset and England thereafter.

Other Peppins migrated to Australia from the 1850s onwards, and some made it good, especially in sheep farming, where a special type of wool still carries the family name: the Peppin merino. When I visited the huge jail at Fremantle, in Western Australia, I searched diligently for a “Peppin” on that infamous roll-call, and was relieved to know that there was a “Pepper” on the lists, but no “Peppin”.

Enough for today? There’s lots more, I can assure you. This Friday, the 13th of March, marks only the beginning of a saga built on success and failure, life and death, goodness and evil, all of which will make you wonder.

Sleep well, my dear Readers.