Mythical Spanish Princess

So good to remember you again, my grandma-abuela, long lost Spanish princess. It’s been a while, hey? I’m remembering how we were introduced many moons ago. You - one of our beloved maternal grandmothers in India - leaving your Spanish home, so the story goes, to marry a sea captain and voyaging to India (how romantic - I think?) Suddenly you’re in mind cos my Ancestral Medicine friends and I are readying to gather in Madrid this spring. We’ll be honouring all of you; our ancestors of blood and bone and the wise elemental ones, whilst delving into the cultural layers of history and mystery.

I first met you during an ouch-y hair brushing moment, do you remember? I do – the memory still makes my scalp hurt. Nan cursing and tutting as she tugs, “how on earth do you get so much hay in your hair? You’re the ‘Wild Woman of Borneo.’ You must start behaving like a young lady or you’ll never meet anyone!” (Me, perplexed, wondering who on earth I’m supposed to be meeting, aged 8. Hoping for the life of me that it’s a dog, or horse.)

Hairbrush poised in mid-air, Nan’s cheeks suddenly suck in and her head tosses in the air, peacock proud (it’s hard not to smirk, hiddenly, sensing an imminent public announcement). “Of course, you’re descended from a Spanish princess, so you really should brush your hair!” Nan goes on, recounting how great grandma Ruby would not be seen dead without a mantilla - a traditional Spanish veil - in her hair and a fan in hand, honouring the legacy of her-our Spanish princess ancestor.

Naturally, that has me asking a ton of questions Nan can’t answer, her irritability visibly building. I tread with care, remembering her Cruella de Vil fury and hissing a year or two earlier, when I innocently and aimlessly started a sentence, “Nan, you know we’re a bit Indian…?” only to be reminded in no uncertain terms, “We Are British,” her towering over me, suddenly shadowy. (And the precise moment when the song ‘You’ve got to be carefully taught,’ from the musical ‘South Pacific,’ started living within me and I began taking what grownups said with even more of a healthy pinch of salt.)

Your myth shaped me a little, great grandmother-abuela, thanks. It was Spanish, and the Spanish of the Americas, I then preferred trying to learn in my teens. It was Latin America where I planned to travel, to study, explore. I was beyond delighted when I was taken to be local, chatting in Spanish one Saturday morning during a visit to Alicante’s bustling market. Mind you, I’ve been assumed to be Jewish, and also assumed to be local at Saturday markets in Turkey and Italy, too, so maybe that’s just dark coloured curls and enthusiastic-to-trade market folk, too…

Happy memories of Spain abound. Visiting gorgeous Roy and Win, Roy working as the resident Costa Blanca reverend. The coolest vicar, always up for an engaging discussion about movies, or the nature of good and evil, preferably washed down with a glass of Rioja. Win teaching us the Enneagram whilst we attempted-failed to stay cool in the shallow August lapping sea water. The kindness of strangers when I arrived in Barcelona one chilly December night, embarrassed by my hopeless disorientation, locals going out of their way to deliver me safely to the hostel. A more tranquil Barcelona memory as I stumbled off the overnight train from Gare du Lyon, the sipping of tea and mesmeric watching of the octogenarians playing boule with such grace in the Parc de la Ciutadella.

I remember the frantic hunt for you, mythical Spanish princess grandma, early on during genealogical searches, scanning any surname sounding remotely Spanish listed in the excellent Families in British India genealogical database. Imagine my joy at finding an Isabella Fernandez. How I longed, grasped for it to be you, Isabella, only to find no matching paternal surname.

For years it was impossible to even track down the full name of my great grandmother, Ruby, the awesome matriarch donning the lacy mantilla and speaking princess adventures. Eventually I realised that she had decided to name herself after a precious stone – Ruby – rather than stick with the staider and more Victorian ‘Agnes Maud’ of the genealogical records. Likewise, her younger sister, Norah, renamed herself Pearl. Jewel women. I finally make the connection that when I was given the name Kamalamani, ‘Red Lotus Jewel,’ during Buddhist ordination in 2005, I was reclaimed by this be-jewelled lineage. How poignant to realise this just now, 21 years later, the after effects of the amnesia lingering.

Big respect to you Aunt Pearl, for you are the great grand aunt to whom I owe my life. You and Bristol were a place of refuge as the body of India was violently carved up during the partitions. As Mum and her family reluctantly, swiftly, left Delhi via Mumbai, they had a bejewelled aunt to lodge with. (According to Mum, you actually turned out to be a strict former governess with two moody cats, but it was a start.)

A second cousin and I eventually pieced together the mystery of the missing gem sisters and their clan. He laughed in recognition when I mentioned the mantilla. Of course she was a Spanish princess, he said, it was far more palatable in late 1800s Mumbai to be Spanish rather than Eurasian at a time when that had firmly fallen out of favour with the Raj, after years of the colonial administration promoting so-called, ‘mixed marriages’. That was the moment you became mythical, dear grandmother, and my heritage became more tangible, the relief of receiving DNA test results showing I’ve not a trace of Spanish nor Portuguese blood, but plenty from the British Isles, Northern Europe, and a good splosh from South Asia and a little further east. My shoulders dropped a notch and I breathed more easily as the outside information matched my inside knowing. And it turns out that there is a sea captain, on a different lineage altogether, who was an employee of the Dutch East India company hailing from Friesland.

Thank you mythical Spanish princess. You were the muse who kept me searching. The memories of my South Asian grandmothers were temporarily erased. Their customs, faiths, textiles, sensuality, favourite spicy foods, their inaccurately, anglicised recorded names, even the lives of some of their beloved children. How they were turned upon, and, in turn, turned upon one another. Your imagined and longed for memory kept me searching, tracking back, wading through the spilt blood and tears, mired in racism, casteism, most of all, profoundly deep disorientation.

I’m no longer cross with you, Nan, for the lies, for the denial, for the pretention. Not when you and your fore folks faced discrimination and hostility for simply being who you marvellously were-are, and being of mixed heritage. You were also pale-ish skinned and therefore, in the terribly harmful hierarchies, ‘passed as white’ - a phrase that has me shuddering in the typing. You lost your home, your beloved India and here was never home. Thanks to you mythical Spanish princess grandma I have had the urge to keep researching, meeting and re-membering several other grandmas and a few grandads from India, different blood lineages, parallel stories. You have been and are a true ally and companion.

There were more charged memories from Spain visits, too – violence’s charge is global and unceasing. Lucky me to find myself retreat leading in the stunning swooping valley at the foot of the Carreu mountains in Catalunya. I sensed vividly the lingering, indomitable spirt of the freedom fighting socialists, opposing Franco’s regime, shot dead whilst taking refuge in the remote and tumble down shepherds’ dwellings. Violence, fear, oppression abounds in such recent memories, through to the present moment. And there’s liberation, too, let’s never forget.

I finally got to see a photo of my great grandmother Ruby with her mantilla the summer before last. We share the same chin, nose, square hands. The same dark hair, dark eyes. We are both a fan of chunky rings, it seems. Nan had fallen out with Ruby – her mother in law – years before, so this family treasure arrived via a different route, with enough water under enough bridges, my cousins and I delighted to reunite and piece together ruptured parts.

Ruby, my Mum's Dad's Mum

It is good to see you, Ruby. Years ago I was curious when a psychic friend repeatedly heard the name Ruby as she tuned into our people. I know for sure you are keen on the Ancestral Lineage Healing work, happy to be a gateway person to the glorious order and colour of paradise gardens, sea dragons and an education and initiation which is just beginning. I won’t forget you, dear mythical Spanish princess grandma - abuela, most necessary figment of Ruby’s imagination.

I’ll remember and pay tribute to you both this spring, by Madrid’s Manzanares river. I shall plead that human folly ends with immediate effect, knowing it won’t, but let’s never give up. I’ll send thanks. After all, the Manzanares flows into the Jarama river, the Jarama into the Tagus river, and the Tagus eventually flows into the sea through Lisbon’s mouth. Picture that fresh water mingling with the cleansing salty water - I sense the gurgling fusion. Maybe, just maybe, with a fair wind, some of these waters will eventually mingle with the waters of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. Who cares whether that takes hundreds or thousands of years? Not me. Perhaps, mythical Spanish princess, you always were – are - a water grandmother, born of the tears of all the women on earth having to be someone else: elsewhere, nameless, erased not just from genealogical records, but from their land, left behind kin, cultures. Be reunited, you all, now. Let those mingling waters, in timeless time, wash it all clean, wash us all clean, starting afresh, over and over.