Posts Tagged ‘ Mr. Patch ’

I was about to throw out a shoebox of cassette tapes the other day, but instead, popped one into a portable cassette player (also retrieved from the dark corners of a closet) and had a listen. The tape was of my sister Lee interviewing my dad in 2002. Most of the lore had been ingrained in our heads, but I’d forgotten exactly how my dad, Everett Woodman, had met his retired schoolteacher friend, P. A. Thiruvenkatachari, “Mr. Patch,” …Read More

In honor of Mr. Ganguly, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for parrot motifs used in décor and fashion. Some examples: Painting blending with wallpaper in a guest room where I stayed recently. Artist unknown. My hosts called this “the jungle room.” I slept very well, all the same. Macaw embellishing a picture frame–and maybe looking at contents. Clutch handbag by Nanette Lepore. Sociable creatures having a cozy conversation. Silk shawl imported from India by Ethnic Hues. Laurel …Read More

Ninety-five percent of Indians marry within their own ethnic, religious, and cultural communities, said Dr. Shashi Tharoor, member of the Indian Parliament, in a recent speech to the Indian Institute of Management in Kolkata. It’s fair to guess, also, that a big percentage—probably most—marriages in India are arranged by parents or family elders. Wandering Americans don’t fit into this picture very often, but strange things do happen. A Woodstock School alumna told of an encounter she had in …Read More

Growing up in India in the 1950s, we didn’t have TV, and only occasionally went to the movies. My sisters and I staged our own entertainment, including plays we wrote ourselves. One was called “The Abduction of Brenda Brussels;” it must have been pretty scary. Then there was our version of Washington Irving’s “Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” complete with headless horseman. We held it in the neighbors’ driveway, so that we could use their pony in the production. …Read More

Back to the correspondence between retired Madras schoolteacher Mr. P. A. Thiruvenkatachari and my dad, Everett Woodman. At one point, my parents were awaiting the birth of their fourth child. The family joke was that my dad wanted a baseball team and instead got a ballet troupe. Mr. Patch wrote, “I should be very glad to hear, by the next mail that brings me a letter, that you have a boy; not that I discriminate. As the rhyme …Read More

I’m still immersed in the letters of the Brahmin schoolteacher in Chennai with whom my dad corresponded for many years. Mr. Patch could be crusty. I guess he figured that his advanced age gave him the right to be so, and temperament played in as well. “I am in the habit of making no mental reservations of any kind,” he wrote. “I speak as it comes out of my mind.” One issue on which he was very outspoken …Read More

Hooray! A photo of Mr. P. A. Thiruvenkatachari and my dad hung on the wall of my dad’s study for three or four decades, and I thought it had disappeared when my sisters and I cleaned out my parents’ house. But today, in the Woodman papers in the Colby-Sawyer College archives, I hit pay dirt! Many thanks to college archivist Kelli Bogan for digitizing this! Here’s Mr. Patch, with my dad, in an undated photograph taken at Patch’s …Read More

You fall into the role of family archivist gradually, without quite realizing what’s happening. My relatives think I love smelly old paper that makes your fingers wrinkle, and photo albums held together by decaying rubber bands. Actually, I do love that stuff—for example, my grandparents’ account book from their first three years of marriage. How else would I know that they were Bull Moose Republicans and ate tripe? Five years after my dad’s death, I’m still going through …Read More