AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Brendan MacCarthaigh

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH

Contents

Preface

v

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28

1 4 9 11 17 20 26 28 34 36 41 43 48 50 56 58 64 66 71 73 79 81 86 88 90 96 98 105

Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Post Script

107 110 112 118 120 126 128 134 136 140 145 150 155 160 164

Preface

What you are reading is the preface to a book by a book, and

the

preface

to

an

autobiography

by

the

autobiographer. If you like literary challenges this one should satisfy you deeply! Well then, as the Book, I am proudly aware that I am the first ever to have written a preface to myself. I am proud to have informed you of how I came into being and how handsome I insisted that I must look. And so on. You will see me for yourself. Congratulations, reader, you are the first of a dynasty. And as for Brendan's story, it too is unique, because instead of being a life story it is a string of anecdotes out of his long and exciting life. Important ones have been omitted, but the ones that take their place here are fascinating. So in a way it's an autobiography but in a way

vi • Preface

it's a hodgepodge of life episodes. There, you never heard that before in a preface to any volume, eh? The main thing is you will enjoy it at two distinct levels: the episodes themselves, and the way they are related sometimes by Brendan, sometimes by Book. Now then, in case you get even more confused, let's just start. Welcome - enjoy yourself. (We know you will.)

Chapter One

I begin this out of annoyance. I am fed up being told again that this is fascinating stuff, how Brendan did this and Brendan went there and – well, lived his life. A helluva life it’s been, I agree. But, as a friend of Brendan’s used to say when he got tired of not being noticed, “What about me, yaar?” I mean, you’d never have heard about Brendan if it wasn’t for me! You humans won’t let him die, you suborn books like me to keep him publicly alive! Well, that’s ok, because now I am alive, so I think that means that Brendan gives me life, as well as I give Brendan life. Nevertheless, what bugs me is that he gets all the attention, not me. Nobody ever says ‘Isn’t the book beautiful? So tidy, so well paginated, so neatly bound, so carefully covered, etc etc etc’.

2 • BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH

Look, nobody would even have noticed him, if it wasn’t for me. Now the guy is more-or-less dead, people are talking, and going to libraries to get books about him. That’s sort-of ok, but do they go to book-shops to buy me? Not a chance. Libraries full of ‘me’s do that. And if they’d only check out the book shops they’d find beautiful shiny dustcovered colourful copies of me there, with him inside. So, as I say, I feel aggrieved. So what do you learn as you read me? Well I tell you this: if you want a biography I’m the item you’re looking for – but the snag is, Brendan refused to write one. So you’re thinking, Then what the heck are these pages about? Oh they’re about incidents in Brendan’s life, interesting bits and scraps. Actually I’d have preferred if he gave more, so I would be a more impressive looking volume. See, the thing with us books is, we like to be used. Not left on shelves or tucked away in cupboards. But no matter how handsome we look (I mean, look at me! Don’t I look smart?), the item we serve must taste exciting. Let’s see can I find a piece here and there. Oh, and by the way, I’m going to quote him. I had planned to use the Third Person, but on reading the stuff people find it more immediate to have him telling his own story. So he will interest on the basis of report, I on the basis of appearance. Careful – don’t put me down face-down. Bad luck. And disrespectful to me too.

Autobiography of an Autobiography • 3

See how carefully I separate my chapters!

Chapter Two

Sorry folks, my Book insists on interrupting my story, feels it’s not getting enough attention on its own. It will even re-write what I tell you, convinced it will look better. Oh well, since we are mutually dependent, let’s both put up with it. I don’t remember my borning. Nor the place, which I learned later was called Dublin. Nor my mother. Nor my being taken away straight after leaving her womb to some cousins down-country for a couple of years. Nor returning then to Dublin, to what would now be called home. Nor my mother dying before I returned. Nor my father marrying a different mother. I remember a lovely old lady we called Aunt Minnie who helped look after us. And a string of maids.

Autobiography of an Autobiography • 5

I do remember very little. I remember I had brothers and sisters. Lots of, with me the most recent. I really only remember that my life was a very big cloud of unlovedness. Of course I didn’t know that I wasn’t loved, I just knew that I was pretty unhappy. I remember I would be put to bed in a cot in an upstairs room, and I would wake up screaming. I remember seeing lots of faces looking down at me in the cot, like some animal in a well, and then I would fall asleep again, and nobody would have said anything or done anything. Nobody knew why I was crying. I only knew twenty years later or so, I was crying for love. Whatever that was. Lots of people lived in my house. Some had become adults and had jobs. One was a priest, and later another. As I grew up more left my house to get their own – some married. It’s all rather vague, you understand, because I never saw a wedding, my brother and me were too small to go. Or maybe it would have cost too much. Maids disappeared after a bit and my new mother did it all. More than it all. She ruled. Better tell you now. I grew to fear her. Well, first to fear her, and then hate her. All I can remember with any clarity is getting beaten for just about every fault and failure. Major crime: wetting the bed. Nightly. Till she took me to a doctor. I remember him as he put me together again telling her, “He is healthy. I think if you give him a penny for every night he doesn’t

6 • BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH

wet the bed it will cure itself.” I learned a million years later, he was dead right in his diagnosis. (I became a qualified clinical hypnotherapist a long time afterwards.) But I remember her sniffed dismissal of his advice. And more beatings. The young cannot survive without love. And I wasn’t getting it. Though my next brother got a hard time too, he was a bit older, and she liked him to some degree. So I wanted to die. I didn’t think of dying of course – I didn’t know what it was. But out on the street going (endlessly!) to church, or anywhere, I would race across under traffic, run into lamp posts, crack my head on sharp corner-buildings, all the signs of the death wish. The young cannot survive without love. So I became a crybaby. I cried for the merest bump. I didn’t know why. I learned, years later. By then I had learned that I was the eleventh and last child in the family. That my step-mother was my father’s third wife. Yup, third. The others died. So the family was properly mixed up. The amazing thing is that they all turned out ok, respectable social adults coping with life capably enough. Oh I haven’t mentioned my father. I know he was from Wexford in Ireland’s south-east corner. He used to work in the railways. Well, forget it – it’s my story I’m telling,

Autobiography of an Autobiography • 7

so let me stick to that. He married in his early thirties, and there were six children. Two became priests, in the best Irish traditions, but good ones. One joined the army and then got a day job, I’ve forgotten what. Another became an electrician of extraordinary talent, could turn his hands to any trade skilfully. And the last became a nun. So they were his family. His wife died, I never found out of what, so he married again. She became my mother. She was an opera singer, Sheila Murphy, and from a Dublin family that made chariots that used to be pulled by horses. This was early-ish twentieth century. Her eldest became a nun, so she and the last girl of the previous brood went together to the convent. Then the next had a go at priesthood, quit, married, emigrated, had two boys in Australia where he died, a life eventually fulfilled but rocky on the way. The next became a tradesman, as talented as the electrician I just mentioned, very clever, and became more-or-less the focal point of the family. He died. The ninth was a girl, beautiful in due course, married, clever, and a capable manageress in business circles. Next was the boy I mentioned in the previous chapter, very good looking, and found himself a talented prize-winning golfer after he gave up his professional life as an electrician. Like me, he was somewhat colour-blind. I asked him how he distinguished the colours of various wires. He replied, “Trial and error.”

8 • BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH

And then there was me. Is it any surprise that my stepmother was severe? But forgiving thoughts like that don’t strike for a long time. So I hated her then. Oh, and my dad. Well, he was a man who lived in our house. Down as far as the last girl they all loved him. Us last two, both boys, no. We didn’t dislike him. We just didn’t notice him – nor, we thought, he us. He had risked his life for my colonised country, he was very intelligent, but poorly educated, thoroughly Holy Roman Catholic, and proper. Hindsight: how he raised a family of eleven without a single “black sheep” in the flock now impresses me. We were known as The Holy Family by the locals, what with two priests, two nuns, and in Church for every devotion: who’s surprised. But we were discouraged from interacting with those locals, I think my dad had notions of propriety. Maybe it was simple poverty. There, Book: that’ll do you for a Chapter? And no, I have no photos. I’ll tell you why later, but I do understand your frustration. A biography without a photo? Well, celebrate the novelty!

Chapter Three

I’m delighted you’re still enjoying my presentation, dear reader! I wonder should I say “readers”, since there’s lots of copies of me in libraries and so on. And well there should be! “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”, no? (You’ll find lots of Keats beside me on other shelves too.) Sometimes I wonder at the script you’re reading here. It’s Roman, of course, but it could have been any among a dozen or more. We books like Roman, you don’t have to put in tralliwaggers above and below letters, like you do in Gaelic (that’s Brendan’s language) or French or German, with their own family of tweaks on some letters. In school Brendan became fluent in Gaelic script, which is quite different from Roman, and uses its own trio of what I called up there tralliwaggers – inflection signs – and only twenty-one letters. A very common inflection sign was a dot over several consonants to soften the edge of its voiced or voiceless

ABOUT THE AUTHOR BRENDAN IS MANY THINGS, WITH LOTS OF ACADEMIC QUALIFICATIONS (FROM DOCTORATE TO HINDI BASIC) WHICH HE DISMISSES AS BITS OF PAPER. HE HAS PUBLISHED QUITE A FEW BOOKS TO DO WITH EDUCATION, ALSO ON FEAR, ON STRESS, AND ON RELATIONSHIPS. ON THE SIDE HE IS A LYRIC POET, WITH SEVERAL FASCINATING VOLUMES TO HIS CREDIT. IN FAIRNESS, HE IS ALSO DEEPLY CONCERNED ABOUT THE MEANING OF LIFE, AND WHILE MANY OF HIS POEMS ARE FUN, MANY ARE DEEP EXPLORATIONS OF “WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT”. THOUGH BORN IN DUBLIN ON THE FAR SIDE OF EUROPE, HE HAS SPENT MOST OF HIS ADULT YEARS WORKING ON THE EAST SIDE OF INDIA. MUCH OF HIS WORK HAS BEEN WITH STREET KIDS, WITH A LITTLE BIT OF COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY CLASSES THROWN IN. RELIGION AS SUCH IS CERTAINLY NOT HIS HOBBY, BUT HE RESPECTS DEEPLY ALL INSTITUTIONS THAT HELP PEOPLE TO COME TOGETHER IN LOVE TO HELP ONE ANOTHER AND TO HELP THOSE WHO NEED IT. FOR HIM THE MEANING OF IT ALL, ALL, ALL, IS LOVE. HIS FAVOURITE GOODBYE: GOD BLESS.  ABOUT THE BOOK THE BOOK IS AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH AS TOLD BY THE BOOK.  BRENDAN MACCARTHAIGH IS ONE OF THE LAST IRISH CHRISTIAN BROTHERS IN INDIA. “AFTER A LOVELESS CHILDHOOD FROM WHICH I HAD FLED TO JOIN ANYTHING – BY CHANCE IT TURNED OUT TO BE THE CHRISTIAN BROTHERS (CB)– AT THE AGE OF 14 I WENT THROUGH THE NORMAL CB TRAINING PERIOD, WHICH INCLUDED MEETING WITH GREAT MEN ALONG THE WAY,” RECALLS BR BRENDAN. SO, AN IRISHMAN CALLED CALCUTTA, HIS HOME, UNDERTAKING A JOURNEY NOT JUST ON THE MAPS BUT ALSO AN INNER ONE- DEEP WITHIN INDEED. “MOTIVES PURIFIED FROM ESCAPE TO COMMITMENT, AND FOR THREE OR FOUR YEARS AFTER TRAINING I TAUGHT IN IRISH SCHOOLS. THEN AT AGE 22 I WAS POSTED TO INDIA, FLYING TO KOLKATA ON DECEMBER 6 1960,” SAYS BR BRENDAN FONDLY. BRENDAN NOW LIVES IN CHANDIGARH, WHERE HE SPENDS HIS TIME WRITING AND TRAINING TEACHERS ONLINE.  Also available as an e-book

Non-Fiction

` 447 | $ 5.86