UM ... UM ... PA ... PA

At eleven, I was young and foolish!  If I wasn’t foolish, I would never have consented to the outright indignity that I was about to put myself through.

The old Arab Fort, sometimes erroneously referred to as the Portuguese Fort in Zanzibar, had been transformed into a "Ladies club".  The walls of the fort were some thirty feet high and served to provide women (particularly Muslim women) with the privacy that they needed.  The walls also guaranteed to keep peeping toms out.  It was here that sports, befitting the dignity of women, were organised and executed so that all women could attend to their personal well being.  The Ladies Club was also a focul point for social interaction among women.  To this end tea parties were frequent, and the only men who were allowed in were four musicians who provided the women with one more form of entertainment.

The orchestra (to use the term in its most pristine form) consisted of old Mr. Mascaranhas on the violin,(the orchestra leader), Mr.D’Souza on the trumpet, Mr. Dias on the guitar and Mr. Fernandes on the huge brass tuba. (First names have been deliberately omitted.) One would have liked to think that this group of seasoned musicians would produce some classical chamber music, but that would be a hope but not a reality. 

On the appointed day of the gala performance, Mr. Fernandes came down with real or imagined stomach cramps (more imagined than real) and it was thought that the strain of blowing his monstrous tuba might have resulted in soiling his underwear.  A willing substitute had to be urgently found to replace him.  Mr. Mascaranhas, the band leader, was apparently in quite a panic while he combed the list of untried possibilities but he received a negative response from all those that he approached.  At about this time, I was on my way to meet a friend who lived in Shangani, when a very troubled Mr. Mascaranhas stopped me and asked me whether I could play the tuba. Mr. Mascaranhas had a congenital “stutter” but it came out right the first time or I must have had keen hearing.  I told him that I did not know what it was, still less did I know how to play it..  Mr. Mascaranhas virtually begged me to go with him to the Ladies Club, assuring me that I would be able to play the double bass in five minutes. Who could blame him for recognizing the genius of a 11-year old before him?   Always ready to learn and take up new challenges, I went with him not knowing that my first painful lesson was to be in front of close to two hundred curious, cackling and critical women. My first impulse was to run for my life, but being a softy by nature, having been trained by my impractical mother to give until it hurt, I decided to try and make good on a very embarrassingly situation.

Here were we sitting in a circle.  The monstrous tuba was placed on my feeble and aching lap constricting my circulation.  Fortunately it hid nearly all of me. Mr. Mascaranhas told me that all I was required to do was to blow hard through the mouth piece, very much like one would be required to blow through a breathalyser to measure ones alcoholic levels. I blew with all my might but no audible sound came from the stubborn instrument.  Mr. Mascaranshas then instructed me to blow through the mouth piece imitating a “fart”.  I thought that was terribly indelicate of him.  There was a booming sound that wound its way through the various labyrinths of the grateful instrument and out to the waiting ladies who interpreted the sound as a warning that the orchestra was about to start. The sound sadly resembled a fart that the Jolly Green Giant would have made while frustratingly negotiating the Bean Stock.  Mr. Mascaranhas smiled from ear to ear and the other members of the band nodded their insecure approval.  Now came the real test.  Could I “um-pa-pa” to timing….and what where those strange keys on the instrument?!!  Should I press them while I blew with abandon through the mouth piece?  After all, I had to give the world the impression that I was born with a double base sitting on my lap.

“One, two, three,” declared Mr. Mascaranhas to my astonishment.  With wild abandon he started to play the “Tennessee Waltz” on his violin. Not to be outdone, the ambitious trumpeter got into the act, and the guitarist plucked on his strings.  Of course, I had no idea where my “um-pa-pas” were to come in, but I knew I had to say something.  I pressed one of the keys and blew the “fart way” only to produce a sound like a train arriving at the station.  This sound was hardly consistent with the score, and had everybody, including the musicians laughing their heads off.  I thought this was great entertainment so I pressed the second key and blew as though my life depended on it.  This time the sound was a deep mourning sound that came just at the end of the number as though it had actually been rehearsed that way.

There was wild clapping but surprisingly no booing! I had a distinct impression that western music must have been very foreign to the largely Arab spectators or that they were just being polite.  All the power to them, I thought!   By the end of the evening, I had created the kind of music that I thought was congruent to the famous “Spike Jones” music which was a special genre of music.

However, when it was all over, I stayed home for a week after this demonstration, hoping that by some major miracle, my features would have changed beyond recognition, to mask my over night notoriety. I also developed stomach cramps each time I saw Mr. Mascaranhas and was also richly convinced that the tuba was not an instrument even for a perceived musical genius like me.

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Comment By Aspi Dastur

It's evening now, but it's been one of those Mondays when nothing seemed to go right. See, last week-end at our work was "maintenance week-end". This is when IT performs maintenance on all our Systems, or what I refer to as
"mismaintence". Because in whatever they do, they invariably screw up the settings in the Systems. It takes almost a full day to set things right again.

So, it is after such a day that I came across George's story about Um Pa Pa. It is so funny and so well-written that it made me forget the travails of the day.

For that I have to thank you George.

George, I remember you well from Zanzibar, as Teacher Yvonne's brother, and also when you were at Cable & Wireless where my dad worked too. But I remember you
even better from St. Xavier's in Bombay, where we were in the Hostel together.

You were an English major, which shows in your fine command of the language,with humor to boot. Please keep writing these stories of your experiences in Zanzibar, and maybe some day you can compile them into a book of short stories.