Born in Malaysia in 1946, Lily Forbes grew up in Colonial Malaysia as the middle child of a large family. Her adolescent years were spent in Pondicherry, South India. In 1969 she realised her childhood dream of coming to England. She qualified as a General nurse than as a midwife in 1974 and later in 1991 trained as a Sick Children’s Nurse at Great Ormond Street Hospital where she had the privilege of meeting princess Diana.
At the age of fifty- two, in 1998, she obtained a Masters in Medical Anthropology at Brunel University.
Since retiring from working at the Bristol Children’s hospital as a Clinical Co-Co-coordinator she has pursued other dreams, in particular her love of travel, by visiting Machu Picchu, the Galapagos, and Brazil amongst many other inspiring places. Cooking is also a huge passion and she loves fusion cooking. In 2009 she appeared on BBC2’s Instant Restaurant. Married with two daughters, she is proud grandmother to Maddie. She divides her time between Bristol and Manchester.
My conscious life sprang into being amid belching smoke, sticky bodies and ethnic diversity. Considering where my future was to take me, it seems quite a coincidence that my earliest memories involve travel – and an Englishman.’
This is a story about one girl’s dream to escape poverty and fulfil her dreams. Set against the rich social and political backdrop of war-torn Malaya’s independence, the child’s viewpoint tells a personal story of family life and individual survival in the multi-cultural, multi-religious melting pot of Malaya as it was then known.
The trials of small-pox and poverty are contrasted with key moments such as meeting Mr Nehru and shaking hands with Mrs Indira Ghandi. Lily served as a cadet in the Indian National Army following her father’s footsteps, who fought in Burma during World War Two.
An unwanted love interest was followed by a traumatic incident. In an ironic twist of fate, failure in her exams turned Lily’s destiny around. She returned from India to Malaysia.
Forbidden love a passion for food and the tenacity to pursue dreams despite surroundings are at the heart of this tale.
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‘Growing up under the Mango Tree’ begins with my earliest memory as a four-year-old child on a train journey, where I meet an Englishman. This is the beginning of the thread that is pulled throughou
t the story tying it up in the epilogue when I eventually marry an Englishman and settle down in the country of my childhood dreams-England, an impossible achievement during that period.
The first thirty chapters focus on a small pox survivor, the middle child of a family of nine siblings in a rural poor district within a few miles of Kuala Lumpur the capital of Malaya. Brought up in traditional values in a mainly Indian community with it’s dictates of ‘elders have to be obeyed at all costs’ leads to some dark moments for me, with both emotional and physical consequences.
Religion plays a large part in our upbringing helping us to accept our poverty. The story develops around my Convent education, and the interaction with school friends and teachers. We lived among both endearing and volatile neighbours, surviving an arson attack and living in fear of further violence from local youth, however my story is also interspersed with tales of family humour and friendly sibling rivalries.
I was six years behind my next older sibling, and the next three children after me were all boys, making me a bit of a loner in the family and I escaped into a dream world of books and children's adventure stories. Throughout the narrative there are constant references to the ever-changing political situation in Malaya, which in turn leads to life changing decisions being made by my family.
Chapter thirty-one onwards focuses on my three and a half years in India with my mother and younger siblings, where we have to embrace a more restrictive culture. Here my schooling leads into pre-university life, and I also enrol as a cadet in the Indian army, which leads to my meeting the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi in New Delhi. Pressure from personal and family expectations, difficulties with our newly acquired Indian relatives, an unreciprocated love interest at the university, and an unwelcome sexual encounter leads to a period of anorexia and failure at Pre University for me. As a result of these cumulative setbacks, I find myself falling into a period of deep depression, and it is decided that I should be sent back home to Malaysia to be reunited with my father and the rest of our family.
The final two chapters concentrate on a short sweet love affair with a younger boy from a different caste to myself, which unfortunately encounters strong opposition from both sets of parents. Equally Malaysia now finds itself thrown into turmoil after the race riots in May 1969. For both these reasons my dad offers me an escape route by agreeing to borrow money to send me to England and train as a nurse. So three months after the uprising I arrive in London with an unexpected opportunity to live and explore the country of my childhood dreams.
A two-page epilogue explains what happened to this 22-year-old girl and brings it up to date. This concludes my memoirs.
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