To escape from this gloomy recession I went time travelling on the cheap. Basically I visited my Nan so I could listen to her recalling a chapter from the story of her life in vivid detail, without pausing for breath. Well it’s pretty inexpensive compared to a trip to the cinema or buying a book, plus I get an unlimited buffet of Cherry Bakewells and Blue Riband chocolate wafers thrown in for free.
But great, just my luck. She was on Chapter 6, The Great Depression of 1929. A time when 20% of the British workforce was unemployed, 25% of the UK’s population existed on a subsistence diet, and my Nan had to move from London to the rather less glamorous Stanwell, Middlesex. She also had to leave behind her beloved job as a quality controller at a luxury goods manufacturer, where at 15 years old she got to look at and touch real leather handbags, silk scarves and bejewelled necklaces - objects that working class people like her would never usually get to hold - to become a stock assistant at Woolworths.
To my Nan at 96 years old, the Great Depression of 80 years ago is more lucid than what she did yesterday, because apparently it’s the short-term memory that goes first, whereas the long-term one decays much later. As she spoke, with her profile in silhouette against the harsh light of the February sun, she kept staring straight ahead, as if it was all being played out right in front of her. She was back in the 1930s, reliving the steel tub baths with ice cold water, hauling heavy stock down steep stairs and scraping together enough money for the bus fare.
Yet her story of everyday poverty and hardship made me feel much better about today’s economic situation. It doesn’t even come close when you try and compare the two. And then it made me think about the book I’m reading at the moment, White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, that’s set in India in the present day. Although you could be mistaken for thinking that it was actually Britain in the 1930s because of all the alarming similarities. The poverty, corruption, illiteracy, huge divide between rich and poor, exploitation of the underprivileged, child labour, outside toilets, large families sharing cramped spaces, servants and handful of moneyed landlords owning all the property, to whom you have to pay extortionate amounts of rent.
It shows that in Britain at least, we have come a long way in a relatively short space of time, and although they say this recession will be the worst this country has seen since the 1930s, we won’t have to go back to scrabbling in the mud for coal to heat our homes. It’s better to look on this recession as just a minor setback that we can all gain something from. Like appreciating the small things in life, living within our means and realising what’s important. All the stuff that, let’s face it, we don’t really do unless we’re forced to.
During the 96 years my Nan has lived through, depressions and recessions have come and gone, as life is all about cycles. Only once in a generation do we get the chance to break out of the cycle we're in, and move into another one where we're better off than before. According to the IMF, India, after all those years of exploitation by the West, will have one of the only expanding economies in 2009 and 2010 - China’s will be the other. They're both taking their chance. And we should take ours, by learning to live with less and caring about communities rather than companies.
So yes, life’s all about cycles and what goes around, comes around. Or what the Indians call Karma. It gives me hope that the big bosses who've caused this latest recession will get what’s coming to them. In White Tiger, the Indian servant protagonist slits his boss’s throat. Perhaps one day all the fat cats’ heads will roll too – metaphorically speaking, of course.
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