At The Asiatic Society Library and the NCPA Library--and my First Interview

Wednesday, October 3, 2018
Bombay

At The Asiatic Society Library and the NCPA Library--and my First Interview

     Namaste from Bombay!
     My productivity today made up for my malaise of yesterday. I kept both appointments I had made at two libraries in the city, became a member of one of them and did my first interview as part of my Fulbright field research! At last, I have actually begun! Well done, Me!
     So I awoke at 5.00 am and immediately had a phone call from Llew who was in New York with my friends Raju and Sue who are visiting from Bombay.  They were off for dinner and said Hello to me while they were together. This was followed by a phone call I made to my friend Leslie in Connecticut who has been so closely connected with me through my trials and tribulations. By the time I was done chatting to these folks, it was about 7.00 am and I decided to stop to wash, dress and down a cup of coffee before going off for my daily walk to Jogger's Park. I actually managed to do that, came home (dripping with perspiration as humidity levels in Bombay have soared as has the temperature) for a quick shower and then I dressed for my day out in the city.

Off to Downtown Bombay:
     I left at 10.00 am for an appointment at the Asiatic Society Library at noon with my friend and former high school classmate, Dr. Shehernaz Nalwalla who is on the Managing Committee at the Library.  She promised to show me around the premises and introduce me to the collection. Hence, I hopped on a 220 bus from Perry Cross Road to get to Bandra station. If one does not mind waiting for a bus for an average time of 10 minutes, buses are cheap, usually not so oppressively crowded that one is suffocated (I have almost invariably found a seat) and you sit in the same amount of traffic as you would if in a rickshaw--so they are, to my mind, a far better way to get around. While waiting for the bus, I made a phone call to Jimmy Bilimoria, a librarian at the NCPA (whose contact number was given to me by my friends Aban and and Rusi Davar while I was at their home the other day) to confirm that I would be with him in the afternoon. He was more than happy to see me.
     From Bandra Station, I took a train to Churchgate.  I always travel in the Gents First Class compartment as I find that the Ladies is too empty and too scary. A lot of ladies are traveling in the Gents First Class, I notice, as there are now 4 Gents First Class compartments and you always get a seat in one of them.

In the City:
     From Churchgate, I decided to walk to the Asiatic Society Library. The idea was to go past all the streets I used to haunt when I started my working life in the Cash Department of the Reserve Bank of India where I had worked for two years while taking my Masters' degree in English by evening classes at Elphinstone College.  The Asiatic Society Library (also known as the Town Hall) is right next to the newer RBI skyscraper in which I used to work--and this building in turn is just opposite the original RBI building that was built in the early twentieth-century, I believe.
     Only, to my surprise, once I reached Dadabhai Nowroji Road (which I believe was known, in my mother's time as a working woman, as Hornby Vellard), I discovered that the new Metro lines they are laying in Bombay,  have completely reconfigured traffic movements and also shut off a lot of pedestrian pathways. This made my walk to the RBI a rather convoluted one.  It was also very hot and very humid and I was grateful for the bottle of water I always carry in my bag as I needed to hydrate frequently as I was sweating freely.
     I was happy to find that The Bombay Store that sells Indian handicrafts is still there as is the Jammu and Kashmir Handicrafts store from which I have bought lovely genuine pashmina shawls in years gone by. However, I was disappointed to find that in Botawala Chambers where I used to buy a ton of books for Chriselle when she was a little girl and another ton of British women's magazines for myself such as Womans' Weekly and Woman and Home, the man who used to sell the magazines, a Mr. Botawala, I believe, was no longer looking after the make shift book shop in the foyer of the building.  The man who was in-charge told me that he comes in rarely these days. I was sorry as I had hoped to meet him.
     Across the street, at both RBI buildings, I found such tight security, I was incredulous.  There are massive wrought-iron gates now, electronic gates that contain metal detectors as well as security personnel frisking people as found in airports. Wow! How Bombay has changed in ten years since the terrible terrorist attacks of 26/11. No doubt there will be special commemoration services this year to mark the 10th anniversary of the tragedy. But, I remember those days when one could freely go in and out of the old RBI building and marvel at the counters behind which men from the Cash Department dispensed cash to the public in a central hall that is simply spectacular.  I bet I could still go in, of course, if I jumped through the security hoops--and I hope to do so another time.
     I walked across to the Asiatic Society Library and found that the entrance is not up the lovely imposing steps of the Neo-Classical building that I have always loved, but from the back. Once I found it, I made my way up the twin curved staircases to get to the vestibule where my friend Shen (as I now know her) would be waiting. I was a little early and really very hot--so I entered the National Library (which adjoins the Asiatic) and sat right under a fan for about fifteen minutes to cool off.  The Main Reading Room there had a few people sitting around with books in front of them--but I noticed that on top of each book was their phone and it was those that they were reading! That said, I found the same thing occur in the Radcliffe Camera building at the Bodleian Library in Oxford (so no judgements there!). In the main Reading Room of what I later discovered was the National Library (and different from the Asiatic Society Library), I saw newspapers and magazines in various Indian languages as well as English. The room itself is impressive with its gilded Corinthian columns, its chandelier lighting (now entirely electrified, of course) and its old round teak wood tables and its old teak armchairs (you sit and read in chairs with arms--fancy that!).
     At noon, I made my way back to the vestibule of the Astatic Library having cooled off considerably and within five minutes of my waiting in a room surrounded by marble sculptures with busts of various colonial worthies (Bartle Frere, Mountstuart Elphinstone, Carnac, as well as the seated sculpture of Sir Jamshedjee Jeejeebhoy), my friend Shen arrived.  We visited for a bit until she told me about the collection and about membership fees. She gave me a brief tour of the premises and showed me the stacks in the basement that have movable shelves that work on steering wheels--I was most impressed! She told me also that the government had given the library 5 crores of rupees to digitalize their catalogue which is now fully available on line.  Corporate sponsorship also has stepped forward to make periodicals like The Bombay Chronicle which was published in the early decades of the 20th century, available to remote readers. I was so amazed at the manner in which the city had made strides that I believe so much scholarship can now be undertaken at much less trouble than it used to be in years gone by when I was doing my doctorate in Bombay. (My friend Leslie, a librarian at our local Pequot Library in Southport, Connecticut, was telling me that I ought to write articles in the New York Times that highlight these aspects of India's progress when all one ever reads about is the torture of Dalits, cow-lynchings, suicides of farmers, etc. And she is right.  One rarely comes across an uplifting story about India and, to my mind, such stories are equally worthy of newspaper cellulose.)
     Shen also introduced me to the folks who work in the back office and who are in-charge of membership.  Now their offices were like something out of a novel by Kafka. They were sprawling rooms, filled with dreary aged furniture, shelving stacked with files thick with dust. Each of them had a computer but it looked incongruous in the face of these ancient premises that are so badly in need of a good clean-up. Clearly, while the front facades of the buildings and their main halls are being refurbished, no attention is being given to the back offices that wear the shabbiness of the ages.
     In the stacks, things look different--better.  Also, I loved the half galleries that surround most of the rooms that contain the old black library vitrines.  Shen told me that part of the government grant paid for new glass panes for them. There are fresh coats of paint here.  The spiral staircase leading down to the conservation section below was also freshly refurbished. So, since some parts glow, those that are neglected now look twice as shabby.
     Having received information from Shen on membership dues and taking her advice that I access the online catalogue and see if there is anything that would be of interest to me before becoming a member, I left.

Lunch at Copper Chimney:
     I decided to walk to Kala Ghoda along the Esplanade that borders the Bombay Docks as I needed to buy lunch before my next appointment at the NCPA.  Shen was off to another appointment at Crawford Market and could not join me. So we parted company and I walked alone.  Again, it was very hot, but two weeks in China had accustomed me to heat and humidity and it really was no worse than it had been there. I wore my sunglasses and my baseball cap but my hair was entirely plastered to my head when I took it off as it was just too hot to wear a cap. It was my idea to return to the Kala Ghoda Cafe for lunch.
     But then, as I walked along shops that are actually high-end boutiques such as Varun Bahl and fancy Japanese cookie shops such as Yoko Moto, the walk reminded me very much of that stretch in Chelsea, London, where the upscale interior designers such as Joanna Wood and Viscount Linley have their showrooms and where Daylesford Organic has a cafe. Somehow this entire stretch took me back to London--it was amazing. When I reached the end of the Esplanade, I was at the wonderful colonial Anglican Church of St. Andrew that was built in 1812.  This building would once have been within the walls of the Fort that the British East India Company would have built to guard their merchandise from vandals. The Church would have served the ecclesiastical needs of early 'Companywalas'. Sadly, I could not step inside because the doorman told me that it is locked and only opened for Sunday services at 6.00 pm. or on Saturdays at 10.30 am. Shame!
     However, by this point, I was just around the corner from Rampart Row and decided to walk down it to see how much it had changed.  And boy, had it changed! Thackers, the book store from which I ordered and purchased all the prize books I had won for topping Bombay University at the BA and MA exams with English Honors, was no more.  I was sorely saddened. Similarly, the Indian Airlines office has closed.  It wears a forlorn facade. Instead, there are more designer showrooms--everyone in India seems to be making fancy evening dresses for weddings and such.
     That said, the Copper Chimney which once used to be only in Worli, now has a branch here. I saw a sign advertising a lunch buffet for Rs. 699 and (in small print), a Soup and Salad buffet for Rs. 199.  Now that would be a real steal, I thought. So in I went. The place was, mercifully, air-conditioned, as I desperately needed to cool off after my walk. There were about thirty people inside in a restaurant that had a full bar and a buffet on the other side. I told the maitre d' that I would like the soup and salad buffet and he led me to that section of the buffet from which I could serve myself.  There were two soups--Tomato and Chicken (both outstanding)-- and three vegetarian salads (Greek Salad, Green Salad, Aloo Chaat) and one non-vegetarian salad--Chicken Mango Salad. There was also Boondi Raita and a number of preserves and pickles. Thoughtfully, they had provided bread rolls, bread sticks and papads to make it even more substantial. Seriously, this is such good value for money, I will eat here again every chance I get.  The food was delicious and very filling and and the service was superb and while I expected that with taxes, etc. I would pay much more than Rs. 199, when my bill arrived, that was exactly what I paid--it was Rs. 199 all inclusive!!! Wow!

Off to the Library of the NCPA:
     I had to find my way to the library of the NCPA next which is at Nariman Point. However, as everyone knows by now, I am a real aficionado of public buses--whether they are in New York, London or Bombay. So I was determined to find a bus that would take me there. I retraced my steps walking back towards the RBI when I spotted a bus stop.  I asked folks standing there if there was a bus that would get me to Nariman Point and three of them told me that the 108 would go.  Yes!!!
        I waited less than ten minutes when the 108 showed up. Needless to say, I got a seat as the bus was only half full. I loved the ride along the Bombay Dock Gates (Lions' Gate, etc.) which were manned by all sorts of security folks. At the Prince of Wales Museum, the bus turned around the traffic island and sailed towards the Cooperage and then on to Nariman Point.  I adore these parts of downtown Bombay. They never fail to lift my spirits. Although it was hot, it was a real pleasure to be out and about exploring these bits of the city.
    When the bus terminated at Nariman Point, I did not have my bearings as the area is a maze of streets with towering corporate office buildings. Everyone knows the NCPA, however, so I asked someone and got directions.

Doing my First Interview:
     I found Jimmy Billimoria in the Opera Section of the Music Library of the complex which is beautifully laid out with five theaters, glorious manicured gardens and a very artsy ambience reminiscent of the National Theater in London. I am simply going to love doing research in this space and I am so excited to have the privilege to do so.
     After a brief introduction, Jimmy launched upon a monologue about his interest in opera. I pulled out my notebook and began taking notes as I did not realize that I would be in the middle of an interview within two minutes of meeting him.  He was a treasure trove of information about the beginnings of opera in Bombay and he told me about so many organizations that have kept the genre alive in the city.  Before long, I had the names of a lot of people I should be interviewing with their contact numbers! How cool was that? He also took me across to meet his brother, Cavas, who is the medical doctor for the NCPA and who also played with the Bombay Symphony Orchestra.  Meanwhile, his wife Hutoxi, who also works in a different section of the main library, took me to meet the head librarian, Sujata Jadhav, who gave me a membership form and told me that it would cost me only Rs. 500 for a year's membership.  All I needed to give them was two photographs (which I happened to be carrying). Once money changed hands, I was presented with a spiffy library membership card. I was so thrilled! I am now a bonafide member of the library of the National Center for the Performing Arts where I have little doubt that a lot of the books on my Bibliography will be available.  It is not a lending library--so I will need to do my reading on the premises.  But they are air-conditioned--glory be!!! So I can make myself comfortable in very nice surroundings from 10.00 am to 5.45 pm, Monday to Friday.  Fab, fab, fab! I now intend to keep one day a week for library reading.
     Armed with my library card and a slew of names of people whom I now intend to contact and with whom I shall make appointments, I left the NCPA gallantly escorted by Jimmy who showed me the bus stop that would take me back to Churchgate station on the 137 bus.  This took a while to come--about fifteen minutes--but I got a seat again and in ten minutes, I was at Churchgate station.
     From there, I waited for a train to Andheri (as these are much less crowded than trains going to Borivli or Virar) and then took a seat in the Ladies First Class compartment as it was close to 5.00 pm and I was sure there would be many women in it all the way to Bandra.  It reached Bandra at 5. 15 pm, jumped into a 220 bus--once again empty--and reached home by 5. 30 pm.
     However, I have to say that the heat was enervating and I could not wait to switch on the AC in my studio and relax with a cup of tea and cake.
     At 6.30 pm, I left my studio, walked to church for the Novena to our Mother of Perpetual Succor.  After Mass, I visited Russel briefly to see how he was doing. I was disappointed to find that his knee has begun swelling again--clearly fluid is accumulating in it again. I will be calling the intern, Dr. Vijay Patel tomorrow, to tell him about this development which is a cause for concern. Dad gave me some chocolate cake and a potato chop that had been given to him--he says that people keep sending him more food than he and Russel can consume.
     I picked up my laundry also from Dad's place (as I do not have a washing machine I get my laundry done at his) and then reached home where I switched on the AC again. I also made myself a gin and tonic as I really needed to relax after a long and tiring day.  But hey, what an productive day it turned out to be!
     I ate my dinner (new tiffin: chicken curry, cutlets and greens with potatoes) with half a custard apple for dessert. And as I ate, I watched Tunnel--a really good show.
    Until tomorrow...