A Lovely Saturday with my Former Students from Jai Hind College

Saturday, November 10, 2018
Bombay

A Lovely Saturday with my Former Students from Jai Hind College

     Namaste from Bombay!
     I am rejoicing at the fact that my body clock seems to have become recalibrated--it is now waking me up at about 6.15 am. Took ages to come back to normal and I am glad I heeded the advice of my friend Ninanz who suggested I just try to go back to sleep when I awake at 4. 30 am! It has worked like a...well, like a dream!
     Accordingly, I washed and had my breakfast--muesli with coffee--and then showered. I dressed for a trip to the city as I was looking forward to a much-planned meeting with some of my former students from Jai Hind College where my teaching career as a professor of English had first begun. But before I took public transport to town, I wanted to pay a visit to Russel and my Dad as I did not know what time I would return from my city jaunt.
     I had barely five minutes with Russel when Suzie, his hairdresser, walked in for her 11.00 am appointment with him. Suzie is a family friend and Russel is a special 'pet' of her and her husband Darryl.  They have been firm friends of Russel for decades and as a professional hairdresser, Suzie does Russel's hair at home without taking a penny from him.  She had last cut his hair two months ago before leaving for a relative's wedding in New Jersey.  Now that she is back, she made cutting his hair her first priority.
   It was great to chat with Suzie about how cold it is already in New Jersey! She said she had to run away right after the wedding as they could not tolerate the cold! Wow! Here I still (vey occasionally) keep my AC on for a few minutes to take the humidity out of my room before I switch it off and keep only my fan on for the night.  It has certainly turned cooler in Bombay than it was in October--however, the local Indians seem to have a much worse time with the heat than I do.  I guess my threshold for climatic variations is much higher!
     Ater Suzie left at 11.30 am, I had barely five minutes with Dad before I had to move on as I had a 12.30 pm appointment at Churchgate station with my former student (now good friend Rashida) who was picking me up to take me to our lunch venue at Cuffe Parade.
    I walked out with Suzie and jumped into a 220 bus at Perry Cross Road, then into a train at Bandra Station and got off at Churchgate.  Rashida told me on the phone exactly where to stand as she would turn the curve of the road in a cab from Victoria Terminus that would then pick me up. While I was standing and waiting for her, I got a call from a Parsi friend called Kamal inviting me for dinner to her place this coming Friday. I was delighted to accept as I really wanted to catch up with Kamal whom I had made friends with while she was on a holiday in London, two years ago.
     Rashida arrived as scheduled, I hopped into her cab and off we went to the World Trade Center at Cuffe Parade where we had plans to meet for lunch at a restaurant called Hammer and Song.  It was great to see Rashida again as the last time we had met had been in my room at the West End Hotel soon after I had arrived in Bombay and while I was still enjoying the hospitality of the Fulbright folks. Neither one of us could believe that two months have passed since we hast met.
     The restaurant was lovely.  This was the building --the World Trade Center (WTC)--in which my Dad had ended his career as a banker in the Reserve Bank of India.  He had worked with the DBOD (Department of Banking Operations and Development) and had really enjoyed that assignment more than any other in his long career.  The DBOD had rented out space at the WTC and there he had been for years. It felt wonderful to be in a part of Bombay that had been so closely associated with my Dad's career.
     We settled down at a table for three as we were expecting Soniya and possibly even Priti--who was not sure what time her other luncheon appointment would end and if she could, in fact, join us. Soniya arrived a little later and had a lovely reunion with Rashida whom she was seeing after years--I met Soniya just a couple of weeks ago.
    So here's a word about this little group of students. They were English majors way back in 1984-86 when I was a professor at Jai Hind College--it was a time when I was basically no more than 3-4 years older than they were! I was young and as they put it "cool"--so we grew to be close friends, really.  To make our relationship even more significant, 1985 happened to be the International Year of Youth and India was offering huge discounts on hotels and other travel arrangements to anyone under the age of 26. As we all qualified, I decided to organize a trip for my students to the Golden Triangle.  This also happened to be the year that my French pen pal, Genevieve Tougne (now Ducote) and her sister Chantal arrived from France to tour India.  They became a part of our touring entourage as we left by train from Bombay, arrived in Delhi and then took all sorts of local transport to go through Agra, Fatehpur Sikhri, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Udaipur (where we ran into my friend, a local banker called Harsha) and Jaisalmer (that was where we all met Mick Jagger, remember?). We grew extremely close on that trip which is one of the most memorable of the many trips I have taken in India. For the next year, while they were doing their Senior BA at Jai Hind, we were like a pack of close friends--Romanee (now flying with Air-India) and Poonam (now married and well settled with grown up daughters in Dubai) were also members of that trip. Naturally, we have all stayed close friends.  Every single one of these gals (except Romanee) married and now has grown up kids of their own . In recent years, the internet and whatsapp has made it easier for us to maintain contacts and indeed we do.  Sadly, as Romanee has such an erratic flying schedule, I did not even suggest that we include her.
     Lunch was absolutely delicious--ever single item that we ordered was fabulous.  It was about 1.00pm by the time we ordered and all of us were starving.  While Soniya had iced tea, I actually had a milk shake! We ordered baked brie with honey infusion and pine nuts as a starter (and the gals loved it as much as I did). For our meal we ordered Burmese Chicken Kow Swey and a Chicken Panini and we shared the two--they were more than enough for the three of us.  Dessert was Nutella Cheese Cake and Churros with Chocolate Sauce (the chocolate sauce was the only disappointment).
     Just as dessert came to the table, our fourth attendee Priti arrived with her husband Johnny.  She introduced him to us, he sat for a few minutes and left.  Priti then took over the table. I had not seen here since 1986. She is the sort of bubbly, effusive personality who just sweeps you along with her exuberance.  She was also flush with her first publishing success--her first book called Out With Lanterns, a novel, has been receiving good reviews.  She gifted me a copy of it after signing it for me.  She has actually acknowledged in her book her indebtedness to me and the English and Writing I taught her at Jai Hind College which shaped her beginnings as a writer herself.  Needless to say, I felt hugely flattered.  It was an occasion for all those gathered at the table to tell me how much I had touched their lives and how indebted they felt to me for inculcating in them a lifelong love for English Literature that has remained unabated.  I am so proud of them and their achievements.
       Soniya is Head of Education for a German company that manufactures hair styling products such as clippers, scissors, curling irons, etc. When the two of us had met recently, she had told me all about her work and I had told her how proud I was of what she had achieved as she had faced adversity at a very young age--early widowhood and the raising of a very young daughter which she continues to do most competently. Rashida enjoys being a housewife to three children and continues to obsess about books and British culture (a gal after my own heart). She is an avid surveyor of my monthly newsletters and actually writes to let me know when one of them is running late! So with my Fan Club surrounding me, you can just imagine what a good afternoon I had!
      Priti spoke extensively about the travails of getting published in India and about the success of her book and the responsibility of social media in furthering her visibility.  I really learned a lot from her. She also insisted that we return to her place for coffee after our meal, but we declined, despite her persistence, as we had spent almost three hours together and decided to keep it for another reunion.
       I am just grateful, as I look back on my long teaching career, that it started off so brilliantly at a local Bombay college of which I have nothing but the happiest memories with colleagues who are still valued friends of mine and students such as these who remember me with nothing but the greatest affection.  In turn, I thanked them for giving me some of the happiest career memories of my life. I have come such a long way since those first tentative steps as a professor with teaching opportunities that came my way in the UK and in America in some of the world's greatest educational institutions.  But I have never forgotten how marvelous it was to have cut my teaching teeth as it were, at Jai Hind College which provided me with such a fine training ground.  In having come back to Bombay, I have indeed come full circle!
   We parted when Soniya who had driven in dropped Priti off at her place and then dropped Rashida and me at Mahalaxmi station from where Rashida took a cab and I jumped into a train.  In less than half an hour, I was in Bandra and went straight to Dad's place to spend the evening with Russel.
  He was very grateful for my company as Dad had left to go to wish my cousin Meera for her birthday and then had gone directly to church for Mass. I spent the next hour talking to Russel and was just about to leave when he had visitors--JonKen and his wife Sonam, then spent the next half hour chatting with Russel. We had a very nice time together.
     By 8.15, Dad came home, I stayed with him for just another ten minutes and then I left. Back home, I made myself a gin and tonic and enjoyed it with cheese and crackers before I had dinner of chole, chicken curry and spinach with potatoes with ice-cream for dessert. All the while, I watched Dead Wind, a Finnish TV crime thriller show.
     By 10.15, after anther lovely and very eventful day, I went off to bed.
     Until tomorrow...