Beginning an Exploration of the Museum and Samson and Delilah at the NCPA

Tuesday, November 6, 2018
Bombay

Beginning an Exploration of the Bombay Museum and Samson and Delilah at the NCPA

     Namaste from Bombay!
     I am dashing off my blog post at the end of the day today instead of first thing in the morning as my routine went a bit haywire (since today is Diwali)
     But, I  awoke at 6. 30 am and cranked out a blog post that took me all of 20 minutes. I then gulped down a quick cup of coffee and dressed for the gym where I spent the next hour. Right after it, I came home and spent a while on the phone with Shahnaz with whom I had plans for the evening--we would be seeing the HDLive screening of Samson and Delilah at the NCPA at the 6.30 pm show from New York's Metropolitan Opera House.  However, since I was going to be in the city, I prefer to go there early and make a sight-seeing detour of sorts. Shahnaz had an appointment with her lawyer and told me to wait until 1.30 pm by which time she would join me too.
    I figured I would spend the morning working on my conference paper for Calcutta and would give her a chance to finish her meeting and then travel to the city with me.  Accordingly, I showered, then got my own food organized and took it in a Tupperware container to Dad's house with the idea of eating lunch with him and Russel. I carried my own food there as I did not want to be saddled with another lot of leftovers. Despite the fact that my tiffin comes in only once in two days, I find myself eating out so much that I invariably have a load of leftovers in my fridge.
     Dad was hugely suprized to see me but when I explained why I had shown up he was more than happy to have me eat lunch with him and Russel.  Russel too was delighted to see me because he knew that I would not be back in the evening to spend time with him.
     I was just finishing lunch when Shahnaz called to tell me that she was leaving her place and would be at my Dad's gate in five minutes. She decided to drive to the city in her car (as opposed to taking the train) as Diwali festivities have already begun in Bombay and the roads have much less traffic on them. She expected that we would speed into the city.
     And she was right.  It took us exactly an hour from door to door. Shahnaz was sweet enough to take an interesting detour that led us to places with which I am not really familiar such as the posh south Bombay locations of Warden Road, Peddar Road, Napean Sea Road, Malabar Hill and Walkeshwar.  In fact, we took a wrong turn at Teen Bhatti and ended up on a dead end road which brought us to the gate of Raj Bhavan, the estate of the Governor of Maharashtra, where my friend Michelle, who now lives in London, had grown up as her father used to be Head of Security for the Governor of Maharashtra.  In fact, I have lovely memories of traipsing to Raj Bhavan when we were classmates at Elphinstone College to attend one of the very classy sit-down tea parties that her mother used to host to celebrate occasions such as her birthday. I remember (long before I had made my first trip to the UK myself) being charmed by the wafer-thin porcelain tea cups and saucers in which her mother had served us tea in proper grown-up fashion with the prettiest pastries and daintiest finger sandwiches that she had passed around on three-tiered stands! It was the most exciting of exposures to the English way of life that I can remember!
     Anyway, I took pictures at the gate of Raj Bhavan while Shahnaz asked the havaldar on duty for directions. I wanted to send them off to Michelle so that she could wax nostalgic about her growing years.
   When we were back on track again, we raced down the Walkeshwar Hill alongside the glorious shimmering Arabian Sea at the Chowpatty Beach and then sailed all the way down Marine Drive on a day when Bombay reminded me of my childhood--traffic was sparse and the number of people on the roads was equally thin. What a joy it can be to have the city practically to yourself!
     As we approached Nariman Point, Shahnaz had the brainwave that we park in the parking lot of the NCPA, use the rest rooms there and then take a cab to the Museum where we intended to spend a couple of hours. And that was precisely what we did.  Five minutes later, our car safely stashed away, we used rest rooms and took a taxi to the Museum.
 
Exploring the Prince of Wales Museum (now the Shivaji Museum):
     We bought our tickets and entered the gorgeous marble central circular hall of the museum whose building was designed in Indo-Sarcenic style by the British architect Wittets. The more I explore the fabulous heritage buildings of Bombay, they more I am getting acquainted with this genius architect who has left his mark so lovingly upon the city. It is ornamental in the extreme with its imposing facade that includes a huge dome and twin flanking ones and all sorts of carvings. Inside, the marble flooring gives the entire place a majestic ambience--we could well be in a maharaja's palace.
     Picking up a floor plan (and resolving that the next time I come on my own I will do the audio tour of all the highlights which are beautifully printed on a glossy flyer), Shahnaz and I decided to start at the top most floor (the second floor) and make our way down. We took the elevator up and following the floor map entered a smallish gallery devoted to the last works of the Parsi painter Jehangir Sabavala that have been donated to the museum by his widow.  He painted these works in 2010 and died in 2011. He was truly a gentleman painter and his own black and white portrait, done in Germany, in the 1940s, presents a prim Parsi man with a prim mustache and earnest eyes. A much later portrait presents a much older man, who had balded but had retained his classy demeanor.
     The next gallery brought us directly into 'European Paintings', most of which were the personal collection of Sir Ratan Tata who was one of the two sons (together with Dorab Tata) of Sir Jamshedji Nuuserwanji Tata. Sir Ratan, who has a lovely bronze sculpture of himself on the same floor, amassed a fine collection of Victorian and Edwardian paintings that are in beautiful shape, in grand gilded frames. Although they do not comprise the work of Old Masters, one or two of them are by world-famous artists, such as David Tenniers and another by the portraitist Sir Thomas Lawrence (of the diamond merchant Henry Phillip Hope who is associated with the famous Hope Diamond). I loved a painting entitled 'At the Crossroads (The World and the Cloister)" by Emil Rau  which featured a tearful young girl being coaxed by two 19th century nuns as her internal debate rages as to whether to join the convent or to give herself up to married life. I was stunned by the variety of works in this gallery--there are Tudor portraits, Flemish animal studies and Dutch landscapes, even a small portrait of Madame Pompadour by Francois Boucher! Who knew??? Right here, in the city of my birth are these fine examples of European paintings squirreled away far from wide spread publicity.
     We spent so much time admiring the paintings and reading all the curatorial cards with their helpful notes that we only had time to peruse the fabulous Victorian vitrines that contained a nice representative collection of glass (by Emile Galle, cameo glass, Venetian blown specimens, cut crystal), porcelain (I recognized Meissen and Coalport), pottery (there was Josiah Wedgwood's Portland Vase and some of his famed jasperware), some really amazing Mogul glassware (all of which were collected by Ratan Tata and bequeathed to the museum) and my favorite segment of the museum--his own personal collection of snuff bottles--he has hundreds of them, most Asian in origin but many made in Europe as well.

Lunch at Jamie Oliver's Pizzeria at Nariman Point:
     It was close to 5 pm and Shahnaz said that she was starving as she had not eaten lunch! She wanted to eat at Woodside Restaurant where we had eaten a few nights ago; but I felt safer eating closer to the NCPA. It was Jamie Oliver's Pizzeria to which we adjourned by cab from the museum.  There we split a Mushroom Pizza  studded with wild mushrooms and pickled onions over a white mushroom sauce that was only just Okay--no great shakes.  With a Coke, it was a good meal.

Off to the Opera--Samson Et Dalila:
     We were at the Godrej Little Theater by 6.15 where I ran into my friend Firdaus who was accompanying some Parsi friends who were visiting from Canada. He introduced us to them before we disappeared to use rest rooms. The opera Samson et Dalila by Camille Saint-Saens was in French and starred Roberto Alagna (whom I have seen umpteen times on stage) as Samson and Elina Garanca as Delilah.  Costumes and sets were spectacular and Act II was outstanding. It was a very enjoyable opera and although not much hyped, I actually found that I liked it a lot more than I expected. Shahnaz slept through most of it--so it probably was not as enthralling for her.
     It was about 9.30 when it ended and we got back in Shahnaz's car for a lovely drive back to Bandra.  Once again, lack of traffic on the streets along Marine Lines made the drive purely pleasurable and I recalled similar drives taken in my childhood days in my Aunt Anne's car--when Bombay had been nothing but a huge pleasure and living it in had seemed like the greatest privilege in the world.
     Shahnaz dropped me back to my flat before getting back to her's. It was about 11.00 pm and I was ready to hit the sack after a most adventuresome day!
     Until tomorrow...