A Morning Spent Working and the Paranjyoti Choir in Afghan Church

Friday, December 14, 2018
Bombay

A Morning Spent Working and the Paranjyoti Choir in Afghan Church

     Namaste from Bombay!
     Today was the kind of day that started routinely enough and ended with a bang! So here goes:
     I was awake at 6.00--this left me time to blog, read news on Twitter and deal with email correspondence. I also decided that I should now wind down for the Holidays as I have a trip to pack and prepare for and still so much to do in the next two weeks--don't we all!? Truly, it doesn't matter where in the world you might be or how simple your life, the days before Christmas are just killing in terms of prep!
     I had my breakfast of muesli and coffee and spent an hour in the gym--still reading about lovely Bridget Jones. Liking the book much.
     Back home, I showered and began emailing off our Christmas family letter around the world. People came back to say they could not open it and wanted it sent in another format--as if I would know how to do that!!! Anyway, others said they had no trouble at all.  I then realized that if you are trying to open it on your phone, you probably fail.  On computers, it seems to open well. There is a possibility that the file is too large. Well, at this stage, I cannot make any changes--simply too much to do.
     I also finished the transcribing of the interview with Khushroo Suntook which took me less than an hour as our second meeting was much shorter. The Bharat Dabholkar interview was long and transcribing will take ages--I probably will not be done by the time I have to leave for Orissa.
   I then fixed up with my cousin Blossom (who has arrived from Madras to spend Christmas with her brothers in Bombay) to meet her at 4.00 at my Dad's from where we would leave at about 5.00 pm for our evening's program. Then, my friend Kamal called to inform me about another LitFest (Literary Festival) that is currently on at Mehboob Studios in Bandra. I had no knowledge of it at all.  She is attending tomorrow and wondered if I would be there too. I quickly looked up the program and, thankfully, did not find anything that I wanted to attend today.
       Tomorrow's program is much more interesting--there is my friend Shashi Tharoor speaking about his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister (about Modi), plus a session on Migrant US Literature in an Age of Trump that I am keen to attend as I teach US Immigrant Lit. and there is a political session with Smriti Irani and Milind Deora duking it out on stage with a Moderator named Nidhi Razdan.  Since she represents the BJP and he represents the Congress, I thought it would be right up Dad's alley (as would the session with Shashi as Dad is a huge fan of this writer-politician), so I called Dad and asked if he would like to join me in attending these sessions.  He was delighted to do so--so Dad shall be with me at the LitFest tomorrow! I am so excited to be going with him! I shall have to find him a seat right in front so that he can hear and see--his eye sight and hearing are not the best. But, he jumped when I told him about the events and said he would love to go with me! I so admire his enthusiasm (and now I know where I get it from!!!)
     I had my lunch of black-eyed beans curry, fried fish and a concoction made with bread and peas--the bread is blowing off my low-carb diet--but hey, I still do tuck into cookies, cakes and ice-cream (so who am I kidding right?). I continued watching The Two Fat Ladies at lunch time. Then, I took my 20 minute nap, dressed and left for Dad's. Blossom and Lenita, Russel's physiotherapist, were both there. Dad is feeling very discouraged as Russel is not able to get the hang of walking with a stick (although he is doing well with the walker). We are trying to tell him that he ought to give it a lot of time. Still, it is not easy for Russel or for Dad to accept his limitations...
     While I was at Dad's, I got an invitation by phone to participate in a Literary Festival at the Radio Club on December 28 run by a company called Tefla. I told them to send me more information before I can decide in what capacity I can participate.  It seems that they want me to be part of a panel discussion on Books.
     At about 5.00 pm, Blossom and I said Bye to Dad and Russel and left for our evening's event.

The Paranjyoti Choir at Afghan Church:
      Really, there is never a dull moment in Bombay, let me tell you.  Blossom and I were headed into downtown Bombay to listen to a free concert given by the legendary Paranjyoti Choir under the leadership of conductor Coomi Wadia who has been their mentor for almost half a century.  She is now aged but continues to conduct. Age sits most gracefully upon her as she is tall, slim, very elegant indeed in her silk sarees (I see her frequently at the NCPA at all the HDLive opera screenings as well as the classical music recitals). Blossom was most taken up with how poised she looks.
     Well, as it turned out, getting to the city by train was a truly novel experience for Blossom who has not done this for 48 years--the last time she took the train and commuted to the city was when she was a college student in Bombay--she has since then lived in Madras. The crowds on the platform overwhelmed her and she felt real fear. She asked me how I cope and I told her that being in China for 2 weeks before I got to Bombay was the best thing that could have happened as I got completely accustomed to crowds in Beijing and Shanghai--by the time I arrived in Bombay, I had become used to seeing crowds of humanity all clustered together and it did not phase me.
     We took the Ladies (second class) compartment (as Blossom does not have a first class pass) at the very front and it was empty--much better than the one in the middle of the train where there was a lot of pushing and shoving and which I could not take either--remember we were in peak hour rush (just after 5.00 pm). In the front--the first car of the train--is another one exclusively for Ladies and it was delightfully calm and empty--such a far cry from the middle Ladies Only car. We let one train go and walked to the front of the train and took the next one that came--and that way, we arrived at Churchgate very peacefully--much to Blossom's relief,
     Nafisa was waiting for us outside Eros station when we got there and she drove us to the venue. When we reached Afghan Church, it was all lit up and festive-looking.

A Word About Afghan Church:
     As I said in an earlier blog post. I have made a couple of attempts, in recent years, to get into Afghan Church--an Anglican Church at the southern tip of the island of Bombay. However, it is always locked and there is never anyone around to assist. So, the reason why all of us were so keen to get there tonight was primarily to be able to see the inside of the church. And I have to say that I had expected it to be similar to St. Thomas' (Anglican) Cathedral at Fort--which is one of Bombay's most interesting churches.  But it was not. The former is chockfull of Victorian mortuary sculpture. This one was stark--very plain inside indeed.
       Built in the typical English Anglican Victorian vein, its lovely steeple has tiny windows carved into it (similar to the one in Oxford that I really love) and double levels. Inside, it has a gorgeous timbered ceiling that soars to the top, some stained glass and a very lovely altar. But there is no mortuary sculpture at all--I guess all memorials are in the cathedral.
     Built in 1847 just after the first Anglo-Afghan War that occurred in Sind and in Afghanistan as the British (in their colonial greed) tried to capture Afghanistan, it was specially built to house the mortal remains of those soldiers who gave up their lives for territorial expansion.  The British were hopelessly defeated as the Afghan Pathans fought from their subterranean lairs in rugged terrain with which the British were quite unfamiliar--it was the same reason why the US forces could not get Osama Bin Laden a century later. They retreated and brought their war dead back to Bombay for a proper burial.  Their remains are probably under the main altar--which is a slab of white marble. Behind it are quiet pastel-colored mosaics and marble paneling that declare the objective of building this church: "This Church Was built in memory of the Officers Whose Names are Written on the Walls of the Chancel and of the Non-Commissioned Officers and Private Soldiers, Too Many to be so Recorded, who Fell Mindful of their Duty by Sickness or by the Sword in the Campaigns of Sind and Afghanistan, AD 1838-1843."
     At the entrance of the church are the regimental standards that the soldiers used--for the church became the main house of worship for the British army that was stationed in the vicinity which were then army barracks and is now simply known as Navy Nagar (it now houses the Indians in the armed forces who took the place of the British after Independence). The original baptismal font is still in place at the front portico of the church.
      But the church's most intriguing features are the notches carved out in the pews so that colonial soldiers (who always had to have their arms with them) could stand up their rifles during services. In the front pews sat the officers (who did not need to carry their arms) but whose pews have holes cut in for their regimental standards. It was all quite fascinating to see. Finally, after all these years of trying to get in, I was able to take in all these features of the church.  

The Pranjyoti Christmas Concert:
     Having reached there by 6.30 pm, we were lucky to have found five seats in a row--which we needed as I was holding one seat for Kamal and Nafisa had invited a fellow-Singaporean in Bombay, Mandira, to join us. My friend Firdaus (whom I affectionately call Dr. G--he is Dr. Gandavia!) arrived too with a bunch of his European friends to whom he introduced me. One was an Italian and two were German and the Germans were delighted to find that carols in German were part of the program. Kamal, who also sings in the choir, was not singing tonight as she said that the rehearsal schedule was much too demanding. My cousin Allan's daughter, Tanya, also sings in the choir and I was delighted to spot her as the female choristers trooped in singing "Silent Night". The males were already on their stands.
     The choir was lovely. They sang a number of songs and carols in different languages--English, of course, plus Hindi, Latin, German and Spanish. Wonderful acoustics made it feel as if I were listening to the choir of King's College, Cambridge.  The women wore teal green sarees and the men were in black Nehru jackets--very smart, very formal, very Indian. This choir has traveled the world over and taken their voices with them--so it was a privilege to find Tanya there singing away to glory. There was a 10 minute intermission during which I visited with Firdaus and then they were at it again for another half an hour.  They did two encores as nobody wanted them to leave.
     What a stirring experience and how wonderful to have been able to engulf oneself in the Christmas spirit in an antiquated Anglican church, being welcomed by the Anglican pastor, listening to a choir composed of Roman Catholics and Parsis--RCs and Parsis!--in sarees and Nehru jackets conducted by a Parsi--for an audience that was composed mainly of Parsis and Indian Protestants (Church of South India) This is the true spirit of secular India--plainly visible for all to see. I exalted in it.
     Nafisa (a Muslim who thoroughly enjoyed the concert) gave us a ride back to Churchgate station and Blossom and I took a rick from there--she dropped me off and carried on to Pali Hill. I got home, ate my dinner while watching the other half of Thorne: Sleepyhead until I turned it off because it was simply too grizzly for me!
     Until tomorrow...