Getting Back to Business...Another Interview. Lunch with Lawrence and Dinner with the US Consul-General for Company

Sunday, March 10,  2019

Bombay

Getting Back to Business...Another Interview. Lunch with Lawrence and Dinner with the US Consul-General for Company

  Namaste from Bombay!

I awoke with a prayer on my lips—the petitions that are storming heaven for the return of my deleted files have not let up. The Lord may simply grant my petition so that I will stop harassing Him! But, I have reconciled myself to the reality of accepting His will. This afternoon, when I get to Himanshu’s office to pick up my computer, I shall know where I stand.

So when I awoke, I began blogging, as usual, and then had an early breakfast—it was a broon with the last of my meatball curry with coffee.  I could easily get used to these leftover curry breakfasts! I watched Come Dine With Me as I munched but then, without lingering too long, I had a shower and got dressed to walk briskly down St. Paul’s Road towards Virendra Colony by the seaside near St. Andrew’s Church where I was meeting Brian Tellis who is the next subject of my field inquiry.

I was there in ten minutes and a few minutes later, Brian joined me. I love the fact that although I have been aware of so many showbiz personalities in Bombay for decades as a journalist and a scholar, I have always maintained such a low profile myself that no one knows me or has ever heard of me. This has given me the kind of virtual anonymity that I love and what I most appreciated when I relocated to New York. Brian seemed kind of perplexed that he had never heard of me. Little does he know that I really do value my anonymity. 

We began chatting while he drove us to the city. I was grateful for the ride although I have become really accustomed to taking public transport and have absolutely no problem using buses and trains in Bombay.  Still, since he was headed to a meeting at the NCPA and I had a lunch meeting with my British friend Lawrence Powell in the afternoon, also in the city, I requested that Brian and I ride into the city together. So, we kind of broke the ice while in the car and we continued our conversation when we sat down in a quiet corner of the Opera section of the library at the NCPA after I visited with my friend Jimi Billimoria who runs the section.

What a Fall There Was, My Countrymen!

Of course, this was not before I made a complete ass of myself by tripping over a step that I failed to notice and went sprawling on my stomach in the lobby of the Little Theater—much to my huge embarrassment. While I have to admit that I was hurt enough as my knees made hard impact with the marble flooring to need to sit down for a while, it was really not as bad as other similar falls I have had. My mind went back to exactly ten years ago when I had fallen while trying to make a running bus in the charming little Cotswold Village of Chipping Norton in the UK when I was en route to Stratford-on-Avon. At that time, the impact had been so great and the pain so bad that I had actually seen a British GP in Summertown that evening to ensure that there was no fracture.  He had examined me expertly (as only British GPs can) and had assured me that there was no damage at all—my knee, he said, would remain sore for a few days because of the shock of the impact—but that apart, I would be fine. And he was right.  In about four or five days, the pain disappeared completely and I was back to normal. 

Yes, I do realize that I am now ten years older and my aging bones might not bounce back today as easily as they did then...but I am not overly concerned. I picked myself up feeling far more chagrined than hurt, really, and continued with my day. At the back of my mind was the awareness that I might not be so lucky if this happens for the third time—if you remember, I’d had a fall about a month ago when I flew sprawling on the road after twisting my foot on a stone not far from my building. Then too I had escaped disaster—and today too, I felt as if it could have been much worse. Hopefully, there will not be a third fall.

An Interview with Brian Tellis:

      It was hard to pin Brian Tellis down to a meeting because he has a wild schedule. But he is so multi-talented and has been an achiever in so many different avenues of entertainment that I needed to persevere to make sure I could tap his brain. And, in the course of our free-wheeling conversation, I found him refreshingly unassuming, modest even to the point of shyness. Yet, what dazzling dual careers he has carved out for himself! As a performing artist and as a businessman who started a business from scratch about 30 years ago that was pioneering in so many senses and was recently sold to a Japanese conglomerate, Brian had made his mark. As he talked about his beginnings—very humble ones at that and so typical of the Bandra Catholic boy—and went on to speak of the fortunate contacts and opportunities that catapulted him into the limelight, I was struck by the unselfishness and philanthropy that seems now to characterize his intentions going forward. It was a pleasure and a delight to speak with him and by the end of the one hour that he could allot me before he slipped off for his meeting, I gleaned a great deal of information. However, we will need to take up where we left off when he gets back from Amsterdam to which he is flying tonight. Like I said, he leads a jet setting lifestyle..but a nice guy would be hard to find.

Reading Up on Bombay Jazz in the Library:

Once Brian left, I returned to my favorite spot at the library of the NCPA and asked the lovely man who assists me (and is sadly to retire soon) to bring me Naresh Fernandes’ book entitled Taj Mahal Fox Trot which is on the history of Jazz in the city of Bombay so that I could do my homework in preparation for my interview with him tomorrow evening. 

I spent the next two hours reading up on it and was quite fascinated by what I kept learning in terms of the contributions of Goan Catholics and Parsis to Jazz as a musical genre in Bombay. There are undoubtedly pages from this book that I am also going to need to photocopy. In fact, I was delighted to find that the sweet librarian had ready a sheaf of copies for me from Meher Marfatia Laughter in The House on Parsi Gujarati Theater which I had finished reading last month. From Naresh’s book too I am going to need a lot of pages photocopied. I did not finish it, but I am looking forward to our chat tomorrow evening.

Lunch with Lawrence at my Favorite Luncheonette:

I have been going to the Soup and Salad Buffet at The Copper Chimney so often that I am recognized by face by the receptionist who seats people and by the wait staff. It feels good to be thought of as a ‘regular’! My appointment with Lawrence was for 1.30 but I was there by 1.10 as I simply took a cab from Nariman Point to the restaurant at Kala Ghoda.  Ordinarily, I would have walked because nothing thrills me more than walking in South Bombay with its oodles of colonial and contemporary history nudging me at every corner—but today, I did not want to aggravate my knee and decided to take a cab instead.

    It was nice to see Lawrence again—looking decidedly tanned and enlightened from his extensive seven and a half weeks of travel in South India. We had met, a few weeks ago, in Goa and had decided to meet up again on the last leg of his Indian sojourn.  Tomorrow, he flies back to London—to Ealing, in fact—a place in which I had once lived myself. 

Lawrence came equipped with his iPad and showed me pictures of his travels, post-Goa, into Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. His pictures of the temples of Hampi were particularly interesting. He had also been to Halebid-Belur which I can vaguely remember seeing myself. I particularly remember being fascinated by the sculpted elephants at the foot of every temple structure. We had a lot to talk about in terms of his travels in India and his forthcoming travels. As a world backgammon champion, Lawrence follows the tournament circuit and shall be making his way from England to Budva in Montenegro following almost exactly the same route that Chriselle and I had taken, two years ago, when we had toured the attractions of the Adriatic Sea together—Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro. And later, he heads to Japan and Malaysia. He makes the retired life seem almost attractive. Almost. I am still trying to wrap my mind around the disincentives of giving up things that I so dearly love—teaching, scholarly researching and writing. Lawrence made retirement appear almost enviable. But I don’t believe I am ready for it yet. 

After lunch, Lawrence headed to the Museum right across the street (at my suggestion) and, ordinarily, I’d have been pleased to join him. But I had to get to Himanshu’s office to pick up my laptop and I could not linger too long in the city.

On the Train to Himanshu’s Office:

I crossed the Oval Maidan on foot and arrived at Churchgate station from where I boarded an empty train to Bandra. I then did something I have been promising myself I would do for a while at the suggestion of my friend Ewell who was raving about how nice it has become—a visit into Sahakari Bandra (a Government-run supermarket) that he said had been gussied up to the appearance of a swanky supermarket because the Ambani’s were, apparently, planning to take it over and run it.  This did not happen but the spiffy-ing up of the premises has resulted in it being a pure pleasure and I loved every minute of my browsing through its aisles and shelves. So I can now tick one more item off my To-Do List!

In five minutes, by walking about the busy Ghodbunder Road that stretches alongside the railway lines from Bandra Station, I arrived at Himanshu’s office where I did not dare hold my breath for fear of what I would discover. Would he have managed to recover and retrieve my hundreds of files in my Document folder or not? And if they had been recovered, would they be intelligible to me? 

Well, I shall not keep up the suspense anymore. The simple, sadly sorrowful fact of the matter is that he did not. There were about 10 files under a heading that said Doc and about 20 files under a heading that said Doc X, but none of them were the ones I was interested in. In fact, I think these files used to reside under some other heading (probably Google Drive) in my computer and were not the ones--not by a long shot—that I had trashed and emptied. Feeling deeply dejected, I felt anew the loss of my life’s work, but then he told me that he had attempted the recovery through the software that I had downloaded and that he would try again, this time using the software he usually uses for the same purpose. Well, I had no choice, but to leave my laptop there for a little longer (he says it will take a couple more days) and continue to hope for the best.

So be it, I thought, as I took the bus and got home for a soothing cuppa and a quarter of a really delectable guava. I did not have a chance to do much relaxing, however, as Michelle and Megan, fellow Fulbrighters asked if I wanted to meet at the corner to take a rickshaw together to the Taj Land’s End for our Fulbright dinner.

Fulbright Dinner with the US Consul-General:

And so, there we were, going through security and trying to find the room (Garden View Room) in which the function was going to be held in the five-star hotel called the Taj Land’s End at Bandra Bandstand. We did eventually find it and spent the rest of the evening chatting with the 14 American college and university administrators who have arrived from the US to tour about 6 cities in India to survey potential for bringing American students to study abroad in some part of India. I met a whole much of them. They seemed none-the-worse for their recent arrival in India and were much impressed by St. Xavier’s College (my host institution) which they had toured in the morning. 

A drink called a Blue Lagoon was put into my hands but it was much too sweet and I soon abandoned it for a diet Coke—I am very pleased by the four and a half pounds I have lost of unnecessary extra weight I had been carrying since my return from over-indulgence in Kerala. David from USIEF in Delhi then introduced us to Edgar Keegan, the current US Consul-General in Bombay, at whose side I found myself seated for the evening. He was very personable and friendly and delivered a lovely speech in which he talked about us, educational ambassadors from the US to India, as doing “holy work”. I loved it and thought very deeply about how the kind of research I am carrying out is aiding Indo-US bi-lateral and race-relations...Hmmm, there was much food for thought there, indeed.

Dinner was both lavish and delicious and I had to kick myself that being on this diet meant only pecking at the offerings. However, I could not resist the desserts that blew my resistance away as I had one ras malai, a passion fruit mousse and a taste of a fig and raisin pudding (a tad too sweet even for me).

More socializing, more exchange of business cards followed before I left with Michelle and Megan in a rickshaw and got back home after another full and exciting day in Bombay City.

Until tomorrow...