A Crammed Sunday!

Sunday, May 5, 2019
Bombay

A Crammed Sunday!

     Namaste from Bombay!
     I had another early start--about 5.30 am and after I'd finished blogging, I sent out a text to find out how my friend Shahnaz was doing as I haven't had a peep out of her in ages and her parents were recently both hospitalized. She too was an early bird today--so we had a long chat on the phone and caught up. It took almost an hour at the end of which I asked her if she was interested in accompanying me to see The Tashkent Files in the G7 Multiplex in Bandra this afternoon. My friend Kamal had told me yesterday that it was worth seeing. Shahnaz was game--so we would go for the
2. 15 pm show, we decided.
    Then, I was having my brekkie of muesli and coffee and getting dressed to go to the 9.00 am Mass (Mass timing have been taken forward by 15 minutes for the month of May--I can't even see the logic of this...why just 15 minutes? Why just the month of May?)  Mass was said by my current favorite priest, Fr. Lancy D'Souza, from Sydney, Australia, who is retired and who seems to have returned to live in India. He brings a rare sense of humor to the pulpit which I love...but with the kind of congregations we have inIndia today, no one even cracks a smile at his jokes. Must be so frustrating to be a homilist with such an audience!
     Mass done, I took a picture of the Notices for the Week and went off to Dad's to read them out to him and Russel.  No vada pau this week either as the man who makes them is out of Bombay. Everyone with a sensible bone in their heads leaves Bombay in May as the heat is so intense and the humidity so suffocating. I am still so glad I had the week's respite in Uzbekistan when I warmed (no pun intended!) to the chilliness of spring in the temperate zone.
     Back home in my studio, I spent the next two hours doing a through cleaning of my place. Not just cleaning, but tidying as well. I went into drawers and shelves of closets to reorganize my slender space and put away a lot of things that had sat around outside--this keeps them dust-free and removes clutter from my space. I had the best time cleaning--I realize that the glow of sweet satisfaction you feel at the end of it is just the best feeling in the world. I have also found that I can use You Tube search engines now to listen to the most wonderful music through my TV screen--yesterday it was all about 70's Music Hits and I had the best time. Can't wait to get to the Beatles. I have already done Elton John, Phil Collins, Abba and Boney M! Yes, Boney M! Can you even imagine? I am listening to them after absolutely decades! Such fun!
     Cleaning done, I made myself a pomegranate juice-club soda cocktail and sipped it with a few peanuts to feel a bit rejuvenated. Then, it was time for me to finish editing Chapter 2 of my memoir--this was one of my goals for today. That done, I was able to leave for Dad's.
     Lunch at Dad's was leftovers from his birthday party which Russel, he and I sat down to eat together. There were gorgeous fresh Alphonso mangoes for dessert.
     At 1.45 pm, I met Shahnaz at my Dad's gate (she was in a rick) and the two of us had such a fond reunion--as it seems we have not met for at least a month! We reached th G7 theater--it was the former Gaiety, Gemini, Galaxy on S.V. Road--there are now 7 Gs--they've added Gossip too! But you had to see the approach to this cinema theatre. It was so awful--like something out of a 1950s noir film about espionage! It was that bad! Inside, the theater was small and intimate and about 75% full.
     I did not like the movie at all. I had hoped to get some answers to the hints that the death of India's second Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri was, in fact, murder. I was interested in finding out who was behind the conspiracy to kill him, if indeed there was one. The driver from the US Embassy in Uzbekistan had hinted to me that it had something to do with Pakistan. Shastri had arrived in Tashkent to enter into talks with then President of Pakistan, Ayub Khan, in a deal that was brokered by the former Soviet Union when Kosygin was Premier of the USSR. After 10 days of intense talks, several very successful agreements were reached. The next day, Shastri was all set to fly back to India when he was declared dead in his bed from a heart attack.  Of course, it is not at all unlikely that his death could have been entirely a result of natural causes--but many people find the timing and the place of his death rather odd and have always questioned it. I had hoped that the film would clarify a few things in the way that the Oliver Stone film JFK had done while keeping us on the edge of our seats and offering enlightenment.
     This film did nothing of the kind. I found it boring and confusing. I hated the format of it--most information was provided to the audience through several meetings of a Committee that has been set up to investigate (in contemporary times) the possibility of foul play and a cover-up in the death of Shastri. The acting was awful--people in the room kept yelling at each other in the most unnatural exhibitions of anger and frustration. There were politicians, historians, journalists, a former retired Supreme Court Judge and a couple of other people in a very dim room and all they seemed to do was scream at each other--it was awful.
      I enjoyed the few brief glimpses of scenes in Tashkent. I loved the exterior shots of Hotel Uzbekistan (where Shastri's entourage stayed...although he, apparently, stayed in a small bungalow). I had made it a point to visit Hotel Uzbekistan without knowing of the role it had played in the controversy. There were also lovely shots of the Museum of Amir Timur, Timur Square with his equestrian sculpture and of Chorsu Bazaar--all sites in which I had spent a considerable amount of time on my recent visit. Those bits were lovely. So were the early morning, misty shots of New Delhi at dawn when the protagonist Ragini goes jogging each morning.
     But, as far as the script is concerned, it was terrible. There was zero clarity and it left me with more questions than ever. What I got out of it was that there is a possibility that Shastri was poisoned by a cook named Jan Mohammed. That when poison is a cause of death, the face turns blue (which apparently his did), that no post-mortem was carried out to determined the cause of death (not in Tashkent and not when the body was returned to India) and that the report of the death as filed by the Russian authorities and the Indian authorities had many discrepancies in them. Towards the end of the movie, there was a segment on the roles played by the CIA and the KGB during the Cold War and that the KGB had a huge hand to play in India and Indian elections at that time and were inordinately close to a certain woman who is never named (but who was clearly Indira Gandhi) who, apparently, profited enormously in monetary handouts from them.
     So that was it. I did not understand very much. The movie was in Hindi with a lot of English liberally throw in (as is the trend today--everyone in India speaks Hinglish and this fact is now reflected in movie and theater scripts). I will need to discuss it some more with Shahnaz to try to figure out what really happened to Shastri. If all the movie has done is raise more questions, it has not succeeded at all.
        Shahnaz dropped me at the corner of Pali Hill--so I walked past Candies, the popular confectionary and bought a pain au chocolate for my breakfast tomorrow and a chocolate eclair for tea today! Back home, I switched on the AC and continued watching Hinterland as I brewed a pot of tea and sat down to ceremonially eat my eclair. It had pastry cream inside--not my favorite as I prefer fresh cream. But apart from Marks and Spencer in the UK that make these cream-filled chocolate eclairs, I have found few places that do it. This eclair was good but they used a milk chocolate instead of a dark chocolate topping.
      My laptop kept me company after tea as I continued with my editing and then completed changing the elastic on yet another pair of shorts for Russel. I have one more pair to finish off but I have run out of elastic--so shall have to pay a visit to Cheap Jack at Hill Road for some more.
     At 7.00pm, I left my studio for my next appointment. I was meeting Jackie Tellis, who has been following me on Twitter for a while. We decided to meet as she is Bandra-based. I thought drinks at the Bandra Gymkhana would work for both of us. So off I went.
     Jackie turned out to be a lovely person who is well known to many members of my family (Bandra IS a small place!) such as my brother Roger, his wife, Lalita, my cousin Blossom, her son Sudarshan (with whom she has worked), his sister Menaka, etc. etc. I found her easy to chat with and having established so many common links, conversation flowed freely over a Tom Collin for me and Capriocha for her and a really spicy plate of Mushrooms in Mixed Peppers with Garlic bread.
     I got a call from Dad while I was in the midst of my chat with Jackie requesting me to come over as he felt overwhelmed by the amount of food that was in the house and he wanted me to assist in serving dinner. Thankfully, I was only 5 minutes away--so I cut short my visit with Jackie, paid up and took a rick to Dad's place. I sorted out his worries as he sat watching a very exciting IPL match. Russel, Dad and I then had dinner. We have both called Valerie to let her know not to send any food to either of us for the next few days as our fridges are filled with leftovers!
     When I left Dad's place, I came back home, washed and got ready for bed and switched on Hinterland but did not watch anything before my eyes started closing.
     Another weekend comes to a close! Who knows what the new week with bring?
     Until tomorrow...