Bombay
Taken Back to my Piano-Learning Life
Namaste from Bombay!
Up at 6.30 am today, I blogged, had quick brekkie of muesli and coffee, showered and left for the city--Bombay City or Downtown Bombay, that is. My railway pass had expired so I joined the short Ladies Only queue at the station to renew my monthly First Class pass--only to discover that due to major renovations at Bandra Station (they are replacing all bridges and platforms), the Bandra Local (starts at Bandra station to head into Churchgate) was cancelled. Going in the Ladies Only First Class train coming in from the far suburbs was not too bad, however, and when I got off at Marine Lines, I still had a lot of time to actually get on foot to Furtados where I was meeting Anthony Gomes. It was fun to browse around his piano sales store and look at pictures of some of the greatest pianists in the world model for Steinway and Co.
Walking Down Memory Lane:
When Anthony was ready for our 11.00 am chat, he took me up to his office. Our chat took me back to my mid-teenage years when I used to learn the piano under a teacher called Marie D'Silva from Mahim who used to come to my flat in the Reserve Bank Quarters at Bombay Central to teach me. It was through her that I was sent up to do the examinations run by Trinity College of Music, London. However when I was in the tenth grade, she emigrated to Toronto, Canada, and I never heard from or of her since. I switched to an Anglo-Indian teacher named Miss Anne Lyons at Byculla Bridge who was such a character that I actually wrote and published a short story about her. Please see: “Unfinished Symphony”. Short Story. www.alphalink.com.au/~agilbert/symphony.html
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Anyway....talking to Anthony Gomes whose family took over Furtados (which is synonymous with Western classical music in Bombay) in 1965 was a trip down Memory Lane for me. I recalled how terrified I was when taking those exams, how forbidding those examiners were with their silent, round, pink, faces and how I would schlep all the way to Colaba near the Strand Cinema to pay Rs. 30 for half an hour to an Anglo-Indian man whose name I cannot remember (it began with an H--Hallowen, Halloran, something) so we could get accustomed to using the grand piano on which we would perform while taking the exam. I can remember all those hours and weeks and months on end when I practised Mozart's Rondo a la Turca to play for my exam and, another year, I played Debussy's Girl With The Flaxen Hair. Those were the days!
At one time in my life, I was fully steeped in classical music as a learner and as a teacher but when I was done...I was so done! Its just amazing. What happened was that I was facing my LTCL exams that required me to practice at least 7-8 hours a day and I was facing my Final B.A. exams at the same time and in the same year. I had to make a choice between getting my Licentiate from Trinity College or acing my B.A. exams. I knew that I did not want to be a music teacher for the rest of my life---I wanted to be a Professor of English. So it was a no-brainer, really. I gave up learning music formally and focussed on getting really good results in the B.A. exam. And the gamble paid off! I topped Bombay University with a First Class First in English and a slew of awards and scholarships which paid fully for my M.A. in English that followed! And I did become a Professor of English--so you could say I knew the path I wanted to follow pretty early in life and I chose it well. Western classical music still gives me hours of listening pleasure (I have NPR tuned on in my car), I still attend concerts every chance I get and I love opera. So that early training was not wasted--it certainly trained my ear and has added enormously to my enjoyment of life.
Anthony talked about how much the field has burgeoned since those days when 500 students took the music exams each year--the figure today is 22,000! But then Bombay's population has also burgeoned. Today there are exams that can be taken in Speech (and Drama) and Language (English as a Foreign Language) and Bombay is the largest center in the world for the institution that is Trinity College. I asked Anthony where in London it is located and he said somewhere in Greenwich! Ah, that's why I had never run into it. It is somewhere on the South Bank--the conservatoire, he said, occupies what was once the Royal Naval College--which I have visited...so I know where that is. Interesting! Anyway, I enjoyed our chat as it took me back to my teenage years in Bombay--I only started learning piano at 13--very late--and by 19, I was taking my B.A. exams and was all done with it: about 6 years of my life were encapsulated by playing piano.
Lunch and Library Session at the NCPA:
Once done with Furtados, I took a cab and went straight to McDonald's at Nariman Point as I figured I would get a meal before I went to the library of the NCPA where I intended to spend the rest of the afternoon. I bought myself a Fillet o Fish burger and a Diet Coke and got a sheaf of free fries with it. Best Rs. 200 I have spent in a long while as it has been ages since I have eaten a burger and fries!
Replete, I walked to the NCPA on the next block and spent the rest of the afternoon reading. I went through Kumud Mehta's1960s Ph.D. thesis, done under the guidance of the late Mrs. Kamal Wood (some of my B.A and M.A. Scholarships for topping Bombay University were named after her). Her unpublished thesis is a historical look at the earliest beginning of Western (English) drama in Bombay starting from the 1770s and going up to the year 1900. It is such a fine account of the earliest years of drama in Bombay as it gives minute information about the dramatics clubs that were initiated in the city, the colonial patronage they received (Mountstuart Elphinstone was a huge theater-goer and never missed a performance), the type of plays performed, who comprised the audience, etc. I clung on to every word as the hours passed. I found it completely fascinating. Her work has given me such a good historical idea of where English theater began in Bombay and where it was in 1900. My study begins at 1947--so I have a very good idea now of the point at which my historiographical work can begin--although mine is largely ethnographic. It is clear that among the Indians, Parsis were very much the pioneers in this field--as patrons and participants. The music was provided (from the earliest times) by Portuguese Goans--who then dominated the field of Western classical music in Bombay. Such a brilliant piece of work! The next time I get there, I will try to take pictures of a few of the pages and photocopy some of the others.
I also spent time reading through (very rapidly) my friend Shanta Gokhale's book called The Scenes We Made which, like my current work, is ethnographic and composed entirely out of interviews with theatre personalities as she attempts to capture the old times when three theaters thrived in Bombay--the Bhulabai Institute, Walchand Theater and Chabbildas Hall. It is amazing how other women scholars who have gone before me have paved the way for the kind of research I am doing in Bombay too. I am so indebted to both of them.
Evening in Bandra:
It was 4.00 pm when I left the library after spending the entire afternoon there. I took a cab again to Churchgate where I hopped into a train and then a bus home. I had a pot of tea with a single scrumptious dried apricot stuffed with walnuts and raisins (part of my interesting haul of edible goodies from Tashkent's Chorsu Bazaar) and watched Hinterland. Then I left for Dad's place, spent about fifteen minutes with him and Russel after which we left for the 7.00 pm Mass. We received the sad news of the passing away of one of the priests from our parish: the 97 year old Fr. Prax Pereira who was a good family friend and who has spent the last few years of his life confined to his room on a wheelchair. He and Russel were very dear friends--so I am sure Russel will take his death very badly. I now have one more funeral to attend (on Thursday morning at 9.00 am).
Back home after Mass (Dad was hurrying to see the IPL cricket match as the Mumbai Indians were playing), I had my dinner: Goa Sausage Pullao, Sabzi Kholapuri and Pork Chilli Fry with fresh cherries (also brought from Chorsu Bazaar in Tashkent) for dessert as I continued to watch Hinterland. After a while, though, being really wide awake, I started to watch an episode of Inspector Morse (The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn) until my eyes began to droop. It is so great to see my favorite John Thaw again as the crusty Chief Inspector, to see a young and very dishy Kevin Whately play his sidekick Lewis, to see the late Clive Swift (best known as Hyacinth Bucket's long-suffering husband Richard in Keeping up Appearances) play Dr. Barlett and to see the exterior of Oriel College in Oxford. Happy Days!
Until tomorrow....
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