Thursday, July 11, 2019
Bombay
A Final Dental Visit for Dad and a Rollicking Birthday Party
Namaste from Bombay!
As the monsoon continues to rage on in Bombay, its citizens are heaving a sigh of relief. Apparently within a month of the monsoon's beginning, lakes have already filled up 32%. If it continues in this fashion, the city ought not to face a drought as the year goes by.
I was up at 5.00 am and carried on with my usual routine including blogging and reading. I called Dad to remind him that I would be at his place by 9.35 to pick him up for his 10.00am dental appointment. That done, I had my breakfast: two chapattis with lemon curd and peanut butter and coffee. It was not long before I walked over to Dad's place and picked him up. The rain was light and intermittent but it promised to be a wet day.
A Dental Appointment:
We were at the dentist's by 10.00 am as Dad prepared for his one-monthly post-dental check-up that followed the fitting of his dental implants. By the grace of God, all has gone well and he had only slight adjustments to be done by the dentist before it was pronounced that he need not come back again. I had a chat with the dentist who, I discovered, is a habitual hiker. I found his photograph in a lovely, glossy, colored travel brochure in his waiting room that featured him, his wife and son somewhere in the Swiss Alps. During our chat about his hobby, I discovered that he has been a hiker for decades and that this trip was what he called "once-in-a-lifetime". He told me that I should definitely put it on my bucket list as the terrain was challenging but the rewards were magnificent with different spectacular scenery daily. Hmmm...something to think about. If Llew and I could hike for four hours on the Great Wall of China, last year this time, in the worst humidity and persistent drizzle that you can imagine, then hiking on the snows of the roof of the world should be a picnic!
A Visitor at Dad's and Return Home:
When Dad's dental visit was done, we took a rick back to his place. I did not intend to stay long but we had a visitor--Carlyle, a crew-member with Air-India, had just returned from a flight to New York that included a visit to my brother Roger's place in Connecticut. He was carrying some cheese, chocolate and nuts for Dad and Russel from Roger and had come over to deliver them. I kept Carly company with Dad and Russel until 12. 30 when I got up to leave.
Back home, I had my lunch: steak, mashed potato, Mexican chicken salad and one chapatti with a mango for dessert. I was stuffed by the end of it as I continued to watch Joolz Guides--this time he was at Charterhouse Square in Farringdon which was about three blocks from where I used to live in Holborn in London and just one block from where I had moved towards the end of my stay there. Naturally, I know the area like the back of my hand and I have also taken one of the tours of the monastery (for that is what Charterhouse has been since the 1100s) with one of the monks, a few years ago. Another monk gave Julien the tour that was shot by his cameraman. I enjoyed it throughly.
A short nap and much reading later, it was tea time and I ate a biscuit and a slice of chocolate truffle cake. Then, I got dressed for Mass and told Dad that I would meet him directly in church. I had an errand to run before Mass: I had to get the lecture I am giving at Mithibai College tomorrow printed out. At the photocopy place, I met Gora and had a short chat with him. Then, with my paper printed out and some X-rays that the dentist had emailed to me also printed put (two copies of each to be handed over to Dad to accompany his claims for reimbursement from his bank), I set off for church.
The skies came crashing down during Mass really heavily...but luckily, the downpour stopped when it was time for us to leave. We got a ride home from Joe Cordo. Dad was dropped off at his gate and Joe took me to the end of my lane.
A Rollicking Birthday Party:
I swiftly got ready then for my evening's appointment. I was invited to a dinner party at the home of my friends Jeevan and Liz who seem to entertain really often. This is the third time in about two months that I have been invited to their beautiful apartment overlooking the wide expanse of the roiling Arabian Sea at Worli Seaface. I took a small hostess gift for Liz: a porcelain pendant from China, hand-painted with peonies for luck. The Uber arrived on time and off I sailed on a gloomy and very soggy evening. Fortunately, the Sea Link makes the trip to Worli really easy from Bandra and within 15 minutes, I was at their place on an evening when traffic was light as Bombayites are now terrified of the flooding that can occur during really bad spates of rain and prefer to stay indoors.
As soon as I got to their apartment, I was amazed at how crowded the place was! I had expected a small drinks and dinner evening--it turned out to be a 70th birthday party for Jeevan--which, of course, I was not told! As it is a necklace, Jeevan will not be able to use my hostess gift!!! The place was filled with his high school and college classmates from St. Xavier's in Bombay as well as their wives. I was introduced around and was amazed when a lady I could not recognize at all asked if I had ever been a journalist. I said I had! She turned out to be Laxmi Narayan, a sub-editor at Eve's Weekly with whom I used to work very closely when I was in my late teens and early 20s researching, writing and publishing feature articles in Bombay-based periodicals. Fancy meeting someone from that long-past phase of my life! I was so stunned.
Laxmi remembered me very clearly as I had often worked to briefs provided by her. We talked about other female journalists of that vintage (Ammu Joseph, Pamela Philipose, the late Deviyani Chaubal, Jyoti Punwani--who now writes regularly on political themes for Mumbai Mirror--Mala Vaishnav, etc, under the editorship of the one and only Gulshan Ewing who had mentored me through my earliest years as a freelance journalist in Bombay). What a great walk it was down Memory Lane! And then, a little later, in walked a very slim and very elegant lady with a head of salt and pepper hair whom everyone called Chips. She turned out to be Rina Sarkar, another journalist, then based at the Times of India, with whom I had worked as a freelancer. She married and became Rina Kamath but it was as Chips that she was known to the majority of the crowd--all of whom were very good friends over decades.
I also had the pleasure of meeting Jeevan's brother, Prakash, who studied chemical engineering at the University of Cambridge in the UK and served as an academic for a few years before returning to India and entering industry. His partner of that era was a lady named Vidya--they are not together any more although they are still friends--and she turned out to be the daughter of the famed Mr. Shanbagh who had founded, owned and run the city's most iconic book store, Strand Book Store--a place I used to frequent several times a week when I worked in the Reserve Bank of India which used to be in the very next lane. Naturally, I reminisced with her about the loads of affection I had for her Dad (who passed away recently) and for the wonderful sales staff that he had trained so well. Mr. Shanbagh was a true gem of a man who knew all his customers by face (if not by name) and always made us feel so welcome when we entered his store. You could spend hours browsing in his book store without feeling in the slightest bit uncomfortable. He was not concerned about whether or not you bought a book--what he wanted was to make books accessible to everyone. He also offered handsome discounts on his books and I have lost count of the number of books I bought from him during my twenties, as well as the books I bought from him that I gave away as gifts and the number of childrens' books I bought from him in the hope of making Chriselle a voracious reader. Ah...those were the days! I had such a lovely time at the party because speaking to so many lovely people took me back to my past life in Bombay and the huge pleasure I had taken in my life at that time--so filled was it with books, reading, writing, reviewing, teaching....I was very blessed then (and now).
So many of the folks I met had children who had studied in the UK or the US and become academics themselves. Most of them are super impressed when they discover that I am a professor at NYU and that I am currently a Fulbright Fellow. They all want to know how long I will be staying in Bombay and what my Bombay life has been like (I feel tempted to tell all of them to read my blog!!!)
With two G and Ts seeing me through the evening, two waiters serving us throughout as a variety of snacks emerged from the kitchen (through Liz' magical talents): tiny mint-flavored idlis, squares of cheese quiche and nibbles scattered all over in tiny bowls, there was enough to munch on as the evening marched on. Then someone struck up the music--a whole lot of numbers from the 70s and 80s--a real retro play list--and we were all on our feet and dancing with gusto as we spread around the lovely spacious apartment.
Dinner was a grand buffet spread featuring mutton biryani with dal and raita, Liz's superb lasagne (she actually makes the lasagne noodles herself, if you can believe it!), chicken farchas (boneless, breaded Parsi-style chicken cutlets), tomato and onion salad and pav. Wonderful! We were all ready to tuck in as our appetites had been whetted by the drinks and the dancing. Dessert was Jeevan's huge Black Forest Birthday Cake made by Liz. There was another lady at the party named Shashi whose birthday it also happened to be--so she and Jeevan both cut their cake together as we sang for them and many cameras clicked to immortalize the moments. Hefty slices of cake were then served around so that it made a grand finale to a lovely evening.
It was about 11.00 when the first guests started leaving and I called an Uber to take me home. I was home within 20 minutes and was really filled with a sense of joy at the wonderful new friends I had made and the folks with whom I had exchanged telephone numbers. It is a pity that I am meeting people from my professional past at a time when I am already in Return Home Mode. Still, it is good to make these contacts and I am just delighted at the way my paths are crossing with people I believe are strangers and who turn out to be people I had once known well (and who actually remember me)..
Until tomorrow...
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