Tales from a Travelling salesman

Adieu 2017 Farewells are supposed to be tragic but I do not feel sad about seeing tail lights of 2017 fading away. Like most years, this year has also caused us more misery than humankind can cope with and I am happy I am seeing the end of it. I am also not sentimental about birthdays, funerals, weddings, new year and end of the years. These are all part of being human. I do not celebrate most of these. I believe that for me, a dawn of a new day is a celebration of life. I am prepared to welcome or fight my life once the sun rises and I am up from my bed. The year 2017 had no special significance for me. I have seen good years and bad, happy years and sad, years that witnessed my trials and tribulations and years that celebrated by success and wept with me for my failures. I am also not looking forward to the new year 2018 with any greater excitement. I know I have to continue to struggle and fight to remain alert, agile, and ambitious. I know that life does not bring anything...

My Rail Connection Like most good things, flying happened to me much later in my life. Until then, like millions of my countrymen, I was a passenger of the great Indian train journey that weaves our nation together. My fascination with the world of railways and train journey began in a small, remote, dusty town of Jetalser in western India, which I frequently visited. I became part of Jetalser station. I sat in a mailroom at the station when the elderly postman sorted out mails. I hobnobbed with the tea stall owner of the platform, who occasionally took out a cookie from a glass jar for me. I sat on that grey cast iron bench with a lone coolie. I shivered with anticipation when goods or passenger trains entered the station with all the majesty of a lion entering the jungle. Jamnagar, my native place, was a small railhead. Few trains passed through it. The entry of the steam engine train into the station was an event of the day in this small town. The poetry and rhythm of th...

  Houses are like people   The houses I have lived in have left indelible impressions on me. They have shaped my character, cheered my spirit, cast shadows over my soul, and made me what I am now.   Sun and wind flood our present house. This warms my heart as soon as I enter. Trees in our building compound are tall and leafy. They caress the windows of all rooms, branches swaying in a varying rhythm, which often keeps me pleasantly awake. Glittering ocean in the sunshine during the day and in the milky white moonlit night gives me the sense of soaring high. I keep staring at the silvery surf of the ocean at 3 am.   Our house in Juhu came with all the majesty of a beachfront. We went to the beach for morning walks in summer, evening picnics in winter, and frolicked in crashing waves of the monsoon. The house provided a ringside view of Mumbai's street life. Honking buses halted our conversations in the sitting room, and the smell of food from the restaurant below waff...

Samovar, Satkar, Air-Cool... It is bewildering to see Mumbai changing so fast. Many iconic places have drawn the shutters, the places which were linked to my youth, my struggles, my dreams here in this city.  People say change is a good thing. But to me what it really means is that something I didn't want to happen at all has happened. The first to go was Cafe Samovar. A restaurant, so quaint and classic that it belonged to Paris and not Mumbai. Tucked into the unpretentious foyer of Jahangir Art Gallery, Cafe served arty, and ordinary people alike with prices not so snooty and food always tasty. In the true spirit of Mumbai, the Cafe severed chilled beer and warm wafers. I met a friend here often for lunch over a bottle of beer, aloo paratha, raita, and a bucketful of gossips. Abundant art awaited in the galleries next door. The Samovar Cafe was an icon of romance, old-world charm, and hope. The cafe made me feel good about life in this town. Two other establishme...

Bombay, Mumbai; my city anyway   On a wet and rainy day in 1962, I arrived here. I was 11 years old. A war was simmering with China. Shammi Kapoor’s all-time hit film ‘Professor’ was running to a packed house at Novelty in Grant road where I stayed. As Saurashtra Mail brought me to platform no. 3 at Bombay Central station, I had no way of knowing that an old aunt with whom I came here will soon be lost to cancer. We took a convertible Victoria, a horse-driven coach. We stayed at the building called Parvati Mansion. It stands exactly in the same shape as I left it then.  This was the beginning of my tryst with Bombay. Traveling to Bombay by train was my first trip outside my hometown. I kept awake through the journey to note down the names of all the railway stations we passed by. I refused to let the ticket collector punch our rail ticket, thinking he is snatching them away. I preserved those tickets for years.  I arrived again on a hot and muggy afternoon in April 1...

Behind the Bars  I visit bars like others visit temples. Drinking in bars is a sign of civilization, an epitome of grace and charm towards life. This piece is a narration of my life ‘behind the bars’. Not even 18, I visited a bar the first time while on a visit to what we then called Bombay. The place was behind Hindmata cinema in Dadar. The cinema hall is extinct but the bar I visited is not.  A narrow aisle with benches on both sides, but no tables, dirty curtain hung on the entrance. This country liquor bar was my trial by the fire. Fiery spirit in an unwashed glass was drinkable only because I was excited and silly, both at once. The excitement lasted long though, though the taste and silliness did not.  I spent college days in ‘dry’ Gujarat with no bars. We drank intermittently, surreptitiously, and fugitively in darkened porches of homes, in stainless steel tumblers, scared of being found out every time the door rattled.  It was on the evening prowl during my...

Baroda - the Banyan Tree City  My tryst with Baroda - now Vadodara - is 50 years old. Lovingly called Banyan city for large numbers of Banyan trees spread across, the city is benign, gentle, lacking the aggression and intimidation of big cities. It feels small and snug; compact and benign. Coming from a small town like Jamnagar, I felt Baroda larger, cleaner, more sophisticated, more cultured, more polite, more everything.  Baroda is where I began a new life; we got married here, acquired our first car, a used Ambassador, built our first house, our girls were born here. The city thus holds a special place in our hearts. I visited here for the first time in the summer of 1970. I stayed with my brother at his home in Kareli Baug, a very leafy, serene housing suburb of the city. I roamed the city on a borrowed bicycle. The pretty gardens filled the city with tree-lined roads, small and squat buildings, no high rise yet.  Alighting at the magnificent Baroda railway station,...

My East India Diary-   I fell in love with the Calcutta as soon as I disembarked from the first-class compartment of Howrah Express at 4 am. Bright and chirpy Navalkishor, our driver, greeted me. The genial environs of Calcutta instantly appealed to me as he drove me through the bridge into the heart of the city. I marveled at the clean, restful, and majestic Calcutta as dawn descended on the city.  For many years, I kept coming back to Calcutta drawn by the magic pull of Victoria Memorial, a vast expanse of Maidan, eclectic and rusty trams, incredible color, smell, and sight of New Market, graceful and classy Oberoi Grand, tons of Misti Doi consumed in between.  A quirk of destiny moved me to Calcutta. One rainy afternoon in July, we boarded an Indian Airlines flight to Calcutta; a loving wife, two young girls, and an old but spirited mother wanting and willing to rough it out with us. Good old Navalkishor was at the airport, dressed as he always did in dhoti, an ...

Yehi Bombay Meri Jaan... Everyone in Mumbai rushes out of home on Sundays like school children rushing out of the classroom. Sunday outing  is a cathartic process for all of us living here, a window to blow in the fresh air into our minds cluttered by cobwebs of the long week. My wife and I are part of the flocks who fly on Sunday evening. We leave home and soon pass by the ancient St Andrew's church, dignified in its stance, watching over the silent and sullen Hill road.  Mehboob Studio on our left appears crushed under the weight of 70 years of creative work in its portal. Fading sunlight washes the majestic and awe-inspiring arches standing regal and erect, elegantly looming large in a backdrop of high-rise buildings of Worli. Visiting South Mumbai engulfs us with the memories of our good times spent here. We know the history of those magnificent buildings, restaurants, cafes, offices, even signboards; all these have stories to tell, and after 25 years here, we k...

Sublime summer I like to ruminate about the season when it is bidding farewell. Hot summer, my favorite season is almost ending here in our beloved Mumbai. In many respects, summer in India is magnificent, getting a fresh whiff of life; vibrant, alive, earthy, sweet, sublime. I love sweltering hot, dusty days and cool evenings, simultaneously smelly and aromatic, laden with a promise of mangoes, sarbats, sugarcane juice, chilled beer, gin and tonic, Kulfis, Ice Golas, the excitement of school closing, cricket being played on the beaches and in the overcrowded parks. I spent my early childhood summers in our sprawling ancestral home of my hometown of Jamnagar. I roamed around lanes of the town aimlessly, enjoying solitude and familiarity of the place where I was born, demanding nothing from it. Gazing at movie posters outside movie halls was the climax of summer excitement. Sleeping on a terrace is the dominant theme of summers in Gujarat. The elaborate dance of ritual takes place in th...

Bandra - Beauty Queen of Bombay Bandra is the beauty queen of Bombay. For us, its beauty enters our home daily via a spectacular sunset on the Arabian Sea that we watch from our apartment. Bandra is an adaption of Bandar, a Persian word for Port. In 1543, the Portuguese took possession of the island of Bombay by force and gave Jesuit priests the sole ownership of Bandra. Bandra has the unique distinction of having the most ... Roman Catholic churches anywhere in the world. Bandra remained an island until 1845, when Mahim causeway got linked with it. If Bandra were a star, it would be Tom Cruise. If Bandra were a kitchen appliance, it would be a cappuccino machine, if Bandra were a pet, it would be an anaconda. And if Bandra were a brand, it would be Apple. Bandra is the reason to hope that we might save the ecological disaster that this city is fast becoming. The thick tropical greens I see from our apartment bring a smile to my face. In Bandra, we drink more coffee than any...

Train to Churchgate   I admit my long love affair with this throbbing but graceful crown jewel of Mumbai. The collage of magnificent art deco buildings; Churchgate station, western railway head office next door, Old telegraph office, Eros cinema, are serene to senses and scenic to look. The landmark institutions like Asiatic stores, Gaylord, and K Rustom ice cream shop make my day by their grace and dignity.   I lived at Hari Niwas on C road circa 1974 as a young, impressionable youth, instantly making me feel belonged. The paradox of staying in this epitome of vanity and walking to my office, a dump behind GPO in Fort never left me.   Commemorating my love, my wife and I visit the area every weekend for the past 25 years. Our usual stop is the Not Just the Pizza by the Bay or Status restaurant slightly ahead. It depends on what food fancies us.   On a good day, I take the local train to Churchgate, arriving at the imposing Bandra station at aroun...