Moments Of Quiet With Our Lady Of Glory

The Sunday morning mass is over. The pews have emptied out. Light streams in through coloured glass windows, echoing a bright and sprightly Bombay morning outside as parishioners file quietly to the front of the church to receive Holy Communion from a priest in white robes before turning back from the altar and making for the exit.

On the way out they stop by the Baptismal font and dip their hands in holy water before taking the steps out to the front where they catch up with neighbours and friends in happy banter, waving out to faces familiar from attending Sunday Mass together over the years, revelling in the comfort of fellowship enabled by shared faith, and humanity.



The Priest has followed them to the front-yard and soon becomes busy returning greetings from his parishioners as they stop by to talk to him. There’re smiles all around. In the shade of the towering Gothic church dedicated to Our Lady Of Glory, in the gaze of Jesus, his arms extended, I can feel the warmth about me, floating on voices rising from the Sunday crowd. Soon the grounds will empty and the caretaker will close the doors behind him.



However, a few stay back for a quiet moment with Mother Mary carrying infant Jesus, closing their eyes to say a prayer, make a petition, offer thanks for favours done, or wish for good health for self and loved ones before reaching out with their hands to the Mother, pausing to let the moment linger in a private communication with the almighty benefactor.



A few prayer books rest on pews where some parishioners left them behind. There’s barely a whisper around me. The caretaker looks at me from across the pews. He is old. Wrinkles have just as surely mellowed his face as soulful hymns. Both hard times and good times mellow people, even if differently, one out of compulsion, and the other out of choice.

He’s waiting for me to finish up so he can close the doors. He is patient.

I pick up a prayer book and turn the pages, pausing at Novena Prayers. And, voices that were ringing out only minutes before as the Mass wound down now rise again, in silence, before joining up with solemn voices from memory, from another place and another time long, long, ago.

The weight of time can make memories seem like they belong to another lifetime, even to another person.

My eyes trail each word as they resonate in my ears, voices that silence shapes into faces from memory.

Gracious Father, we thank you for having given us a tender loving Mother to watch over our Parish, to protect and intercede for us. Your son, Jesus has said, “Whenever two of you on earth agree about anything you pray for, it will be done to you by my Father in heaven.”

And so, now as one family through the intercession of Our Lady of Glory and by her precious son, Jesus, we ask you to build our Parish into units of close fellowship, alive and vibrant in faith, where the needs of everyone are taken care of.

Here, I pause for a non-existent chorus to take over, for words muttered under a thousand breaths. Words that shape into personal petitions hurrying to finish before the voice from the front of the church sounds again:

Our Lady of Glory,

And pauses for a rejoinder from the parishioners.

Pray for us.

Before the chorus sounds off thrice with,

Hail Mary.

I make way back along the wall, skirting the empty pews. The caretaker smiles at me before leaning against the door and walking it across.

Mass Timings at Our Lady Of Glory Church

Weekdays: 7:00 am, and 7:00 pm.
Sundays: 6:00 am, 7:00 am (Konkani), and 9:30 am.

NCC Cadets Enroute To NCC Camp At Neral

As the train pulled into the railway station at half past six in the morning today, I was pleasantly surprised to see school students neatly turned out in NCC uniforms, two rows positioned for each bogie, their backpacks in place, caps sporting sprightly red feathers, hands by their side military style, and standing to attention as senior instructors patrolled the platform for signs of the Karjat bound train that’d take them to Neral, the site of their National Cadet Corps (NCC) camp.

They were barely ten years old. Freshly ironed for the occasion, their crisp fatigues that’d do professional soldiers proud only barely managed to hide their childlike enthusiasm but you wouldn’t have imagined it from the enthusiastic YES SIRs that followed each instruction their ‘Sir’, a middle-aged man in checked shirt and regular trousers, issued to them in Marathi, the local language.

Even a ‘So, you’ll have fun for three days’ invited a spirited YES SIR from the young students of Saraswati Vidyalaya, their demeanour barely hiding their excitement about the trip. It soon became apparent that the middle-aged man wouldn’t be accompanying the young NCC cadets when he turned to senior school students carrying rifles slung over shoulders and leading the groups and said ‘Take proper care of them.’

To the back, along the wall, parents come to see them off milled around, watching their wards while keeping an eye out for the train. It was still dark with barely a hint of dawn breaking over the city. A sharp breeze blew in the wake of each train.

Along the way, I had changed my seat to escape the strong, cold wind blowing into the bogie as the train had picked up speed. Half-asleep passengers, mostly men out for work, sat stiffly on wooden seats, their ears covered to keep the cold out. Not many people remember the last time a Mumbai winter had spilled into the second week of February, but no one was complaining. It was a welcome change from the humid coastal climate and the perspiration that accompanies a day out about the city in the summer.

A pair of drums used to accompany march-pasts sat on the platform by the feet of cadets tasked with their responsibility.

The drums reminded me of my time in school when march-pasts would happen to the beating of drums. While I never had the opportunity to enrol as a NCC cadet, for it was restricted to students attending the afternoon shift, whose logic I could never really fathom, I delighted in the sight of crisp uniforms, though different from those I saw today.

Over the loudspeaker the announcer announced the arrival of a Karjat-bound train. In orderly twos and threes the NCC cadets filed into the train in three separate bogies, a far cry from the everyday jostling Mumbai train commuters put up with.

Their parents crowded the windows, wishing them on their way. Just as the train pulled out of the station, an accompanying senior cadet in a white and blue windcheater, a rucksack on his back and a rifle in a cloth bag slung from his shoulder raised his voice and cried out:

Ganapati Bappa

before pausing for the choreographed response from those seeing them off on the platform and the ones inside. Sure enough a chorus returned with:

Morya.

Then he cupped his palm to the face a la Tarzan, lifted his head and cried out even louder:

Shivaji Maharaj Ki

before pausing for the response.

On cue the chorus sounded from the platform and inside the train:


Jai.

With the mandatory invocation to the Maratha King out of the way, quiet returned to the platform as the train picked up speed and soon disappeared into the gathering dawn, carrying a bunch of excited kids learning to behave like disciplined adults. I’d imagine only the uniform kept them from being themselves.

And I stepped out of the station and into the commotion of rickshaws revving their engines while calling out to passengers emerging from the railway station.

I woke up early today, at quarter past three in the morning and had every intention to return to bed later in the day and catch up on sleep if only to do justice to the Sunday morning. But the sight of the energetic lot on the platform has lent a Friday spirit to my Sunday morning.

I believe it’s no different on other Sundays, for only a few weeks ago, alighting from the train in VT on my way for a Sunday morning meandering about the city, I happened upon high school students in Sea Cadet Corps uniforms, Navy Whites, returning from their Sunday drills on their training ship Jawahar based out of Colaba’s Navy Nagar. They were heading back home by train. A few, no doubt hungry from their exertions of the morning, including sailing and other water activities, were tucking into Chaat and Samosas.

The two Sea Cadets I spoke to were in their first year of their training and said they won’t be making their next grade anytime soon. ‘We’re still junior.’ The Sea Cadet Corps (SSC) is a Non Government Voluntary Youth Organisation supported by the Indian Navy. On May 13, 2013, it will complete 75 years of existence in India.

On the other platform, school girls in matching Sea Cadet uniforms awaited their train. Soon enough more Sea Cadets arrived, turning the railway platforms into a sea of white, their distinctive caps and demeanour reminding of the men they’re trying to be.

Many years from now when they’ve settled into professions they chose or those that chose them, they’ll probably look back and remember these Sunday mornings when their day off from school bound them in a camaraderie that connected them to a long and rich heritage of service to the nation, and as a consequence, service to self.

It’s an experience I believe will hold them in good stead.

Related Links

1. National Cadet Corps (NCC), India

2. Sea Cadet Corps (SCC), Jawahar, Mumbai

3. Pictures of SCC Training Ship, Jawahar

4. Sea Cadet Corps, India, Facebook Group

Gateway Photographers By The Taj Mahal Palace

Watching crowds whiling away their evening at the Gateway Of India across the road from the legendary Taj Mahal Palace Hotel facing the Arabian Sea, I’m convinced that not all Mumbai local trains disgorge passengers on their way to work and back, some will send them on their way to Colaba for an evening by the sea, to be charmed by the historic monument and inspired by the survival of the majestic Taj Hotel in face of a relentless terrorist attack launched by Pakistani Islamists on 26/11.

And like a river down the bridge, time too has flown past even if in circles, the radius getting bigger with every circle completed, dampening the ripple the further it curves away from the epicentre but never quite deadening it.

And like a bubble, time grows bigger, and bigger, offering you a transitory view in the momentary cocoon each bubble builds before it breaks, leaving you with a memory of the fleeting moment.

It’s this fleeting moment many visitors to the seafront in Colaba seek to capture with their cameras. Those who cannot afford a camera or haven’t brought one along and wish to frame their day by the Taj and the Gateway will pose for a Gateway Photographer to have their picture taken for a fee.

For a time after the Islamist terrorist attacks on Mumbai the Gateway Photographers were nowhere to be seen. The police had shooed them away, against their wishes. Now they are back, their DSLRs, mostly Nikon, hanging from the neck and waving albums of pictures showing tourists posing by the Taj and the Gateway, pictures of pretty girls smiling into the camera, and beyond.


Every once in while a Gateway Photographer conscious of his looks will seek to make himself more presentable than the stiff breeze blowing in from the sea will allow him, using the camera preview screen for a mirror as he adjusts his hair and wipes his face clean of dust before walking back among milling crowds scouting for visitors looking to have their pictures taken.

He is their medium, the bridge between their moment and its memory.

Suitors Wrestle For The Fair Lady

Murshidabad, 2009.

To The One Who Prevails,
I’ve Promised My Affection,
For, While My Longevity Is A Function Of Age,
In My Desirability, I Seek My Immortality.

The Puppet Seller

Baroda, 2011.

I Hold The Strings
Not So I Can Control The Dancers,
But In The Hope
They’ll Choreograph My Weary Fingers To Life.

Winter Sun Steps Down A Well In Mehrauli

On a freezing cold December morning in Delhi some years ago, two men sought a patch of sunlight along a narrow walkway that runs along each of the five tiers of an old step well dating back from early 1200s, most likely 1230 AD.

Gandhak ki Baoli, as the stepwell located in Mehrauli is known, comprises of a shaft well to provide drinking water, and a main tank the residents once used to clean and wash. Both lay dry when I visited the historic remnant of Delhi’s past, dried largely from neglect and indifference.

While I envied the two men their comforting blanket of warmth, I steered clear of the walkways that got narrower with successive tiers descending to the well. As you descend deeper, down each tier, the approach narrows as if preparing to gather you into an all consuming embrace.

From the uppermost tier the same level as the adjacent street, the steps gradually disappeared from sight before they were swallowed up by an opening at the bottom, dark and mysterious.

In a fanciful moment, the kind frozen feet give wings to, I wondered if stepping into the opening would somehow magically transfer wandering feet back in time by eight centuries and deposit them at the very moment the first digger poised to strike the earth to the plan engineers had laid out for constructing this stepwell.



Leaves from an overhanging tree swept the stones with their shadows as a faint breeze stirred life in the vicinity while the sun warmed them.

We were a couple of hours shy of noon though I couldn’t be sure if sunlight would pierce the drop all the way down at noon. Surely it must be wary of what awaited it at the bottom.

Leaving the two men behind to bask in the sun we climbed the steps back up and reentered the humdrum of the Delhi street. And the winter sprung its embrace once again.

It was the last day of that year, not of the winter though.

Bandra’s American Express Bakery On Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve in Bandra is no time to step into the bakery on Hill Road across the street from the Holy Family Hospital, not far from the intersection with Waroda Road that meanders through the old Anglo-Indian locality of the same name, and find someone to tell you why it’s named as American Express Bakery.

It’s definitely not a good idea to ask after the origin of its name let alone how old it is, not after an undated newspaper piece on the American Express Bakery, titled Some of the finest products in town, and yellowing from passage of time, framed and hanging proudly from the wall, starts off with:

Mr. Ross Carvalho, the owner of American Express Bakery, is unaware of the exact date the bakery [jumbled print from a cut in the paper] be a 100 years old. “It is definitely 65 years old, we have bills dating that far back,” he says.

The black and white photo accompanying the framed newspaper article, Some of the finest products in town, apparently shows the shopfront on Clare Road, Byculla. The one in Bandra we had stepped into on the evening of Christmas Eve last year is one of the three outlets of the American Express Bakery. The other two, the newspaper piece reported, are located in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill. It added, “The establishment at Clare Road is the Head Office and the bakery.”

Since the framed print did not carry a byline, let alone a date, and I’m no expert in dating paper from the degree of yellowing subjected by time, I safely assume that no less than twenty years have elapsed since the piece first appeared in the series titled: Old Curiosity Shoppe . . . No 58.

Twenty years felt just right for the perceptible yellowing of paper. It felt just right to age it by two decades for no other reason than to distinguish it from the changes India began witnessing following its dallying with economic liberalisation, a period that would leave a certain way of life firmly behind, including the character of old that Bombay represented, a character that still survives in Bandra in patches, not in the least in the balconies projecting over the street below where elderly women in floral print skirts step out for air and watch the world go by, hailing familiar neighbourhood faces in Konkani. It was not the moment to dwell on any further, for the shelves along the walls were brimming with cakes and other goodies that typically bring up the end of the year in Bandra.

On a whiteboard, for the benefit of its customers, a roll call of confectionery announced their availability:

Fruit Mince Pies
Date Bars
Christmas Pudding
Gram Sweet (Doce De Grao)
Guava Cheese
Marzipans
Dundee Cake
Ginger Bread Cake
Chocolate Muffins
Cinnamon Roll



There was more in the wooden shelves, in cane baskets labeled, wrapped and lined up in neat rows. A few were empty, either awaiting the arrival of stock or cleaned up by patrons making an early run on the bakery before heading back to their homes to prepare for the evening, and the Midnight Mass when they would make their way to the Mount Mary Church among other churches in Bandra and lend their soul to hyms that would stir the Bandra night, gladdening many a heart within earshot, an uplifting tune in the breeze blowing in from the sea off the road that snakes past the hill along its base.



For last minute Christmas shoppers, a board outside the bakery assured that the bakery would remain open all day on Christmas so long as they didn’t expect the bakery to pack their purchases in plastic bags. In addition to a handwritten notice, a poster in the bakery left little ambiguity in the bakery’s stand on using plastic. It said, rather asked before answering it for the customer.

Want To Help Bandra?

Don’t Ask For Plastic Bags.

And that was that. I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would want to pack their bakery purchases in plastic instead of in a brown paper bag. It’s like drinking Falooda from a beaten steel tumbler when glass beckons. As with brown paper that extends the fragrances of its contents, so does glass heighten the visual appetite for the rainbow coloured Falooda.


Past the Christmas tree blinking with colourful lights and welcoming customers stepping into the bakery, the streets bustled with Christmas shoppers. The winter sun had turned mellow as the evening set in over Bandra. A stocking hung in the front so Santa Claus would not miss it. Either way I doubted if Santa Claus would’ve missed the bakery from the road, for the lights illuminating the shelves announced a variety of confectionary to passersby on their way about town.



Within minutes of our stepping into the small outlet of the American Express Bakery, customers came filing past. From the opening at the back of the bakery the staff came carrying breads, cakes, muffins, and more.



In no time I was window shopping fragrances of freshly baked goodies, including confectionery and snacks and found myself lingering just a wee bit longer by the cane baskets.

If it wasn’t for the consideration of fresh arrivals looking to find their way past the older arrivals I would’ve stayed longer sampling more of the confectionery the shelves advertised.



I need not have worried, for stepping out of the bakery later I noticed a crowd further down the road. On approaching the crowd, A-1 bakery revealed itself. While there was no shop floor to meander about and stop by shelves, A-1 Bakery’s shop front was sufficient invitation if one was prepared to crane one’s neck and reach over heads to place and receive orders.



I cannot remember passing the American Express Bakery’s outlets in Santa Cruz, and Cumballa Hill, for if you’re looking for baked treats in the week heading into Christmas, it’s Bandra you head to. With its decidedly Goan Catholic flavour, and the not inconsiderable Anglo-Indian presence you could be forgiven for thinking that only Bandra’s bakeries do justice to confectionery in the flavours that bring Goa alive.

It’s a perception not without reason. I would readily breeze into a bakery owned by a Carvalho, a Gonsalves, a Rodrigues, a Pinto, a Noronha than walk into one owned by a Kulkarni, a Deshpande, a Jadhav, a Jain and the like even if migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Orissa were to man Noronha's ovens as is very likely. A name is a cultural association; in its longevity is invested a certain integrity by way of being true to its origins, steadfast to its cause; in this case, the recipe. Handed down generations, the feel for culinary heritage shared across generations is expected to make for authenticity. And therein lies its draw, and charm.

It’s inevitable for a city like Bandra, with a culture considerably shaped by and originally identified with the Christian community, given that the Portuguese turned it over to Jesuit priests as early as mid 1500s, to set an expectation among visitors come looking for flavours not readily available elsewhere in Mumbai. Even if they are, it’s likely they’re scattered about. The Roman Catholic churches that dot Bandra strengthen its distinct character.

It obviously matters little now if Bandra’s population shows little or no resemblance to the original mix of Christians of Goan origin, the Anglo-Indians, the Parsis. The impressions and the expectations live on in Bandra’s Bakeries, more so around Christmas time.

Later that evening, we made our way up the hill to the celebrated Mount Mary church and were treated to prayers a group of nuns were practicing for the midnight mass later that night.

In the video below, meander about the Mount Mary Church with me and waft with the mellowing crescendo rolling off the walls and the ceiling, before sliding off paintings depicting the life of Christ, his mission, his travails, and the meaning he sought for the faithful.





Wishing everyone Merry Christmas.

Books Travellers Read in Mumbai Locals – Part IV

Continuing with my series, this is PART IV of my ongoing attempt to note the books my fellow travellers read in Mumbai local trains on their way to work and back.

Pictures can mislead. And, if a picture as they say is worth a thousand words, then it can mislead in a thousand words as well.

And if the picture is a book’s cover, well, you know what they say about not judging a book by its cover. But let it not stop you from imagining the story even if you aren’t given to judging it by the cover.

And on Mumbai local trains, the books people read on their daily commute in trains is among the more welcome distractions on the journey when Gujarati businessmen are not wrangling with their suppliers in that distinctly Gujju Hindi that rings loud and clear about the train compartment, muting other conversations as they tune in to the insistent one.



So when I glanced up at my fellow passenger who had just about managed to board the Dadar Local, I paused for a moment upon seeing the cover of the book he had fished out of his bag and buried his face in no sooner he had found a seat in the corner by the train window. In no time his face was lost to me behind the book cover.


And I had The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami for company on the rest of my journey. The unmistakable outline of the Indian Parliament building jumped out of the cover. A car lolled about in the street in front of the Parliament building, cleverly constructed out of letters making up the name of the author, R. Chandrasekar, more likely than not, a Tamil Brahmin, possibly a bureaucrat I thought at the moment. Later I learnt he was a former financial analyst.

Towering banks of lights rose from within the Parliament building, lights Indians would associate with cricket stadiums. What were these flash lights doing in the Parliament? Lighting up games Parliamentarians routinely play? Keeping a watch over politicians ‘fixing’ voting a la the infamous JMM episode? Illuminating politicians batting the ball into another’s corner? Watching over the Opposition clean bowl Treasury benches?

What were the lights for? To light up political shenanigans for a public weaned on reality shows with appetite for more? I didn’t really know for sure, but the book cover offered enough fodder to feed the imagination. And the goat in the mix? Unless the goat was the electorate, calmly and routinely led to the slaughter post-elections, time after time.

Not for a moment did the fellow passenger look away from the book, not even when the train stopped at railway stations along the way to take in fresh cascades of commuters barreling into the compartment like a river breaching a dam.

What was a Swami doing in the mix of the Parliament, the Goat, and the Sofa? Sofa? I was reminded of Chandraswami, remember him? The infamous Godman of Prime Minister Narasimha Rao’s time? The Tantrik?

The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami. Well. I’m yet to read the book. I learnt it revolves around the intersection of Cricket, the Indian Prime Minister, the Pakistani Prime Minister who invites himself to a cricket series being played between the two in India, and a certain Mr. Swami. For the rest, read the book. While I was tempted to tap the reader on the opposite seat for his take on the book, I left him alone to survive the evening journey back home immersed in R. Chandrasekar’s book, an escape into the gathering night while I delved into various possibilities, all afforded by a book cover.

Facebook Page of The Goat, The Sofa, and Mr. Swami.



Talking of Pakistan and the Pakistani Prime Minister, I saw Mumbai train commuters take an active interest in Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah, the man who pushed for the partition of India after barely ever participating in the drive for independence from the British in the years leading upto 1947.



Muhammed Ali Jinnah was not the kind to dirty his hand-tailored suits and starched shirts, let alone his Sherwanis and Karakul hats, in the ‘lowly’ task of fighting for independence from the colonial power, it was far easier and convenient to direct the bloodshed of people with his call to Direct Action using the Muslim League than wage a long, hard struggle for freedom from British rule along with the Gandhis and the Nehrus.



I wondered if it was a coincidence that Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah had its spine coloured red, the colour of blood shed in its millions by Jinnah's call for a separate homeland for the Muslims, Pakistan. The bloodletting still continues in the neighbouring country, among their own kind this time around!

Jaswant Singh’s expulsion from the Bharatiya Janata Party must have helped pique interest in the tome. For a time, it was not uncommon to find Mumbai train commuters immersed in the book, television debates raising its visibility and contributing to the hype around the already hyped up relations between the two countries.

I miss hearing birds about my travels around Mumbai unless I were to make my way to Byculla to the verdant patch that’s home to a zoo, or to Yeeor Hills, a contiguous part of the Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali aside from a few scattered patches of green in the Bombay of before.

With the exception of pigeons and crows, and the occasional sparrow, there’s little else to show for birds in much of Mumbai. Shrikes, Drongos, Barbets among others are conspicuous by their absence in the concrete jungle the city’s been turned into over the years.



Cumballa Hill is a hill in name only, and it’s no different with other ‘hills’, including Antop. If you’re keen on seeing Hornbills, you’ll have to make your way to Fort, to the Salim Ali Chowk to see the logo of the Bombay Natural History Society, the Great Hornbill. It mostly lives in Mumbai in a logo on the stone wall.


So I was surprised to say the least on finding a middle-aged man seated in the corner by the window poring over an illustrated book of birds, flipping pages, unmindful of the racket at railway stations along the way.



If ever there was an oasis of peace in a train compartment of Mumbai local trains, even if in the pages of a Birding Guide, that moment qualified for it, for the one immersed in the promise of nature and the other delighting in the reader’s interest survive a city largely denuded of its feathered bounty.



From the photographs in the book, it appeared the Birding Guide was geared to introducing the common birds an urban dweller might expect to see if city planners had accounted for and retained green cover in Mumbai.

But then Mumbai is a different kettle of fish, and while its city planners had accounted for it in the beginning, as is evident in the gardens, and parks and other formerly open areas, the caliber of governance in recent years, influenced in no small measure by the suspect quality of people elected to positions of power, has seen a steady deterioration to a point where birds are reduced to living on the pages of a book.

It doesn’t take a detective agency to unearth the causes of decay in governance, living standards, and the grind of the daily commute, certainly not of the caliber of The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.



It’s not a book I see often in the hands of Mumbai railway commuters. Apparently, it’s a series of episodic novels by Alexander McCall Smith, an author of Scottish origin.



The first time I learnt of the existence of the series was when I saw it in the hands of a bearded fellow commuter on a rainy day in Mumbai who would dutifully carry a long handle umbrella in the manner of the old gentleman carrying an umbrella and looking out to sea on the cover of Sooni Taraporevala’s PARSIS: The Zoroastrians of India; A Photographic Journey.

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency had piqued the interest of others in the train compartment as it had mine. It was an uncommon title in a setting where travelers were more used to seeing commuters carry titles by Michael Crichton, Jeffrey Archer, and Sidney Sheldon among others than a title by Alexander McCall Smith.



It’s rare I pass a fortnight by without seeing someone reading Michael Crichton, among my favourites as well.



The elderly gentleman had placed Michael Crichton’s NEXT on the seat beside him. I initially mistook his action to mean he was reserving a seat for a fellow commuter. It wasn’t to be.

As the train pulled out of the station, he snapped out of his short nap and dived into Crichton’s NEXT, a book that apparently originated after Michael Crichton returned to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla in 2005, where he had done postdoctoral work, to attend a conference on Genetics and Law sponsored by the Jefferson Institute. He was surprised and outraged by what he learned about the current laws regarding a range of issues in genetics. He immediately put aside what he had been working on, and began research for the book that became NEXT. He modeled the structure after the genome itself, incorporating fragments of popular culture, and writing a series of stories that sometimes interconnected, and sometimes didn't. The result was a very atypical novel. (Source)

Michael Crichton, The Official Site.



The Da Vinci Code continues to hold its own over the years. The only thing that surprises me when I see yet another traveler on a Mumbai local train immersed in Dan Brown’s book is not why he’s reading it but why he is so late in reading it. A sentiment I kept to myself upon seeing a South Indian commuter with neatly combed hair, a red and ash coloured tika gracing his forehead, engrossed in the Da Vinci Code.



Jeffrey Archer’s Shall We Tell The President has pushed his other bestseller Kane And Abel hard for a place in the reading hearts of Mumbai train commuters.



It’s to the book’s credit that commuters will hang on to handle bars on their long commute to the office and back, sufficiently gripped by the plot to be lost to the world around them, a moment of peace fathomed among the pages of a book to the comforting feel of paper.


Note: Read PART I, PART II, and PART III in my series noting the books my fellow travelers read in Mumbai local trains on their way to work and back, and sometimes on their way elsewhere around the city.

A Request: I would appreciate it very much if you would note/credit and link back here if this post inspired you to do a series or a variation of the series of your own.

Since this is a part of my larger India Reading Project involving books and the reading people, I’ll be counting on the link-back for continued and further participation of new readers.


Related Posts in my India Reading Project Series

1. Granthayan, A Mobile Book Store
2. Indian Copy

Conversations, And Backdrops in Jodhpur

Walking down Jodhpur’s M. G. H Road in the heat of the September Sun, a middle-aged man broke his stride upon receiving a call on his phone.

It soon became apparent that it was not a call to be answered hurriedly, and certainly not one to carry on with while dodging passers-by on the street. The call called for a more pleasant setting, some shade, and a place to recline and answer in leisure, making me wonder who was on the other line.

There was little chance I would ever find out but it didn’t stop me from wondering about likely possibilities, and they certainly weren’t mundane possibilities. Wandering does that to imagination.

Looking around for a place more appropriate to the occasion, the man soon found respite from the searing Sun on the steps of an old stone building, leaning against a stone pillar as he stretched himself out on the steps.



Rust had eaten away the letters on the metal nameplate that I had initially mistaken for wood. However, adjacent to the nameplate, letters stenciled in black ink on the wooden door survived to indicate the nature of the establishment: Bharat Tent House.

I cannot remember clearly if Bharat Tent House was housed in the Sanghi Das building, or if it was in an adjacent building. It shared the open area in the front with other commercial properties, including a TV Repair shop.

By now the man was deep in conversation, occasionally smiling as he threw his head back against the floral designs carved in the stone pillar and looked around absently, his mobile phone held firmly to his ear. It was inevitable I would linger around, eyes trailing along the contours of his backdrop, pausing every inch of the way along the façade etched with decorative patterns on pilasters projecting from the wall, lending the door on either side ample relief.

The pilasters ended in fine stone corbels on which rested the entablature projecting from the wall, over the fading blue door. I couldn’t tell for sure if the carved corbels projecting from the wall were merely decorative elements or actually bore the load of the entablature over the door.

The weather beaten door was locked, its blue reminding of the sky in a city that sits at the gatepost of the Thar desert. It was a magical moment, a Jodhpur moment, no less.

And I wondered again, this time around not of who might be on the other line but if his conversation was as interesting as his backdrop.