Their position shouted commerce, but the elegant, time-worn wooden tracery of their galleries suggested the sensibility of artists. Were statues in honour of Indians permissible ? We childrenwondered at that. In the world we had just left, statutes represented white men – kings, politicians, generals, men with the rape of society and many capital murders under their belts – or occasionally the freaky presence of a woman. But that figure of Sivaji on a horse, he seemed to have a look of provocation that would be worrying to governors of empire.
And what lesion of the imagination had caused such bloated, disordered buildings as the Taj Mahal Hotel or, even more grotesque, Victoria Terminus station? Castles in the air, forced on by overwrought ambitions, these dreams somehow solidified into stone. Yet blasted by the city’s sunrays they rose above the tumult with cockeyed gaiety. Each, in its own way, was a hive for a portion of the multitude. The rich and the up-and-coming and their fawning acolytes rustled money and peddled influence in the vast byzantine-baronial halls and bars of the Taj Mahal, while poor workers and a desperate scrum of downward-descending populace made bleak home under the aspiring squiggles and fol-de-rols of Victoria Terminus.
After a day we were tired of wading among people, so thick was the density on the streets. To feel this city, to test the texture of it, was a strenuous business. Having sweated the downtown avenues we went over to Back Bay in search of a breeze, past the cricket ground and along Marine Drive. We were heading slowly, with many stops and with help from rickshaw or tonga, for Malabar Hill, a bold city flank still with remnants of green cover, which spoke of exclusivity in this place of seared grass and the heat-palpitating daze of the streets. We no longer talked much. We children were grumpy, and our father now had the martyred air of the put-upon parent. In the jostling mob of vendors round Chowpatty Beach his temper slipped a bit, both with the crowd and with us. This urban chaos was not a soldier’s India. This was the sort of uproar that civil society got itself into, a folly that soldiers could not mend.At least my father recognized that, but he was sufficiently military to regret the loss of discipline and to bridle at the liberties of the hustlers. For the Raj, however well-intentioned, when stretched and annoyed fell back on a fundamental demand for space and deference. Even the best of white men were tainted with a sense of superiority.
‘Make way there,’ he ordered in parade-ground manner, using his height and his elbows to lever a way through. From time to time he added something in military Urdu, bringing a flush to his own face, though it did nothing to quiet the babble pressing upon us.
But we children were transfixed by the excited, unlicensed weirdness of it all, with hands offering us strange comforts on all sides. Our father was not pleased and turned a frosty eye on us.
‘No, most certainly not,’ he snapped as we clamoured for bhel puri or a samosa or a bhaji. ‘What would your mother say? Look at the flies and the filth. And in all this heat and dust.’
The day was hot and we could have done with something wet and cold, but the kulfi looked as suspicious as the rest of the food. So the ice-cream was also forbidden us. My father was never subject to the sudden whims of taste. I remember a much later occasion, on a sizzling day in Italy. I had cajoled him into trying an ice-cream cone, just because I wanted one. His composed face licked the dripping cone impassively, granting me a favour rather than satisfying himself.
But for the moment, at Chowpatty Beach, he went so far as to allow us a paper twist full of peanuts.
The sea off the Beach looked greasy with spoil and the water under this film too sluggish to heave itself into waves. It crept into shore bearing an offering of queasy odours. Dusting vendors and beggars from his path with firm
And what lesion of the imagination had caused such bloated, disordered buildings as the Taj Mahal Hotel or, even more grotesque, Victoria Terminus station? Castles in the air, forced on by overwrought ambitions, these dreams somehow solidified into stone. Yet blasted by the city’s sunrays they rose above the tumult with cockeyed gaiety. Each, in its own way, was a hive for a portion of the multitude. The rich and the up-and-coming and their fawning acolytes rustled money and peddled influence in the vast byzantine-baronial halls and bars of the Taj Mahal, while poor workers and a desperate scrum of downward-descending populace made bleak home under the aspiring squiggles and fol-de-rols of Victoria Terminus.
After a day we were tired of wading among people, so thick was the density on the streets. To feel this city, to test the texture of it, was a strenuous business. Having sweated the downtown avenues we went over to Back Bay in search of a breeze, past the cricket ground and along Marine Drive. We were heading slowly, with many stops and with help from rickshaw or tonga, for Malabar Hill, a bold city flank still with remnants of green cover, which spoke of exclusivity in this place of seared grass and the heat-palpitating daze of the streets. We no longer talked much. We children were grumpy, and our father now had the martyred air of the put-upon parent. In the jostling mob of vendors round Chowpatty Beach his temper slipped a bit, both with the crowd and with us. This urban chaos was not a soldier’s India. This was the sort of uproar that civil society got itself into, a folly that soldiers could not mend.At least my father recognized that, but he was sufficiently military to regret the loss of discipline and to bridle at the liberties of the hustlers. For the Raj, however well-intentioned, when stretched and annoyed fell back on a fundamental demand for space and deference. Even the best of white men were tainted with a sense of superiority.
‘Make way there,’ he ordered in parade-ground manner, using his height and his elbows to lever a way through. From time to time he added something in military Urdu, bringing a flush to his own face, though it did nothing to quiet the babble pressing upon us.
But we children were transfixed by the excited, unlicensed weirdness of it all, with hands offering us strange comforts on all sides. Our father was not pleased and turned a frosty eye on us.
‘No, most certainly not,’ he snapped as we clamoured for bhel puri or a samosa or a bhaji. ‘What would your mother say? Look at the flies and the filth. And in all this heat and dust.’
The day was hot and we could have done with something wet and cold, but the kulfi looked as suspicious as the rest of the food. So the ice-cream was also forbidden us. My father was never subject to the sudden whims of taste. I remember a much later occasion, on a sizzling day in Italy. I had cajoled him into trying an ice-cream cone, just because I wanted one. His composed face licked the dripping cone impassively, granting me a favour rather than satisfying himself.
But for the moment, at Chowpatty Beach, he went so far as to allow us a paper twist full of peanuts.
The sea off the Beach looked greasy with spoil and the water under this film too sluggish to heave itself into waves. It crept into shore bearing an offering of queasy odours. Dusting vendors and beggars from his path with firm
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