A decade in Toronto - 17

At the Toronto Reference Library for the Cosmopolis Toronto project

Photographer Colin Boyd Shafer launched the Cosmopolis Toronto project in August 2013. I heard of it on Facebook. And wrote to Colin who had this crazy ambition of photographing an individual from every ethnicity that had made Toronto home. That was one staggering project, both in the immensity of its scope and its execution. I believe by the time the project ended a couple of years later, he had managed to photograph individuals from 200+ different countries who were now Torontonians.  

Colin wanted everyone who was interested in participating in the project to explain why they’d chosen Toronto as their new home. My answer was simple: Toronto is cosmopolitan; it's vibrant, encourages enterprise, is tolerant, accommodative and gives everyone a chance to live their dream – our hometown Bombay (Mumbai) once shared these characteristics. Toronto is home because it has welcomed me, accepted me, helped me create a space for myself as a writer.

Colin responded immediately and accepted me as a part of the project. The subject had the choice of selecting the venue where s/he wanted to be photographed. I choose the Toronto Reference Library, because “Toronto gave me the opportunity to become a writer. While I was a journalist and a communications person for many years in India, in Toronto I wrote fiction for the very first time in my life.” The subject was to also choose something that linked them to their past. I choose a photograph of Eros Theatre from the 1950s.  

At the photo shoot at the Toronto Reference Library, Colin instructed me that I wasn’t allowed to smile. The photo is still on the site. You may see it here: Cosmopolis Toronto Website. Then, a couple of months later, he arranged for a video shoot where he interviewed some of the participants. I was among the handpicked few to be interviewed, asked to explain my two home cities – Bombay and Toronto. It was an interesting experience. You may see the short interview here: Cosmopolis Toronto YouTube.

The project went on to acquire larger dimensions and became a part of Myseum Toronto and the photographs were exhibited in all Toronto libraries. In 2015, Colin finally produced a book Cosmopolis Toronto: The World in One City. It was launched at a glittering event at the Toronto Reference Library. Colin has kept himself busy with other interesting projects after Cosmopolis Toronto.

At the video shoot of Cosmopolis Toronto

Cosmopolis Toronto was one of the most interesting projects in which I participated. I’ve blogged about it on a few occasions. If you’re interested in reading about it (which is highly unlikely) you may click here:

Cosmopolis Toronto

The World in One City

Also in 2013, MG Vassanji and Nurjehan Aziz involved me in the third edition of the Festival of South Asian Literature and the Arts. It was one of the best in a short-lived series. MG Vassanji and Nurjehan Aziz did everything to make the festival truly global in its content. FSALA was “a Canadian arts festival with a difference, promoting writers from South Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and those not writing in English, who though major figures in their own countries are not always known to the global ‘mainstream’."

If the previous edition had Girish Karnad and Mahesh Dattani, this edition had Selina Hossain, the Bangladeshi author and Prasanna Vithanage, the Sri Lankan filmmaker, whose Oba Nathuwa Oba Ekka (With You Without You) was shown at the festival. It was the first time I saw Anjali Patil, who has since gone on to become a known face in Indian cinema. I also met Sharankumar Limbale, a Dalit author of global repute.  I translated one of the short pieces that he read at the festival from Marathi into English and posted it on this blog. It’s been one of the most accessed blog posts.

Read the translated piece: Sharankumar Limbale

There were others, too, and the line-up included globally renowned authors. What I remember the most of the festival was how I was to get Selina Hossain from the airport and both of us spent two hours at the airport without meeting each other. Finally, she took a cab, reached the hotel, and was justifiably upset when I met her later that evening. But she granted me a great interview that I posted here.

Read the interview: Selina Hossain

In 2013, Mahesh Dattani, unarguably the only Indian playwright in English who has acquired global fame, visited Toronto. There were seminars in his honour, staging and reading of his plays. Towards the conclusion of his hour-long talk, Mahesh said he feels most connected to three of his creations – Dancing Like a Man (1989), Morning Raga (2004), and Where did I leave my Purdah (2013) - these creations encompass his love for dance, music and theatre.

With Mahesh Dattani

“They form my triptych,” he said.

Overcoming my general reticence, I said the plays that really form his triptych, plays that he will really be remembered for are Final Solutions (1993), On a Muggy Night in Mumbai (1998), Seven Steps Round The Fire (1998) all of which evocatively deal with the issue of minorities (religion, sexual orientation, gender).

Mahesh admitted he hadn’t really thought of them as such, but agreed that they do form a unit.

Harishchandra's biography in Polish

In 2013, Aleksandra Skiba a librarian at Pomeranian Library (The Central Library of the West Pomeranian Province) in the Polish city of Szczecin sent me an email inquiring about my grandfather Harischandra Bhatt, an eminent poet in Gujarati. She was researching Wanda Dynowska – Umadevi and Maurycy Frydman – Bharatanda, and came across references to Harischandra.

Intrigued, she wrote to me to find out more but ended up giving me more information about my grandfather than I’d known. Umadevi, who was Harischandra’s creative collaborator for a brief period, claims that Harischandra was in love with a young Christian woman and even wrote a poem on Jesus Christ for her.

It’d be pointless to recap the content of the two blogs – one of which is a guest post by Aleksandra. But I do urge you to read them.

Rediscovering a Poet

To look for something and to find the other

The Scarlet Muse

Thanks to the efforts of my nephew Tapan Ramchandran, I have received a copy of The Scarlet Muse, an anthology of Polish poems translated into English by Umadevi (Wanda Dynowska) and Harischandra Bhatt (my grandfather).

The anthology was published in 1944 by Nalanda Publishers (NM Tripathi Limited), Princess Street, Bombay.

About a couple of years back, I had tried to get a copy of the anthology for Aleksandra Skiba is a librarian at Pomeranian Library (The Central Library of the West Pomeranian Province) in the Polish city of Szczecin.

Skiba, the researcher and librarian, had done good work unearthing information about Harischandra and Umadevi available in Polish library archives. If you’re interested, you may read the earlier posts here: Rediscovering a poet.

Poland is engulfed in a fresh bout of constitutional crisis. I’m reproducing two poems from the anthology from the World War II era, but have resonance even today.

The Song of Warsaw

(Broadcast by the Warsaw radio station Blyskawica)

With our feet on the grave, still our spirits

are high,

Fighting Warsaw fights on, none here weeps

in despair!

We straddle the Hun and with bare hands we try

To strangle the beast as he creeps to his lair.

While you still complain of the bloodshed

and flame

Devouring Warsaw as day succeeds day,

We here with our bare breasts the enemy stay

And laugh at your praise and suggestions of

fame.

But why must your song of lamenting still

sound

When everyone, men, women, children are

found

Fighting and bleeding for Poland, for home!

Let the mournful dirges no longer be heard.

Here beats the great heart of Poland – intact!

Warsaw speaks! Warsaw thunders! And

this is her word:

“Spare us your praise. Give us arms. We

must act!”

(Translated by Elizabeth Clark Reiss)

The other poem is The Muse Scarlet (perhaps the poem which gave the anthology its name).

The poem is by Marian Hemar (1901-1972). When the anthology was published, Hemar, a Polish Jew, was alive and in exile in London, having escaped the clutches of the dreaded Gestapo. He could never return to Poland, because the Communist regime that ruled Poland after the end of the war. He died in England in 1972.

The Muse Scarlet

O Poetry full of grace

Do pray for us.

Thy honour is now coming

In thunder’s crash,

Thy hour is now pouring

In torrents of flame.

Lift up on us thy golden face

Thy wonderous countenance.

The glare of God’s wrath

Falls upon us,

Cast thyself in despair like a lion

On the path of His blaze,

Seize His hand which lifts up

His heavy sword over our heads,

O Poetry! Thou art the last

Rampart of Polish defences!

O walls of Zbarazh!*

Of Kamyenyets** invincibly proud

O tower of Mountain of Light!

Westerplatte falls,

Hell – villains will steal,

But thou wilt endure

Holy fortress of our Poets great.

Over our heads that lie in dust

Burst the bowl of thy dew.

Grant the grace of a sob

To our dumb, silent lips.

Wash our wounds and defeats

With thy holy tears.

O Poetry! Kneel and weep

And pray thou for us.

When by the flame

All words are twisted and curled

Like metal’s shabby plates,

Thou knowest alone the secret

Of words which defy all fires,

Born themselves out of flames,

Words – tears, words which are

Bread and salt of all life,

Which grow from the soil

And from heaven come down.

Sweep thou above us!

In a current og blazing white

And another of crimson-blood!

O poet, your hand to the standard!

No wreath for your brow,

No place for laurels now,

What matters it’s the flag

Not the hand

That holds the shaft

* a city at present in Ukraine
** a city at present in Belarus

A son's poem to his dead father

Harischandra Bhatt

Readers of this blog are probably aware of Harischandra Bhatt (1906-1950), the Gujarati poet, who introduced western influences on Gujarati poetry.

Earlier in 2014, a television program broadcast in India critically analyzed Harischandra Bhatt’s poetry, and evaluated his contribution to Gujarati literature.

It is an incredibly nuanced piece on Harischandra and his poetry.

My uncle Devendra Joshi sent it to me recently.

You may listen to it here: audio recording 

Meghnad Bhatt

To my dismay, the hour-long segment on Harischandra, didn’t mention a word about his son Meghnad Bhatt, also a Gujarati poet. One doesn’t know the reason for this glaring omission, but one can’t help but think that the omission was deliberate.

I’m reproducing Meghnad’s poem on his father.

I’ve translated the poem in English, and as this is my first attempt at translation, I welcome suggestions to improve it. 

(English translation follows)

સદગત પિતાને 

                 - મેઘનાદ હ ભટ્ટ

ચૌદ વર્ષના છોકરના શબ્દકોષમાં

'આત્મહત્યા' શબ્દ કદાચ સમાઈ શકતો નથી,

પણ પોસ્ટમોર્ટેર્મ કરેલુ શરીર

નાંનકડો નાદાન છોકરો જો જુઍ

તો તો ઍ છળીજ મરે-

- આવોસંદેહ મારા કાકાનેખરો.

પરિણામે

તમારુ મુઆરમોઢું પણ હું જો નશ્ક્યો!

આજે તો

તમે જેઉમ્મરેઆત્મહત્યા કરી

તે જે ઉમ્મેરના ઉંબેરપર હું ઉભો છું

નેતોય

તમને હેજી હું આલખીશક્યો નથી.

ઍથીજ

અવસાનના અવસાદને અતિક્રમી જતું

મરણોત્તર 'સ્વપ્નપ્રયાણ' કરવાને બદલે

હું શ્વાસ લીધે રાખું છું

અનેશ્વાસ લેવાની ઍ પ્રક્રિયાને કારણે

જીવંત હોવાનો ભ્રમ પણ સે સાયો રાખું છું

આટલું પરંતું ન હોય તેમ

ક્યરેક

સ્વપ્નપ્રયાણ પણ કરં છું

સાચ્ચે જ તમને હું નથી આલખી શક્યો,

નહીં તો કયરની મેં આત્મહત્યા કરી નાખી હોત.

To a departed father

               - Meghnad H. Bhatt

A 14-year-old boy’s dictionary wouldn’t contain the word suicide

But if the young, callow boy was to see the body after post-mortem

He would definitely die.

Such thoughts may have preoccupied my uncle

As a result,

I wasn’t allowed to see your dead face

Today,

I’ve reached the age when you committed suicide.

And yet

I can’t claim to understand you.

That is the reason

I continue to breathe

When my ‘dream departure’ should have been posthumous

Through this process of breathing

I continue to harbour illusions of being alive

Although on occasions

I do manage to conclude my dream departure

Truly, I haven’t been able to understand you

Or, I would have committed suicide long ago

‘dream departure’ = Swpnaprayan / Harischandra Bhatt’s posthumously published collection of poems

(Read previous posts on Harischandra Bhatt & Meghnad Bhatt here:

Rediscovering a poet

Meghnad Bhatt)

Rediscovering a poet

Aleksandra Skiba is a librarian at Pomeranian Library (The Central Library of the West Pomeranian Province) in the Polish city of Szczecin. 

I got an email from her last week, inquiring about my grandfather Harischandra Bhatt (1906-1950), eminent Gujarati poet credited with introducing western sensibilities in Gujarati literature and ushering a new post-nationalistic era in Gujarati poetry.

Harischandra’s only major collection of poems – Swapnaprayan – was published posthumously in 1959. (Incidentally, Swapnaprayan was also Dwijendranath Tagore's second collection of poems). 

He worked briefly at the Polish consulate in Bombay during the Second World War and translated several Polish poets into Gujarati in collaboration with his colleague Wanda Dynowska at the Polish consulate. They published Scarlet Muse, an anthology of Polish poems.

Dynowska subsequently edited an anthology of Polish translation of Indian poems titled Indian Anthology. Vol. IV Gujarati Literature The second edition Gandhi – Selected Writings. (Ed. Wanda Dynowska, Madras, 1960)

Aleksandra translated into English the Polish preface of the anthology that reveals hitherto unknown  (to his family) details about Harischandra. 

Reproduced below is Aleksandra's translation:

Antologia Indyjska. T. IV Gudżerati. Wydanie drugie znacznie rozszerzone. Gandhi – wyjątki z pism. Oprac. Wandy Dynowskiej, Madras, 1960, s. XXIII-XXVIII.

(Indian Anthology. Vol. IV Gujarati Literature. The second edition. Gandhi – Selected Writings. Ed. Wanda Dynowska, Madras, 1960, p. XXIII-XXVIII.

“Before describing Gandhi’s work and his influence on the Gujarati culture and literature I would like to say about Harishchandra Bhatt. I wish India to find among Polish writers as devoted friend as he was for Poles. He worked many years at the Polish Embassy in Bombay and was a tireless supporter of Polish affairs that’s why the longer note should appear in Polish-Indian Library in order to immortalize his name.

He came from the poor but intellectual Brahminic family (Surat). His father died early so being the oldest son he had to take responsibility for the whole family, especially for his younger brother. Thanks to Harishchandra’s devotion and after 8-year study in France his younger brother is a professor of French in Bombay now.

Since he was a teenager Harishchandra was interested in the European literature but mainly the Slavic one. Limiting drastically his needs he acquired foreign books which were almost unknown in India (i.e. he subscribed Slavonic Review). 

The big collection was gathered in his flat. There were the books written by French, German, Polish, Czech and other authors in the beautiful bookbinders because their owner was a bibliophile (until recently it was unique in India where the beautiful bookbinders were rare).

His collection gathered numerous writers from Whitman and Verlaine to Hofmanstahl; from Mickiewicz and Słowacki to Kafka. He was a sensitive aesthete dreaming about a new way of publishing which would be close to the European model. Many years it was his unattainable goal but he was aspiring to it constantly.

He enjoyed his work at the Information Department (Polish consulate) which enabled him to express his love to Polish culture and literature. The numerous articles in the newspapers, countless talks about Poland among friends and the wide correspondence gave him the chance to “serve” Poland and approached it to India.

Harishchandra prepared monograph on Marshal Piłsudski. He translated with me Crimean Sonnets and Wojciech Bąk’s poetry (the last one moved him especially). Working at the embassy he published (thanks to help of his friends) his anthology of Polish poets “The Scarlet Muse” and a volume about great people of contemporary India “Among the Great”. The last one was written by the eminent musician and poet Dilipkumar Roy.

The results of his work was so excellent that some friends decided to cooperated with him and he established a publishing group Nalanda  which was famous in the whole India. The group published over a dozen books which aesthetic standards were equally to the Western ones. That time was the intense for his writing as well as the happiest in his life.

He could create much more but painful disappointment was a reason of his early death. Harishchandra, a sensitive and nervous artist, coped with suppression and burdens too heavy for his mind. Firstly, the family situation made impossible to complete his education and he was suffering because of that the whole life.

Secondly, his work which was hard and wearisome took so much time that he almost didn't have chance for own study, meetings with other poets, writings and the books. What’s more he was in fragile health so heavy work and daily problems were enervating him slowly. His dreams about creative work were not achievable for a long time and when they started to become true the sudden blow broke his spirit completely. He was seriously taken ill and committed suicide.

Harishchandra was fully engaged in his publishing house. The results of Nalanda were great but the costs too high. The only member of the publishing house who had funds began to have financial problems and was forced to give up this project. Harishchandra suddenly had to face the breach of obligations. His plans were ruined and he was deprived from creative work again. It was too hard for his sensitivity. Everybody who knew him and had observed the happiness of the last three years could understand his sadness and despair. Not only he lost the goal but also his viability.

Harishchandra’s writing stopped halfway. He could be among the best Gujarati poet soon. The poems which are dispersed in the newspapers and the only collection of his poetry which he was preparing for publishing cannot guarantee him immortality in Gujarati literature though.

Unfortunately, his best cycle of sonnets titled “For Her” written because of his platonic love to a young girl was never published. The girl was a Catholic and worked as a typist in his friend’s office. It was beautiful, fresh love. I was a witness and confidant of that feeling. The poems about Jesus Christ written because of her were never published either.

The first could get his wife down whom he loved deeply too. The second one needed a longer preface for the readers to explain Harishchandra’s understanding of Christ (Jesus Christ is known in India and he is not only respected but also worshiped and treated as a one the greatest prophet and teacher of the world. There are a lot of houses where His portraits is hanged among other great figures.)

Harishchandra understood Christ particularly and without an explanation about the context his poems wouldn't be comprehensible for his countryman. He didn't prepare anything before his death, so it was impossible to publish them.

In Polish-Indian Library I edited only a one poem from that cycle and some (For Her) which we translated few years ago.

Let the reader have his opinion about Harishchandra’s poetry but I want to add that his language was clear and soft and the style full of undertone and half-light.”

The book also has his biography:

He is very gifted poet but less known and not so widely-read by his countryman. He didn't have enough time to flower his talent and died crushed by hard conditions.

His four year devoted work at the Polish Embassy in Bombay makes him especially close to Poles.

He was honoured with Order of Polonia Restituta for his propagation the knowledge about Poland and advocacy of its side (spoken and written).

Knowing perfectly Polish literature (he had a big collection of books) Harischandra informed his countryman about Poland writing numerous articles and having talks.
He wrote a monograph about Józef Piłsudski which was published in Gujarati and translated into Tamil.

He also translated Crimean Sonnets and Wojciech Bąk's poetry. He loved Poland and dreamt about visiting it. He was a romantic, idealist and enthusiast.     

Photos: Aleksandra Skiba

Meghnad Bhatt 1935-1997

Last week my sister Sonal called to inform me that some kindred soul had remembered our father Meghnad’s death anniversary and written about his poetry in Divya Bhaskar, an important multi-edition Gujarati language newspaper published in India and North America. She was simultaneously emotional and ecstatic. “I’m happy at least someone has remembered him,” Sonal said without being able to hide her pride.

On checking the web link she sent me, I realized that eminent poet, writer and an institution in Gujarati literature, Dr. Suresh Dalal, had done the write-up.  Dr. Dalal’s contribution in shaping Meghnad’s literary career remains unmatched.

Is it possible to write about your father without becoming sentimental? I don’t think so, and yet it is so important to do so especially when he is someone who led a very public life as Meghnad did.

Meghnad’s is the biggest influence on my life.  Twelve years after his death I find myself to be too small a human being to fill in to his enormously large shoes. He was less of a father and more of a friend.  

In addition to being my father Meghnad was a litterateur, a trade unionist, and lifetime socialist who seared with genuine anger when he encountered injustice, a secular fundamentalist, and an Ambedkarite in an ideological sense of the word.

Meghnad was a Gandhian who loved Jawaharlal Nehru and Ram Manohar Lohia. George Fernandes was his friend, though he would have been hugely disappointed with his friend’s closeness to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, but would have sympathised with him in his present isolation. He was an avid follower of political trends, but turned a political activist (as many others did) for Fernandes to help in the 1969 general elections that resulted in Fernandes’ historic victory over S. K. Patil.

After many years of “being exploited” he was instrumental in forming a trade union at the Mafatlal Group, where he worked as an accountant for three decades. That singular act of defiance – so uncharacteristic for a middle class clerk with family responsibilities – typifies Meghnad’s values: To remain committed to one’s beliefs even if it meant a lifetime of struggle and unfulfilled desires.

His radicalism was not just meant for the newspapers (Janmabhoomi Pravasi) where he wrote angry columns at the injustices prevailing in the society. It also got translated into his trade union work. I remember one day late in the evening when he returned home and told his stunned family that one of the Mafatlal brothers had warned him at a meeting, “Mr. Bhatt, I’ll have you arrested under MISA.” This was in the heydays of the infamous Emergency.

Above all else, Meghnad was a man of literature – a poet, a writer, translator, essayist, journalist and a raconteur, who lived and breathed the written word.  As he did not belong to any of the known “groups” in Gujarati literature and believed in his own creative merit, he remained unpublished for many years.

He published his first book of poems – Chhiplan when he was 45 in 1980, and that acted as a catalyst for him. He published two more collections of poems – Malajo (1988; I had a minor role in getting Baiju Parthan to design the book cover) and Amthabharan (1994).

He also published the Gujarati translation of Dr. Rafiq Zakaria’s fictionalized biography of Razia Begum, the queen of India and the world’s first woman Islamic ruler. Dr. Zakaria is perhaps be better known in North America as Farid Zakaria’s father, but Zakaria senior was in his days a well-respected moderate scholar.

Meghnad also published Spiderman – a book of essays on death and dying, written after  my cousin Hamir’s death at a tender age of nine, caused by leukemia.  He wrote a short novel – Amthanubhav (1980) and two short novellas – Avadhoot Sarika (1988) and a book of literary criticism Sankhaghosh (1991). 

He had an unpublished book of essays on Mahatma Gandhi when he died at 62, which was not returned by the person who promised to get it published and then published under her name some years later. 

Meghnad left behind a voluminous output of poems and polemical journalistic writing that remains relevant (but unpublished) more than a decade after his death.

Despite such tremendous achievements he remained extremely modest, and considered his father Harischandra Bhatt to be a far greater poet than himself. Harischandra is often credited with introducing an international perspective to Gujarati literature and his seminal book of poems was published posthumously.

Meghnad was hyperactive. In addition to his accountant’s job that he hated with rare passion he gave tuition to supplement his income. 

He struggled all his life working 16 to 18 hours a day, and enjoyed his struggle. He didn’t know what to do with his free time after he retired and became a full time journalist, writing about wine and non-vegetarian cuisine – he did a surprisingly good job of it considering he had been a firm teetotaler and a vegetarian all his life.

Soon after he died, Sonal spoke to me about how perhaps at the moment he was dying she felt a heart-wrenching pain in her chest, and I told her that I had felt the same, although at that time I had dismissed that feeling and had blamed excessive alcohol.

I have also never really acknowledged my mother Durga’s influence on my life. In so many different ways, I’m more like her than my father.  I have always romanticised my parents’ relationship. To me they were like Marilyn Munroe and Arthur Miller...maybe that's a stretch, but you tend to think of your parents in what you wanted them to be not what they were. 

Durga sacrificed her ambitions - she remained a radio artiste when she could easily have been an actress - first for her husband and then for her children...but about all that, too, a little later on the blog.

I’m reading Isabel Huggan’s The Elizabeth Stories; it’s a book about the pangs of growing up expressed in a stark lyrical style that is breathtakingly simple and yet unrelenting in the unease it causes to the readers because Huggan has succeeded in portraying the seemingly enormous and often insurmountable difficulties and challenges we all experience during our formative years.

Huggan writes evocatively about Elizabeth’s growing up years from childhood to puberty (I’m still reading the book, so I don’t still know till what age the writer will take Elizabeth’s journey), and the predominant emotion that one feels while reading the book – even to a male reader – is “Yes, of course, I felt this awkwardness, too; and I really would’ve done things differently if ever I were to get another chance.” At one stage in the book, Elizabeth confesses, “...how much I sounded like my father but how much like Mavis (her mother) it was to go and lie down. I could never escape them.”

I guess that really is the story of everyone’s life: We inherit the worst qualities of our parents.  

The World According to Garp

The David Sassoon Library at Kala Ghoda in Mumbai has a charm that doesn’t belong to the present times. It is a product of the past – a time when people had time.

In our times, it is part of the venue for the admirable Kala Ghoda Arts Festival and attracts a particular set of people who otherwise ignore the library.

I have often imagined my grandfather Harischandra Bhatt getting on to a BEST bus or a tram from Princess Street, where he lived and died, and getting off at the Kala Ghoda, climbing up the broad stone stairs of the David Sassoon Library, choosing that perfect spot on the vast verandah of the library that faces the Museum, stacking his books on one of those enormous chairs on which one can not only rest one’s arms but even legs, and spending the afternoon reading Rilke, Baudelaire and Lorca.

But that wouldn't have been him. He bought his books, most of the time. Besides, Harischandra was a member of the Petite Library (JN Petite Institute Library) on the Hornby Road (Dadabhai Naoroji Road). The Petite Library is also a heritage site today, but lacks that little something that David Sassoon has.

My father Meghnad was a member of the David Sassoon Library, but he rarely used the membership to borrow books. He hardly had any time left to borrow books from the library after working 18 hours a day (as an accountant and a teacher), freelancing as a columnist, running a trade union and writing poetry. Also, just as his father, he had his own library. 

In the late 1970s and early 1980s I made good use of the library card, if not the library. I found the library a bit intimidating.

One of the best books that I borrowed from the library was John Irving’s The World According to Garp. Irving was an unknown author then. But this novel had become a major sensation. I read it in the late 1970s; probably a year or two after it was published.

It was breathtaking in its originality and innovative style. Garp is the main character of the book. He is conceived when his mother rapes a vegetating soldier at a hospital and names him TS Garp (the initials are the soldier’s rank – Technical Sergeant).

Garp’s (Irving’s) obsession with sex was something that one saw in almost all good American authors of that era (Post WW II), starting with John Updike and included everyone of any caliber. Those were the wonderful days when the excesses of the 1960s and the 70s had yet to reach a full circle and explode into the fearsome outbreak of AIDS in the 1980s.

Novels and novelists in the West remained preoccupied with sex. Perhaps the natural outcome of this was the flowering of writing in English language from other parts of the English-knowing world – most notably India. But we will deal with the phenomenon of Salman Rushdie some other time.

The most innovative aspect of The World According to Garp was the inclusion of a novella, a short story and (if I remember) a poem in the novel itself. I had never read a book such as this one ever before. It was at once bizarre, brilliant, scathing, sardonic and disturbing.

Many years later, on a particularly bleak monsoon evening at my Teli Gali home, when my world was seemingly closing in on me, I switched on the television and flipping the channels back and forth for a while I settled on Star Movies. A Robin Williams movie was on air that seemed familiar even though I had not seen it before. It took some time for me to realize that the movie was The World According to Garp.

Somehow, it didn’t hold my attention for long. I have said this earlier, and I will repeat it again. Except the Godfather and Gone with the Wind, I have not seen a movie that is better than the book. This one was no exception.

John Irving went on to attain international fame after this novel, and wrote many novels later. I haven’t read any of these, and I don’t think these surpass The World According to Garp in creativity and imagination.