June 2019

My love for books and reading began in the early 60s – I vividly recall persuading my Father to buy the 11 volume Newnes Pictorial Knowledge Encyclopedia, which was available on monthly installments from the long established Standard Literature Company of Calcutta. It was a pleasure to dip into the red coloured volumes of this encyclopedia and especially experience the pictorial cutouts of aero planes, steam engines etc. Possessing books and collecting them became a passion from this time – I possess a copy of Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe in mint condition, to this day!

The first of the Enid Blyton books that I read was the Secret Seven Series after which I quickly graduated to The Famous Five. The Tales of Julian, Dick, Anne & Georgina (George) and their dog Timmy were absolutely delightful and enthralling – I remember devouring the entire series during my summer holidays. Another wonderful series was the Five Find – Outers which included Fatty, Larry, Daisy, Pip & Bets and their dog Buster and of course not forgetting the village policeman, the comical P.C. Goon!

Then my taste shifted to the books where boarding schools were featured – first of this was the Malory Towers series again by Enid Blyton, which was set against the backdrop of a girl’s boarding school. After this, I discovered the Billy Bunter Series by Frank Richards and the hilarious goings – on in the Greyfriars School. In this series I met funny characters like Billy Bunter and an Indian prince by the name of Hurree Jamset Ram Singh popularly known as Inky because of his dark complexation, Harry Wharton and Frank Nugent. And of course not forgetting Mr Quelch with his mortar board, the Form Master of the Remove.

My next fictional hero was Squadron Leader Bigglesworth popularly known as Biggles of the 266 Squardon. The Biggles stories were penned by Captain W.E. Johns and were set both during the First World War as well as the Second World War. During the Great War Biggles flew the Sopwith Camels and later during the Second World War, he saw action during the Battle of Britain. Biggles had interesting teammates including characters like Algy and the monocle-wearing Lord Bertie.

With no distractions like today of television, social media and the internet, the main preoccupation was to read voraciously – when I ran out of my school library books, I managed to convince my neighbor, Sushil Joseph to lend me books from his school library and finally during the summer holidays, I discovered a circulating library near my home called Ganesh Book Stall at Tardeo which was a good 30 minutes walking distance from my home!

As I mentioned earlier in this memoir, our visits to Ganeshpuri and Swami Nityanand’s Ashram became less, but suddenly one day we got the news that Swami Nityanand had passed away and attained Samadhi. This news devastated my Mother as she had great faith in the Swamiji and his passing away left a deep spiritual void in her. After the Samadhi, we did visit Ganeshpuri but it didn’t have the same feel and became increasingly commercial. After the Samadhi, his devotees increased exponentially, and you got to see the late Swamiji’s photograph in many of the Udupi restaurants in Bombay because he had a large following amongst the Shetty community and the Kannada/Tulu speaking folks.

With her spiritual anchor gone, my Mother immersed herself in reading books of different religions. My Father helped her by buying books as well as talking about Amma’s interest in diverse religions, to his friends and colleagues. One of his friends was Mr Rohekar – he was a Bene Israeli of the Jewish faith and he was a Reader of the Torah in Bombay’s oldest Jewish Synagogue in the Masjid Bunder area. When Mr Rohekar heard my Mother’s interest, he presented my Father with a set of Jewish prayer books which my Father happily gave to Amma – these books had both Hebrew and English versions and were prayers about various festivals and holy days. So soon to our surprise my Mother started observing these Jewish festivals including the Jewish Sabbath which extended from Friday sunset to Saturday sunset! We all therefore came to know the names of Jewish festivals like the Passover, Hanukah and Purim which otherwise would have been Greek and Latin to us!

In a parallel development my Father had Christian colleagues at the Bank and they recommended books like “The Limitation of Christ” by Thomas Kempis which my Father then dutifully bought and presented to my Mother. I also recall going along with my Father to the Sodality House near the Byculla Bridge where we met an Italian Roman Catholic priest who gave us another book on The Life of Christ. So soon Amma was getting exposed to both the Old Testament through her Jewish readings and to the New Testament through the various books on Christianity and Christ which my Father was busy bringing home!