27 My Magnificent Obsessions

I look back now with wry amusement at some of my magnificent obsessions of the past – of course some of them still reside within me even today! Reading and collecting books was a major obsession – it remains so even today. Visits to the Strand Book Stall was a regular ritual. Walking further down Pherozeshah Mehta Road, I soon discovered Smokers Corner, and its delightful owner – Suleman Botawala. He was a landlord and owned many of the buildings in the Fort Area but personally he was a very humble, down-to-earth personality who was gregarious and loved to talk about books. His books were reasonably priced, and I remember buying books from Smokers Corner for many years.

Along Dadabhai Naoroji Road was another spacious book shop that I frequented – DB Taraporevala and Sons, where I spent many an hour browsing through their large collections. My interest in Cricket and Table Tennis led me to a specialty book store in the Dadar/Portuguese Church area called Marine Sports which stocked books on every conceivable sport in the world. I really enjoyed the smell of books, the feel of the paper and I usually read every page. This included the name of the Publisher and the Printer – names like Hodder & Stoughton, Andre Deutsch, Michael Joseph, Blackie & Son, McMillan & Sons and Printers like Hazell Watson & Viney with their Printing Presses in places like Aylesbury, Bucks and Seven Oaks, Kent!

Reading and dreaming about England and London and also the British Colonial Raj in India gave me great pleasure. To bolster this, I spent endless hours chatting with my maverick grand uncle Shinapmam, who lived through that era. He would tell me about his Darjeeling days (where he was a manager of a cinema hall in Kurseong) including tales of British Tea Planters. Another favourite person of mine was the retired railway civil engineer K Madhava Rao, who had just built himself a sturdy house, post retirement, on the leafy Bhaudaji Road in Matunga, the little Madras of Bombay. Though an engineer by profession, he was truly a Renaissance Man who read widely, and had an extensive home library in his house. He was a pucca brown sahib with an immaculate, crisp BBC accent who regaled me with many a tale of British India and the Indian Railways.

Quintessential English brands were my next passion and obsession. By now import restrictions were coming into force in India and I hankered after British Brands like Vinolia White Rose Soap, Huntley and Palmers biscuits, and Sloan’s Liniment. I read somewhere about Dundee Cake and I sent my Father and Sister Chitra all over Bombay to locate it for me – more of my magnificent obsessions in the next blog!