Corner
An update – I noticed a beautiful detail about the old man today that I has missed earlier. Had to describe it for my readers…
Aerial photographs of old Bombay show streets and lanes radiating from the old, crowded city towards the seashore. This allowed the fresh sea breeze to funnel in and kept the inner city ventilated. As a result, there are many points in the city where roads meet at angles rather than at traditional cross roads. Often, a building runs the length of a block between two roads, ending with a rounded facade and balconies facing the corner. So each long side of the building has the name of a different road in its address. Other angled corners are the meeting point of busy roads, the buildings on each road stopping short of the actual corner itself.
A really beautiful statue of Dadabhai Naoroji sits at one such corner I drive by every day. The pavement surrounding the statue is cobble stoned and uneven. The statue is carved in black marble like many others in this precinct. Others down the road along and opposite the narrow end of Oval Maidan are carved in fancier white marble, but my favourites are the men in black. Also, these don’t show Bombay’s grime as much.
The old man sits slightly stooped in his throne like chair, his shawl arranged in artistic folds. His face is gentle and kind. He wears long robes, I can’t decide if these are his barrister’s robes or the old style clothes that Parsi gentlemen wore in the early 1900s. Unlike his statuesque contemporaries who sit or stand in the most upright manner, full of vim and vigour, he seems frail and tired. A lifetime of service to his country has left him with very little for himself in his old age. But a closer look illuminates a far different man – an erudite, learned, scholarly man. In one hand, he holds a book. His finger marks the place where he has just stopped reading. A half-smile on his face gives him a puckish, rueful look. He seems to say, Now that I’ve posed for posterity, may I return to my book? It’s a wonderful and deeply sensitive portrayal of a great man. Carved in stone, he looks out over his beloved city, his old eyes peering from behind the half spectacles on sights he may have never hoped or prayed to see.
Towering above him are a Banyan and a peepal, growing entwined as they so often do. The composition is very pleasing to the eye, projecting a ying yang balance. The resemblance to Gustav Klimt’s The Kiss is startling. The banyan leaves are broad and thick with sturdy stems. The peepal leaves are more delicate, translucent in their youth, gracefully heart shaped. The Banyan trunk is gnarled and twisted, the peepal trunk either twined around it or hidden by the Banyan completely. It is hard to tell from my fleeting view of the corner. The backdrop to the old man and the trees is an old Bombay building, beautifully restored and maintained by a foreign bank as its headquarters here. Its light grey stone and cream paint offset the black and green perfectly.
Then there are the second hand book sellers. This is a time honoured streetside occupation in South Bombay. Attempts to remove them by the local authorities have met with fierce resistance, both from them and their readers. The books are laid out on plastic sheets along the fence of the bank. Anything from comics and potboilers to leather bound classics and encyclopaedias are available here. It is rumoured that rare treasures are waiting to be discovered amongst the piles of second hand or pirated books, if one is a diligent and dedicated book hound. This used to be a strategic corner for the book sellers to ply their trade, situated as it is between two of the biggest local train stations in the city. Mumbaikars endure long train rides to and from work every day. Picking up a cheap magazine or a second hand novel helped many people catch up with their reading. This is one more habit sadly lost with the onslaught of smartphones. The booksellers wear a forlorn look now. Hardly anyone stops by anymore or even gives the books a passing browse.
The last and least genteel member of this corner grouping is the most generous and charitable as well. It is a drinking water fountain, where, wonder of wonders, cold drinking water is available from the many taps. As the signal turns red, a taxi driver or a bus conductor will abandon his vehicle to fill his bottle from this fountain. Perhaps there used to be an old water fountain there all along. But the current avatar is rather ugly and modern, though some thought has been given to match its tiles to the general palette of grey, black and white. No matter. Naoroji looks on approvingly as thirsty Mumbaikars stop by. Here, there is no hint of the religious fervour or the us and them divide sweeping the country. Water is still water. On a hot, humid day, we all sweat the same, and the water tastes as sweet going down one throat as another. The steel tumblers are rinsed off after use and most people tilt the water from a height straight into their mouths without touching it to their lips. I like to think this is more about hygiene and thoughtfulness than it is about taint and trust.
This is a corner of hope and faith. The sacred trees, the books, a man who lived a life worth living and water to drink. This is as good a place of worship as any, and better than most.