Childhood years in a joint family home unlock abiding interests and lifelong loves
Four generations of babies have used this jhablu stitched from a gara saree and rocked to sleep on the chair
It's 11 years since I announced my publishing imprint. 49/50 Books. Readers to retailers, left a bit baffled by the name, still ask: Why?
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The serial numbers spell my childhood address. Our two-storey Art Deco home was nameless. Letters and parcels for the Dastoors reached them simply at “49 Hill Road, Bandra, Bombay 50”.
Mine is an expression of gratitude. Everything I enjoy doing, both personally and professionally, stems from a multitude of amazing family influences. Sharing the same roof with an extended entourage of spirited aunts significantly shaped my worldview. Early exposure to their wide tastes in literature, music, film, theatre and art, assured my brother and me an enriching onward journey.
The 1956 postcard from aboard the passenger liner Caledonia, which Piloo Vajifdar wrote her Bombay sisters en route England
Each of the fuis, our father’s sisters, was a true bon vivant. Together they were magnificent. Almost like doting grandmothers (age disparity pegged them two generations older, not one, as aunts are), they provided us a warm, constant, loving presence. Tough on our Mum, contending with three very elderly sisters-in-law already set in their ways, from the start of her marriage. Remarkably good-natured, she deflected and minimised friction.
Our building, transformed to Trios Mall today, brushed the porch of Boman House, where Ardeshir Boman’s clan from Yazd laid roots in the 1940s. He and his wife Khorshed Hormazdi considered us more family than tenants. We were invited to a bountiful Navroze table each March 21st, greeting Spring Equinox with fruit and flowers festooning their elegant dining room.
The Iranis were extremely fond of the fuis too. In fact, it was mainly on their account that Ardeshirji discerningly chose our parents over a string of previous applicants keen to rent the apartment. He was impressed with Homai and Homi moving from their Dadar homes to a new life with the unmarried sisters.
MGM Studios virtuosos Edward Nugent, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr and Josephine Dunn; autographed poster of actor John Boles
Dhunmai led the eight sibling-pack by a wide margin. She was 1900-born and the youngest, our dad Homi, 1924. Our paternal grandfather, Nusserwanji Dastur from Navsari, was manager of the Empress Mills and Ahmedabad Advance Mills. Cross-country postings with children in tow helped seed diverse interests in his six daughters (soon to be introduced) and sons, Rusi and Homi.
Forever fragrant with 4711 eau de cologne, the fuis’ cupboards offered unlimited treasures. Peppermint sweets, pretty lace kerchiefs, a cocktail ring, little jhablas stitched from hand-embroidered gara sarees (“Keep for your babies,” they said, which I did), a fun compilation of fables narrated by the witty-wise goat Bakor Patel and my best find—TS Eliot’s own taped recitation of his Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.
The aunts bustled between rooms in pursuit of their passions. We followed faithfully.
Dhunmai adored old Hindi film songs. Hobbling to the hall, she heard New Theatres ballads of Saigal and Pankaj Mullick blaring from the giant Bush radio on a carved wood tepoy reserved to balance its breadth.
Self-contained Jer cultivated quieter pastimes. Happiest engrossed in solitary card rounds of Patience, she spent hours dealing an assortment of chintzy-patterned decks spread on a four-poster. She cheerfully paused her game for as long as I wanted to chat, each time I toddled in. That was often. Because Jer loved us kids with blind devotion. I would climb onto her lap to reveal the hidden surprises of Clock Patience, which particularly delighted me. The background drone of cricket broadcasts claimed half her attention. That gently wizened face flickered to full sparkle when card or cricket score settled satisfactorily.
The living room was a sync station of sounds and varied cultural genres. Care was taken that none overlapped within minutes of the other. From a Garrard record cabinet Dad blared his beloved Beethoven symphonies and sonatas on returning from Bombay House where he worked in Tata Textiles sales. Dhunmai switched off Vividh Bharati programmes and retired to her room for pre-dinner chivda nibbles or wafers from Blue Circle, the snack haven beside New Talkies, now Marks & Spencer. Mummy listened to soulful ghazals on the kitchen transistor as she cooked for the large brood.
Only on ascertaining that his senior sister-in-law was done with the Bush booming sonorous sur and taal, did Phiroze Uncle (who outlived our aunt Dina) switch to BBC for a fascinating fix of news and radio plays. The drama of Rhinoceros unfolding orally was wonderfully stimulating for the imagination. Unusual though it felt, to hear Ionesco and Ibsen before discovering their scripts or watching them performed, I rarely missed the audio plays. Professor PE Dustoor, as academia knew him, headed the English department at Allahabad University and authored The Poet’s Pen and American Days: A Traveller’s Diary. Blind in his autumnal years, he relied on Mummy and me to read aloud tracts of text to him.
Aunts who didn’t stay with us breezed in with welcome regularity. Daulat (Dolly) visited from next-door West View, its garden lush with palms and kadi patta we picked fresh from bushes for Saturday curry lunch. Dolly arrived armed with murder mysteries and Woman’s Weekly. The sisters huddled over the magazine’s knitting patterns. I devoured its Robin Family illustrated adventures.
Dolly collected posters of Hollywood stars and reviews of their hits. From the stacks amassed it was a big deal indeed to clutch close John Boles’ mugshot, curtly signed “Regards”. She explained how brilliantly he essayed Victor Moritz in Frankenstein. We were equally perplexed to figure Tyrone Power was Mummy’s top hero. That overly slicked-back hair was demanded by the swashbuckler sagas he apparently aced.
The sole aunt settling abroad, Piloo in London, was close to all her sisters here, especially Dolly. Piloo’s son, our cousin Farrokh Vajifdar, became an internationally reputed scholar of Zoroastrianism and authority on Western Classical music.
The fuis possessed a great sense of humour, albeit occasionally exasperating. They swooped to see me unwrap a Penguin copy of PG Wodehouse’s Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen. With indignant eye rolls they questioned, “Amaari maskeri toh nathi karto taro maanito author—Hope your favourite author isn’t poking fun at us?”
How they craved to be in on things as they happened. Unlucky for them to be weekending in Panchgani precisely when family friend Mina Kava (short for Minoo Kavarana, suggested by HMV publicists commissioning him to compose a paean to the city), rehearsed the first strains of zingy “Bombay meri hai” in our living room. “Couldn’t he wait with it till we returned,” they pouted unreasonably, FOMO-stricken from the ’60s.
Naresh Fernandes’ chapter, “Attaining Hindustanese”, in Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age, restores forgotten snatches of the song, Bengalee Baboo, for me. On hindsight, its phrases seem preposterous. In those innocent times, people revelled in their catchy staccato cadence. Dave Carson’s bestselling tune regaled Bombay a century ago with his troupe, the Original San Francisco Minstrels. The aunts warbled slightly differently from the standard version. Theirs went: “I am very good Bengalee Baboo/In Calcutta I long time stop… Very good Hindu, smoke my hookah/Eat my dal bhaat every day/Night come I make plenty pooja/In Calcutta I long time stop.”
The ladies sang another politically incorrect ditty with gusto. A third sister from Madras added to the household in the 1970s. Kindness personified, the parents invited her into our space once she was widowed, after losing twins and then a son to terminal illness. Khorshed, who painted evocatively, brought framed landscapes to hang on our walls alongside portraits of musicians like Dad’s violinist idol Jascha Heifetz.
Khorshed also taught Dhun and Jer to belt out a song so blithely repetitive, we begged they stop. They’d zip lips for a moment, before bursting again into: “My name is Jeejeebhoy Jamshedji/Parsi driver of GIP/Engine number 63/From Byculla to Chinchpokli...” They quibbled whether the second line was “Parsi driver of GIP” (Great Indian Peninsula Railway, predecessor to Central Railway) or “Pocket full of VIP”. Further conjecture ensued. Was it Engine number 420? Wasn’t it Borivli to Chinchpokli? The lyrics were accompanied by a twirly jig they broke into, with puckering steam engine poofs. All that puffing plus dancing was ill-advised for Dhunmai who nursed chronic asthma.
To our combined consternation and amusement, she popped pills with aplomb while watching Parsi naataks which got her heavily wheezing with mirth. I recall soothing some paroxysms during Lafra Sadan, a caper adapted from Alistair Foot and Anthony Marriott’s play, Uproar in the House. Dismissing alarmed audience advice to take it easy, she gasped, “Goli garvaanu neh paachhu hasvaanu—swallow the pill and laugh on.”
Not a bad life motto, thank you Dhunmai.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
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