Read Ms. Jagjit's novel Dreams of One Country (Amazon): A never-before love inspired campaign lights India's dawn as an elite modern nation!
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Horse Gharries, Gas-lit Streets: Bombay In My Father's Time
Those were days when taxis (and the later auto rickshaws) were all one-horse gharries. The driver sat on a high seat in front. There was place behind to seat four people, two seats for two each facing each other, with a canopy that you could pull over you if you wished. In those days the street-lights were lit by piped gas. Every evening a man had to run by with a pole, a small flame at the upper end with which he would light the lamps. In the morning he would run by to snuff out the lamps.
My father was an avid book reader and believed all that was worth knowing was in books. Every evening he would go from his office in Fort area of Bombay to the Petit Library. In those days before Independence that main road in Bombay, going from Victoria Terminus to Flora Fountain was called Hornby Road. At the age of eight he enrolled me as a a member of the library. I would take a tram or train to town and walk in the arcaded pavements to reach the library. Walking from V.T. I would pass a department store called Evans Fraser on my left and on my right beyond Petit Library was a big store called Whiteaway Laidlaw's. Petit's is an amazingly ornate building with, around the spiral staircase, paintings on glass panes of the founder's family. It has a whole long floor for magazines both Indian and Western, and a whole long floor for books. I spent happy hours there reading magazines or selecting books or just gazing down from the balconies at the traffic going by on the main road or, in the side lane, children at the entrance of Cathedral and John Connon School. When my father passed away I asked the library to give me his library ledger number. Incidentally, though I moved away from Bombay many years ago, I still have a life membership at Petit's.
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