The Times and I - (Part 3)

The Times and I - (Part 3)

In my third year in medical college I went home to Bombay for holidays and saw a Times of India ad inviting applications for training in journalism. By then the original British publisher of Times Group  had been bought over by a major Indian company. For fun, I applied. I sent in cuttings of articles and stories I had published in newspapers and magazines (one of the diversionary tactics I was busy with in medical college), including Times Group publications. I was called for an interview. The business head of the company did not ask me any questions. He just said I was selected. I told him I was in the third year of medical college and had applied hoping I could have a weekly column in the Times. He said he was not authorized to do that, but I could join as a trainee next day. I thanked him and walked out of a professional journalist's career.

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Ms. Jagjit Daniel's Dreams of One Country. Novel: United States of India Rises! In the midst of historic events a Love-inspired woman's campaign for Humane Values launches India's ascent... to join the world's elite developed nations!

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The Times and I - (Part 2)

The Times and I - (Part 2)

Later, however, my contacts with the Times continued. My father wanted me become a doctor. He felt that was the best way I could help the family. Those days the middle class choices of career were medicine, engineering or, at worst, law. I had no such interest. I was busy through junior college and medical college in a rare variety of diversionary tactics (more on that later), which included writing freelance humor and short stories. They were published in Times of India, Indian Express, Midday, Femina, Shankar's Weekly, Thought etc.
One of the Times Editors, the one who wrote a humorous third editorial, M. V. M., became a friend. I would drop in on him whenever I went from medical college to Bombay for holidays. Depending on when I met him, we would go to the 1st floor of the VT Station for lunch or to the Excelsior Cinema's open air restaurant for coffee - and discus the latest  scientific discoveries or writing.

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Ms. Jagjit Daniel's Dreams of One Country. Novel: United States of India Rises! In the midst of historic events a Love-inspired woman's campaign for Humane Values launches India's ascent... to join the world's elite developed nations!

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The Times and I - (Part 1)

The Times and I - (Part 1)

My visits to The Times of India began when I was a school-kid. In those days it was no problem for a youngster to travel from Dadar to Fort, the main business area of Bombay, by a slow-coach tram or a 'local' suburban train of either the Great Indian Peninsular (G.I.P.) or the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway (B.B. and C. I.). Later, as the population of Bombay and suburbs multiplied, getting in or out of a suburban train became a matter of expertise. 
My father had enrolled me as a member of the Petit Library in town when I was eight.
Opposite the G.I.P's Victoria Terminus (V.T.) on the main thoroughfare of town were Times Group's offices. At V.T. I would cross the street and go to the ground floor Stores of the Times Group, which was run by one of my father's best friends. I was sure to get a pastry or an ice-cream if I visited him, before heading for the library.  
But my first visit to the Times Group editorial offices came after I submitted a poem to the Illustrated Weekly. At that time the Times was still a British newspaper run by Bennet, Coleman and Co.  I got a letter asking me to call at the office of the Weekly Editor C. R. Mandy, an Irishman. He was surprised to see a school kid. He said he liked the refrain repeated at each verse's end: But she was a goddess on a pedestal! He said he couldn't publish the poem, but he wanted to see more work by me.

That ended my poetic career. I don't think I ever wrote a poem again.

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Ms. Jagjit Daniel's Dreams of One Country. Novel: United States of India Rises!
In a time of historic events a Love-inspired woman's campaign for Noble Values launches India's ascent... to join the world's elite developed nations!

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Velyamachi: My Gutsy Grandma - 2

 Velyamachi: My Gutsy Grandma - 2

I want to add a short footnote to the story of my courageous Grandma.

On my few childhood visits to Kerala a big event was my Kerala-halwa making session with Velyamachi. Inevitably, on the day before we left Velyamachi would ask me to help her. I would sit beside her on a low stool and my job  was to go on stirring the halwa batter with a long ladle. I was of course delighted. Adding to the delight was the smell of the halwa and the fun of sampling it every few minutes to test the taste.
   
And her visit to Bombay was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Every bit of it must have astonished her. She had never traveled in a train before. The long rail journey! The stations! The views! The strangely-dressed new passengers, talking in languages she didn't understand, who came in as the train crossed other states. And in Bombay the amazing streets and multistorey buildings! Indeed, everything!

My memories of her - my brave Grandma - have not faded away.

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Dreams of One Country, Ms Jagjit's MovieScopic India Novel. The book my wife Jagjit and I worked on together is now available for Print Copy delivery worldwide by Amazon - apart from e-download. Dreams is a story, set in the midst of national upheavals, on India's transformation: of the country's thrilling ascent to join the world's most progressive nations.

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Velyamachi: My Gutsy Grandma - 1

 Velyamachi: My Gutsy Grandma - 1

We have two old family pictures - one with Velyamachi (my mother's mother); the other with Velyappachen (my father's father), both taken on their only visits to Bombay at a studio at the Dadar T.T. (Tram Terminus) circle, just walking distance from the 5-storey tenements where we lived on Dadar Main Road.
Those were British days...before India's Independence in 1947. Our road had three film studios on it, and at that time that road was home for Bombay's Hindi film productions.
This blog is about Velyamachi. It was the first time she had traveled by train, probably the first time she had seen a train. She was 4 foot something...dwarfish, but an amazing woman.She wore a traditional white cotton mundu or wraparound lower garment and a white blouse or chatta. In her ears she wore small jewelry at the top, but in the lower ears the heavy silver jewelry made the holes in her ears bigger and bigger so the jewelry hung over her shoulders.
She was a livewire - who never gave up! Her husband had died early. Initially the family earner was her son John, a tailor who made Western-style clothes and suits for the Englishmen managing tea, rubber and other estates in what was then the raja-ruled state of Travancore - later to be a part of Kerala. He himself wore a half-sleeved shirts and short pants.
When her son too passed away Velyamachi was left to fend for herself. She did it by selling what she could grow on about an acre of land and the milk of two cows she kept. She and the children had black coffee sweetened with unda, a variety of jaggery She managed to get some schooling for three daughters {including my mother), then got them married off. She got her son's children - three sons and a daughter to finish school so that they could find jobs in Bombay with my father's help. In short, she saved the family!

That, briefly, is the story of a wonderful and gutsy woman. My wonderful Velyamachi!

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Dreams of One Country, Ms. Jagjit Daniel's MovieScopic India Novel. The book my wife Jagjit and I worked on together is now available for Print Copy delivery to you by Amazon - apart from e-download. Dreams is a story, set in the midst of national upheavals, on India's transformation: of the country's thrilling ascent to join the world's most progressive nations.

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