Christmas in Bandra today and in the past

When it comes to Christmas, there’s no better place in which to celebrate it than Bandra, the capital of the East Indian community

Christmas! That beautiful word immediately conjures up visions of Midnight Mass (now sadly 10 pm Mass), the Christmas and New Year dances, carol singing, setting up Christmas trees and cribs, an extra drink or two, food made with East Indian bottle masala and last, but certainly not the least, sweet-making of the most mouth-watering kind. In short, joy unconfined!

When it comes to Christmas, there’s no better place in which to celebrate it than Bandra, the capital of the East Indian community. The exciting journey - the advent if I may say so - of celebrating Christmas here, starts off about the 10th of the month, when the serious business of sweet-making engages the attention of all the ladies of the house. Kul kuls, or little nibbles of deep-fried sugar-coated batter with indentations produced by pressing a fork into the raw batter, and guava cheese, which is not really a cheese at all but a sweet sticky slab of reduced guava, are a must in every East Indian house. But that is just for starters. Then comes the vanilla and chocolate fudge, coconut ice, marzipans, thali sweet, bolo de coco, and bolo de Portugal, the latter two confections being the Portuguese contribution to the culinary delights of Christmas. Finally, the traditional Christmas cake, an exercise in which I swear my mother was the champion of them all. Sugar is supposedly the new tobacco and all the foregoing involves sugar a-plenty. But hey, who cares? Hopefully, one day the gloomy sugar bogey will go out of the window, like the late lamented cholesterol, and deal the pharma lobby another well-deserved body blow.

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Carol singing is an exquisitely beautiful part of Christmas. In my day, and that’s going back many decades, groups of carol-singers wandered down the streets of Bandra with many a romance springing up between its members. Today of course, carol singing seems to have slipped into the almost exclusive domain of the Bandra Gymkhana. On one occasion before the pandemic, the people of Bandra were treated to carol singing by the Shillong Chamber Choir. This year there is going to be a repeat performance at the Gym.

This is also the time when the homes in Bandra put up their Christmas lights. The visual splendour of walking or driving down the streets of Bandra with lights ablaze warms the cockles of the heart. The brightly lit Hill Road, which mercifully has not yet been re-named, buzzes with the excitement of young and old jostling with each other to do their Christmas shopping. It might not be London’s Oxford Street, New York’s Fifth Avenue or Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, but for me there is no comparison - this is, after all, home, and that is where the heart is.

Back in the day, Midnight Mass in St Peter’s Church was always the highlight of Christmas. The choir was conducted by dear old Father Irachi and the music from the magnificent pipe-organ, now sadly scrapped, filled the church with incredibly soulful sound. The stirring homilies of the Jesuits of old, especially Fathers Donnelley and Astbury along with the beautiful voice of Urban d’Lima singing Adeste Fidelis are my abiding boyhood memories of Midnight Mass. At that time, it was the practice to follow Midnight Mass with the Mass at Dawn, traditionally called the Shepherd’s Mass and the Mass of the Day. It was inspiring to see how our parents went for at least the Dawn Mass and sometimes also for the Mass of the Day.

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Time to go to bed? Are you kidding? What about congregating in someone’s house for a tipple and to sample the homemade goodies that were proudly passed around? When we finally wended our tired way home, Longfellow’s words would come to mind: something attempted something done has earned a night’s repose.

Opening our presents and Christmas lunch were the events of the day before we dressed up to the nines and went to the Gym for the dance where the music of Ken Mac, Hal Green, Hecke Kingdom, Goody Seervai and others would put a spring in our step and sparkle in our eyes. The last dance was the piece de resistance especially for those of us who were in love. When I was courting the girl who was to become my wife, and that was sixty-five years ago, anything more than holding hands was like the Laxman Rekha beyond which one feared to tread, whatever the cynics of today might have to say. That invested the last dance with so much more meaning. The glittering New Year’s dance either at the Gym or The Rest, Ranwar completed the season of Christmas.

Returning to the present, I have to say that I am eternally grateful for the ethos of Bandra and all it still represents not only at Christmas but throughout the year. One can only hope that the churn sweeping through our beloved land does nothing to change that.  Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all!

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