Elevating public inscriptions and seals, cenotaphs and tribute lines hold faith through hopeless times
Fourth-generation sculptor Gaurang Talim (left-most) with the portrait of his great-grandfather BV Talim. File pic
I sit to write early on the morning of May 5. A quick peek at my mailbox announces the 203rd birth anniversary of Karl Marx, flashing a quote by him—ironically, the one on his grave in London’s Highgate Cemetery. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
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Construed widely and controversially, this Thesis Eleven idea for social progress holds infinite possibilities. With all the carnage carpet bombing around, there’s immense comfort to take from certain lines, symbols and seals scattered in public spaces across town. Healing and hopeful. Calming and caring. A string of words, the smallest sign, at least momentarily inspire sagging spirits to soar.
Seal of the Theosophical Society Of India on Blavatsky Lodge at French Bridge. Illustration/Uday Mohite
In Bhendi Bazaar, the heartland of fasting and feasting, the faithful invoke the purity of Ramzan. They seek peace from sickness and sorrow at five mosques and the magnificent Raudat Tahera. Within this mausoleum of the eminent Syednas Taher Saifuddin and Mohammed Burhanuddin, lies the gem of a 772-page handwritten Quran. Entirely copied on marble slabs, its verses are gold leaf-inlaid, punctuated with bejewelled revelations like “Bismillah”. In a calligraphic record, Raudat Tahera is considered the world’s sole site embedding a complete sacred book in its sanctum sanctorum. An Arabic ayaat on the dome lyrically exults, “Innallaha yumsekus samawati wal arda an tazula (Allah holds the sky and earth together, lest it falls).”
Similarly serene is the benediction, “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst”. From the Gospel of St John, this reassurance graces George Gilbert Scott’s Neo Gothic-designed fountain outside the west door of St Thomas’ Cathedral, Fort. Bombay’s first Anglican Church, marking city limit Point Zero, was inaugurated on December 25, 1718, with a ten-gun salute that every ship in the harbour answered. Sir Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney donated the fountain in thanks for the protective shadow the church threw, blessing his ancestral home nearby. The gesture earned him the sobriquet of Cowasji Cross.
Dadabhai Naoroji’s statue by BV Talim. Pics/Bipin Kokate
A beautiful black marble Dadabhai Naoroji seated outside Oriental Building watches the Flora Fountain junction. The west panel of its pedestal portrays The Grand Old Man of India at the House of Commons session addressed by William Gladstone. It is the east surface I admire, showing the statesman, who championed women’s education, lead ladies and children to Saraswati Mandir. The four-word phrase in the upper corner packs a Capital-lettered punch—“Mothers really build nations”. Sad how this notion is hard-hit by damning statistics for schoolgirl dropout rates the pandemic sinks daily.
Naoroji is but one city father carved for posterity by the legendary BV Talim. His 1918-introduced Art and Sculpture Studio on VP Road, opposite Shapur Baug, has uniquely witnessed three more generations of Talims deftly chisel bronze, plaster and metal busts of patriots and philanthropists.
“Mothers really build nations” is engraved on this pedestal scene
Moving midtown brings the simply expressed Marathi tribute, “Tee bahutaas sahaayya karnaari hoti (She was one who helped so many)”. This salutes the feminist activist Pandita Ramabai, at the entrance of the ladies’ hostel attached to Wilson College instituted in her memory. Lecturing on women’s emancipation, the scholar-reformer with a global following was hailed Pandita for her erudition in Sanskrit at an exceptionally young age. Ramabai was responsible for one of the country’s first shelters and school in 1889 for women, particularly widows. She tirelessly lobbied before the English Education Commission to improve syllabus requirements and campaigned for women doctors to examine female patients, who otherwise ignored symptoms and refused treatment. With Queen Victoria’s nod, the Women’s Medical Movement launched in Lady Dufferin College.
In the French Bridge neighbourhood rest quiet charms. Malad stone-encased, 1928-built Blavatsky Lodge belongs to the Theosophical Society of India. The intriguing seal on its main facade blends a host of eclectic elements encircled by the Society motto: “There is no religion higher than truth”.
Nowrosjee Wadia’s hand-and-hammer symbol reads: “In Deo Fide Et Perseverantia”. Pic/Bipin Kokate
The Ouroboros symbol of a serpent biting its tail is the Greek allusion to infinity. The Hexagram star interlaces two triangles, representing matter and spirit. At its core, the Crux Ansata from Egypt suggests resurrection, with the six triangular points and central ankh “key of life” hieroglyph for seven universal principles. The Swastika-style, ringed whirling cross signifies expansive creative energies. “Om” tops the seal, as the Absolute, divine primal beginning. The secularism of these diverse influences asserts the brotherhood of man.
Just beyond, on the south flank of Khareghat Colony on Hughes Road stand a pair of cenotaph columns. One, dated 1926, is the oldest and only war memorial—other than at India Gate, Delhi—erected by civilians. With a list of the honoured is inscribed: “In pious memory of Zoroastrians who died doing their duty during the Great War of 1914 to 1918”. A smaller structure beside acknowledges later martyrs of World War II and subsequent battles with China and Pakistan. The Zoroastrian equivalent of All Souls Day (Farvardin mahino and Farvardin roj), observes a wreath-laying ceremony with a bugler playing The Last Post and Le Reveille.
Bust of Jerbai Masina with HW Longfellow’s verse. Pic/Atul Kamble
Further inner city, eight sprawling acres of the Masina Hospital on Victoria Road in Byculla, are gently suffused with a soothing thought condensed from HW’s Longfellow verse. The writing underlying Jerbai Masina’s statue on the manicured lawn should lift the mood of the very frailest: “There is no death, what seems so is transition, from breath to life Elysian.”
With an aunt heading its paediatric department years back, we would often swing by the hospital to take her home. Waiting for her to finish putting a stethoscope to tiny baby chests, there was enough time to savour this statue’s gloriously carved details depicting human qualities and guiding principles. The hospital was previously the 19th-century residence of eminent Baghdadi Jew trader, David Sassoon, called Sans Souci, French for “no worries”.
The 1926 column at Khareghat Colony is the earliest civilian-erected war memorial. File pic
The Sassoons bequeathed their property to Dr Hormasji Manekji Masina when he cured David Sassoon, who was suffering an acute hernia attack. The third Indian to be granted the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr Masina raised charity funds for the hospital of his dreams, with his devoted wife Jerbai. Masina is probably Bombay’s first private hospital in 1902, followed by Parsi General Hospital in 1908 and Harkisondas Hospital in 1925. Jerbai established the Postgraduate Medical College and Lady Broacha College of Nursing in 1923.
Masina Hospital is a rare facility serving both the 1918 Spanish flu spread and current Coronavirus crisis. Growing from four beds into a 270-bedded multi-specialty, tertiary care hospital, it is credited with the city’s pioneering neonatal care unit.
The St Thomas’ Cathedral fountain bears a soothing Gospel of St John inscription. File pic
Within the gates of Rustom Baug, which shares a wall with the hospital, an arresting logo emblazons its buildings. “In Deo Fide Et Perseverantia (Faith in God and Perseverance)” circles a hand holding a hammer symbol of industry—registered trademark of the company, Nowrosjee Wadia & Sons. This striking image caught my eye when I interviewed comedy doyen Dinyar Contractor for a book on Parsi theatre. Searching for his block, I stared at a sight mirrored directly under the Latin emblem. An old lady with thick glasses under her scarf-covered head sat multi-tasking at her ground-floor window. Chanting prayers as she kept trying, hard and patiently, to thread a needle for the chintzy embroidery frame on her lap. A picture of the piety and perseverance exhorted by the motto, she equally evoked the seamstress skills of benefactor Lady Jerbai Wadia, who constructed this baug in memory of her son Rustom.
Sometimes, rather than a seal or motto, life-affirming embellishments attract. Leafy Khar lanes boast such a gem. Hugging Madhu Park, the Ghanteshwar (Lord of the Bells) Temple from the 1950s is unusually sheathed in thousands of metal bells hung by devotees. Favours asked fulfilled, they return to tie bells in gratitude. Newer brass specimens gleam alongside counterparts crusted with time. Fervent prayers surely go up from desperate men huddling in a little labour mandi here. For most of the morning, jobless strugglers hang around the Khar Station chowk, identified by typical bags and boxes. Painters’ brushes peep from scruffy thelas, carpenters and plumbers proffer their toolkits.
Other lines resonate from lustrous Latin originals. Profiling iconoclast architect and Swatantra Party founder, Piloo Mody, made me notice the name his father, Sir Homi Mody, gave their Carmichael Road bungalow. “Spiro Spero (Whilst there is life there is hope)” is engraved on that gatepost, the Japanese Consulate today.
The early Jesuits have left legacies of profundity. Privileged meeting Fr Peter Ribes, the Spanish priest distinguished as the last Latin tutor in the city, I heard sonorous nuances of the classic language he taught at St Stanislaus, Bandra, and St Mary’s, Byculla, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Reaching the country as a 25-year-old from Barcelona, Ribes told municipal officials, “Mee tumchya peksha jaast Indian aahe (I’m more Indian than you).”
Seeing him scrawl “Audentes fortuna juvat (Fortune favours the brave)” on a blackboard, I was fascinated to arrive at the ancient root
of “audacious”.
Another edifying favourite of Fr Ribes was “Per aspera ad astra (Through hardship to the stars)”. A loftier cadenced version of “We shall overcome.” Indeed, we shall.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. Reach her at meher.marfatia
@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
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