Missing My Moore Market

It was a boon to be born in a time when there was no boob tube ( or even youtube!) . Ones only companions were books and i grew up devouring them day and night . In fact if ever i had been featured in the final stanza of Old Mc Donald's farm it would have gone here a book , there a book, everywhere a book book , but as i had no claim to such fame i just drove my mother nuts by bringing the book to the dining table at every meal. Actually, she had not discovered that i had devised my own plastic jacket for the books and read them in the shower too. Then my long suffering parent would have preferred to climb up the gum tree to bringing up the brat. Truthfully, my parents were very supportive of my reading habit and their monitoring extended only up to making sure i was not reading any "indelicate" stuff. In fact, at time when most parents thrust classics into unwilling hands , my parents actually bought me the Classics Illustrated comics to inculcate a love for the classics later. That is how i read Silas Marner, David Copperfield, Tale of Two Cities, Ivanhoe and many others in comic form when yet 6 or 7 and later read the classics in original . For such as me , whose life blood was books ,there was in the lovely city of Madras a Xanadu called Moore Market.
There are historians who can answer the query why it had that name -for a long time i thought it was after Shakespeare's famous Moor : Othello. It would have been apt of course but i learnt it was derived from Lt. Col. Sir George Moore president of Corporation of Madras who opened it in 1900. Although the mystrey of the name wore off , the magic of the place never ever did and not pondering over etymology, for me it was sufficient that it just existed.
When i left Bombay i was devastated to be separated from the little second hand bookshop tucked away in a little alley off Crawford Market . What an unknowing fool i was : cribbing about my future not realising Fate was lovingly leading me to the very Heaven of old books.
My first visit to Moore Market was with my Mother. We walked out of Fort St. George along the pavement along the General Hospital ( yes, there were such things then in this city) and crossing over to the other side in front of Central Station entered the intriguing world of Moore Market.
The market had several shops that stocked all kinds of toys- from plastic dolls , to winding tin cars and buses that had crude keys sticking out of them.Somehow no one had heard about lead poisoning way back then and parents had no qualms picking these up for their little children. There was a special area where one could buy cloourful birds in round cages and glass fish tanks with some mundane and some exotic fish. The shops were all quite crowded with new and second hand goods. Some even swore there were stolen goods available but i wouldnt know as i was not looking for them. There was a clothes shop , too, called London Stores which put out on plastic hangars white lacy tops and bell bottoms in all colours. It also sold nighties and veils and white gloves for Christian brides. I did not let my mother pause and look at any of these, constantly dragging her further with the liturgy- where are the book shops Amma , where are the book shops. When i spotted the first one , pulling my hand out of her protective grasp i ran towards it. No lover would have run that eagerly toward the beloved. My mother was not too perturbed , she knew i would freeze in front of the first shop with books piled high just drinking the scene in. As they say Mothers know you so well. So there i stood drawing deep breaths , inhaling the musty smell of old books , the smell of glue and printers ink.I didn't know anything about sniffing glue for a high but i sure felt ecstatic. I twirled and twirled in front of the shop in glee and shuffled from one foot to another calling to my mother to hurry .The first shop was not too big but it was heaped with old magazines, comics, text books and hundreds of fiction books. Classics and pulp did not keep respectful distance from each other but mingled freely. I was delighted .There was no sterile atmosphere of books neatly arranged in shelves like a prima donna - more like a natural beauty in disarray. While i pulled out a Nevil Shute from the pile ( i had just moved out of Agatha Christie) I stumbled upon an old copy of Kipling. While trying to move a medical text book out of the way i unearthed an outdated almost-mangled copy of Mayor of Casterbridge. It may have looked deplorably out of shape to some but to me it was precious.I absolutely loved Thomas Hardy.If i had not discovered that he died in 1928 i would pined away with unrequited love for him but i decided to console myself by reading and collecting every work of his.I knew passages from Far From the Madding Crowd ( of course it helped that it was my school text) but my passion went beyond the call of school duty. I had clandestinely read Coffee ,Tea or Me and Stone for Danny Fisher borrowing it from a friend who had a brother in college but i did not dare pick up any book of that genre with my mother around. Instead with the cherubic smile still plastered on my face i picked up couple of PG Wodehouse and the fat tome of Leon Uris Exodus. I had developed, thanks to my wonderful world history teacher, an insatiable desire to read as much as i could about the Third Reich and the Holocaust.The historical turmoils of nations in the early 20th century and the ensuing events fascinated me and the human tragedy that followed overwhelmed me. While i revelled like a little piglet in the mush , my mother was busy fingering rather lovingly a book titled Good Earth.Upon my asking her about it , my mother stood there and with tears moistening her eyes told me about the author and an incident from her biographical book Exile. I needed to read her i said and my Mother smiled and bought both the books for me.
My mother coaxed me to visit the other book shops as well. Some had explicit adult magazines discreetly tucked away, although i could partially see their cover .The shopkeeper hastily moved them out of sight and stood like a sentinel guarding the approach to that pile . A far cry from those disgusting devils who hock these outside schools these days. Mother and i moved from shop to shop and from her little purse my mother parted with more and more money as i picked more and more books. She did not refuse to buy me what i wanted although i must add she bargained and browbeat the shopkeeper till in sheer exasperation he gave in. She also appealed to their social conscience about making a child happy. Between a Mother's appeal and altruism the shopkeepers did not have a chance to overcharge.
I often went to Moore market alone while i lived in the hostel , sometimes to buy text books or reference books; more often though to treat myself. But till 1980 i never knew that Moore Market was linked with my Kismet. What i say now will be vouched by my closest friends as absolute truth for it is a story so fascinating that it deserves to be told.
The year was 1980 - I was studying law in Bangalore. My grandfather living with my uncle in Madras was seriously ill and wanted to see his favourite grandchild and so i came with my Mother to see him.He recovered and before returning to Bangalore i could not resist a trip to Moore market . I went alone, ostensibly to but law books but also to add to my collection. I bought several and books and also bought the text on international law by J.G. Starke that i really needed .I was very pleased because the book was second hand but it looked spanking new. It has a plastic dust jacket on it and did not have any thing marked or scribbled in it. I returned to Bangalore, studied from it , completed my law course and came back to Chennai to enrol as lawyer after a reluctant shot ( to fulfil my father's dream) at the Civil services.
In the first year of practice i joined the Master course in law at the University of Madras. Young lawyers tend to hang out together in the canteen and the juice shop and i had a few good friends to do that with.Among many one finds a special person who means a little more than others and that person came into my life in the second year of my legal practice. In the March that year he proposed to me and i accepted it after some serious thought ( although i must confess i did wait for him to do just that) even though i knew the heavens would fall on me .I had not told my parents yet putting it off till my second year Masters exams could be completed to avoid hysterical episodes at home . While i was studying for my last paper i discovered that the particular point i wanted to clarify was not in the book i was using and remembered reading it in the book by Starke which i had used for my bachelors degree. I took down the book from the shelf and shaking the dust off it , opened it . I felt a hundred thousand lightning bolts crash on me as i stared at the title page for across it was the signature of my fiance with the date 26.7.76! It was his book , used by him when he did his law which had through Moore market found me . i had bought the book in Moore Market in 1980 - six years before i had even met him!!There was a Karmic force bringing us together. For four years the book had waited for me in the shop . Its what movies are made of and we scoff but he and i were meant to be. He later told me he had leant it to a friend who never returned it to him but he did not know it had been sold. Serendipity : alive!!
When Moore market went up in flames in 1985 i lost more than a book market i lost the symbol of my romance.
Ulfat mein taj banne woh bhi tumhne yaad hoga
Ulfat mein taj gire woh bhi tumhne yaad hoga
(loosely tranlated : taj - being both the Taj and crown)
In love you will recollect Taj has risen
In love you will recollect crowns have fallen
My personal brickwork Taj - the Moore Market - turned to ashes that terrible day and i shed tears for my concrete Cupid.

Living Next Door to Ye Olde Spencers

I had just joined Ethiraj college for my Bachelor course in English Literature , when my father was transferred again. He was convinced that nowhere can you get better education than in Madras , so desperate hostel-hunting began. I went with my classmates who were in the Ethiraj College hostel to check it out but one look at the crowded rooms ( and as a junior I was expected to share the room with three more ) I hitched up my jeans and ran. Being an only child I was used to complete privacy and the thought of sharing space, scared the daylights out of me. Then some good soul informed me about Rani Meyyamai hostel - a new student's hostel opposite the college. When my father learnt that the Ethiraj Principal herself was a committee member of the hostel administration he saw no fault in my staying there . I didn't grumble too much either, for the room was to be shared with only one more and I was confident that I could grit my teeth and manage that. That is how is how I moved next door to The Spencers.
Spencers was a fascinating store dripping with old world charm. The exterior with spires and turrets dominated the arterial Mount Road. I had often passed the sprawling reddish building but had never entered it . Some day , I promised myself I would go in there. My mother got almost every thing she needed from the Army canteen and was not an avid shopper. When she needed to buy clothes and other kitchen stuff she preferred to nip down to Parry's Corner which was closer to Fort St George. Besides, she was brought up in the tradition of a prudent South Indian woman and despite the Army life stuck to be a being a housewife who had no time for fripperies. Department stores were not of much interest to mothers like her who had no fascination for anything besides the basics. I was ,however , as degenerate ( in her mind) as the youth of then and loved to ogle at things I could not afford or would not be allowed to buy. It was still those times when shopping of any kind was a family field trip and even if one could indicate ones preferences, the final decisions were parental prerogative .
My heart sang with joy - I was now free to do my own shopping.Drawing on all my inner reserve of bravado I headed for Spencers. As I walked from the hostel down Binny Road ( sorry folks, but despite renaming and trying to ram those new names down the throat, most people still use the old names)past the gleaming white Connemara Hotel I felt mighty important .
The first time I entered "The Spencer" I was intimidated by the huge store that seemed to stretch endlessly on either side of the entrance. It had long wood and glass counters behind which stood sales personnel at attention.There was hallowed silence and everyone spoke in hushed tones.I almost expected to be handed out detention for daring to enter the precincts! I was entering the sanctum sanctorum of the shopping world .
There I stood, a gawking teenager desperately clutching my money and the massive shelves glowered down at me down disdainfully. I always expected one of the shelves to lean forward and curl up its lips and shake a fist at me - like a "propah" gentleman chiding an urchin in some English club .The fact that I was dressed in (the then stylish and in retrospection : horrendous) bell bottom pants did not endear me to the shelves or those who managed them.
Spencers was a place to be seen shopping if you wanted to be counted among the elite of Madras. I often wondered what I was doing there. Later, I resolved that each time I went in I would not slink around as if I was trying to rob the place but walk in as a customer who had money to buy . Each visit emboldened me and it was not long before I would stride in nonchalantly as if I had been doing it all my life! Glory days - what fun it was to walk up and down the wooden floor and peer at things. I remember it as the first day of my addiction to shopaholicism!
The center of the aisle to the left was where I always headed first and there stood the pastry shelves laden with rich moist slices of cakes in delicate pinks and rich chocolate browns with topped with pretty roses and silver balls . They were not the kind you bought off some bakery around the corner - they were really oh la di da types . I would point to one or two of them ( depending how much I had managed to stretch my finances for the month) and the lady would pack them in a little box for me. I would then go to the counter to pay for it. The payment counter was very highbrow too and looked like a bank counter with someone like a teller sitting behind the wooden bars.
Actually there was another secret reason I visited Spencers. I was nicknamed Golliwog - not entirely due to my dark skin but also as I had absolutely frizzy hair that had a will of its own.Although I put oodles of oil and plaited it as tight as I could , it always managed to stand on its ends and was the bane of my life. Always wanting what was not, I yearned for smooth straight hair like others. This was much before people went to parlours and paid a bomb to perm their hair for the same effect! I chanced upon a magazine that seemed to offer the panacea - a conditioner called Estolan that would smoothen the frizz. Shampoos were as high as an average collegiate would go for hair grooming and exotic upmarket ( the term upmarket hadn't been invented yet, so the word was fashionable ) products as hair conditioners were unavailable except in Spencers . Falling for the promise of silky tresses I scrimped and saved for that magic jar which would smoothen my plait of rough coir into satin. I still have not figured out after all these years why my heart pounded and my knees buckled as I walked up the first time to the cosmetic counter and stammered the name of the magic potion. I bore it triumphantly back to the hostel with a Julian veni vidi vici smile! By the way, the jury is still out on whether it fulfilled the promise or not.
Christmas time Spencers caught on the festive mood, too. The cheer and the warmth of the Season crept into all that wood and they went from Humph! to Ho-Ho!!. There were discreet Christmas festoons, not the hit-you-in-the-face that you see in malls now . Little baubles of red and green, tiny wisps of delicate streamers, pretty little wreaths of holly were hung up. There were no blaring Christmas jingles on the loop till you ready to to dig someones eyeballs out after hearing the ditty fifty times before you leave. The counters in the patisserie were lined with moist rich plum cakes each of which had a miniature golden bell and holly stuck in them. Some were with royal icing and the words Merry Christmas in elegant cursive slant. They also had long red stuffed stockings for sale ( since no one offered to do so , I bought them for myself) which had among other goodies inside , delicious chocolates wrapped in silver and gold foil. Grown up on a diet of Enid Blyton in childhood and steeping myself in English classics in college , Spencers was an illustration of English lore come alive. When I graduated and left Madras I carried cherished memories not only of my hostel friends but also of Spencers. I felt the grief of the passing of a friend when I read the news in another city that Spencers had burned down, and as with friends of adolescent days ,(though many new ones may come into our lives later) the memory of the innocent love lingers on.

Living inside Fort St.George

When my father was transferred to Madras from Bombay, I threw every tantrum in my book of survival . I hated the thought of leaving my friends behind and when you are a teenager there is no life beyond friends. We lived in Churchgate in South Bombay which was great place to live compared to the rest of overcrowded Bombay and to me at that point of time of my adolescent life Bombay was a great place to live in anyway. So from bustling Bombay I was dragged unwillingly to Madras .
My father was allotted the government quarters inside Fort St. George which at that time was mostly administered by the Army. My father's office was also inside the Fort and the building on Body Guard Road was then only in blue print.We moved into one of those huge rambling old structures inside Fort St.George and to it me was like being confined to the dungeons. The mansion ( in the literal sense and not the Triplicane meaning of it) , for it was nothing less than that, had 18 rooms on the ground floor and 13 odd on the first floor . This was for the family of three.It had been the house in which was Robert Clive had lived while he was still a lowly clerk in East India Company and long before he became the Gov.Gen ( or so the story goes ).
From the ground floor rose a wide staircase of stone which had iron rings driven into its corners which were used to tie the horses .The drawing room was 80 ft long and proved to be a nightmare for my poor mother when she wanted to arrange the sofas and coffee tables in it.The dining room could seat forty people comfortably not that my mother ever intended throwing such a huge party at home. The other rooms had our meagre belongings . In the massive rooms our beds, tables and chairs looked like doll furniture. We did not use any rooms on the ground floor . I would often go there with my beat-up Hitachi transistor or a Thomas Hardy ( who I passionately developed a love for ) or assorted comics when I needed to hide from family and visiting relatives
I chose a room for myself at the back of the house . It had a long window which took up an entire wall and it was 12 ft high. After my bed , almirah and study table were put in there was so much of the room left over . I loved my bathroom - it was just a little smaller than my massive bedroom . My father woke me up at 5 each morning to study and I would just lock myself in the bathroom , spread a bed sheet on the floor at the other end and curl up and sleep for another half hour.
My room had a view of the spire of St Mary's Church through the foliage. The clock in the tower would strike every quarter and the bell would toll every hour. While living in Bombay we had a view of the Rajabai Tower from every room of the house and all our clocks had died and gone to clockwork heaven It was , therefore ,wonderful to have a personal time keeper . My life was divided into quarter hours from then on . For me somehow the quarter strikes meant a lot . It was like the God of Adolescents was reassuring me that life as I knew it was not going to end in misery.I would not be left friendless in the world.
After all the sulking came to nought I picked myself up and set about discovering the charms of the Fort. Soon I acknowledged to myself ( I would never let on to my parents though ) it was actually a fantastic place to live in.
The entire Fort fell silent after 5 in the evening when the government staff left after work and as security was not an issue then there was a lone policeman at the huge silver coloured gates. I would stand in the long balcony that stretched the entire length of the house and gaze out eastwards watching the blinking lights of the ships at sea and conjure up stories of sailors and sea adventures. Sometimes I would see huge mounds of yellow sulphur waiting to be shipped to someplace. I spent most of my time talking to myself as I had no one else to talk to . Seemed as normal a thing to do - just as some people sing to themselves.
I learnt to love the darkness and the silence. Bombay had been bright and glitzy and I had revelled in it then, but the magic of the old Fort soon pervaded my soul. I spent my vacations flipping through the register in St Mary's Church, sitting in the pews regarding the nave and reading the tombstones in the yard. I thought of myself as some reborn Romantic poet and just sat down to soak in the atmosphere . I wondered at the people who had left the comfort of their familiar life and travelled this far to a strange land to make it their temporary home and return to their shores again someday but had never returned .
It was so safe inside the Fort St George that my parents never objected to my wandering around in it and most of the people knew whose daughter I was .Hardly any families lived inside the Fort . There were the barracks for the soldiers and the other quarters were occupied by sundry labourers. There was a small post office from where I mailed the letters to Bombay and a small Army clinic where I went to see the Army Doctor when not too well. The Army canteen visit was a chore I had to do for my mother every month. Sometimes ,a soldier would stop to talk to me and discovering I spoke Hindi would be thrilled to hear me chatter- just to hear the familiar sounds of his mother tongue.
I often visited the Fort Museum to which very few people came and I walked around it pretending it was my private collection.Of course I missed my friends and I wrote them long letters running into 18 to 20 pages but I stopped missing Bombay. I fell in love with the history and romance surrounding me and sat up many , many nights hoping to see some apparitions. I would have settled happily for a bonnie ghostly child or a woman in white sweeping along if a headless rider would be difficult to come by . The doors and windows groaned and creaked at night and I felt they were recounting tales to each other and only wished I could understand them. My mother, however, failed to enjoy any of this and spent most of her time praying that she would be protected from them. .
I was inspired to scribble a lot of teenage poetry about silence and shamelessly copied the style of the English poets but it helped me express myself .We lived there for two years and I changed from a teenage Bombayite who loved big cities to a more mature Madrasite ( I hated being called a Madrasi even then ) capable of introspection. I often think of my early days in Madras .When I drive along Kamarajar Salai (then called Beach Road) I see the house I lived in and its long balcony and then some rude road hog leans on his horn and wakes me up to Chennai.

Those blinking lights

Whichever road you take in Chennai you cant miss them - the ubiquitous red lights on the roof of every make of car. I always was under the wrong impression that those lights were supposed to be for emergency and so only the police personnel , fire engines and the ambulance should have them. They really need to rush somewhere to protect the citizens of Chennai when they were needed,right? Wrong!! They may have started that way but more and more people needed to show they are way above the hoi polloi.They are used by almost every one now .
I still haven't figured out why the Governor , the Chief Minister or other Ministers need them - they have the outriders on motorcycles and police in jeeps preceding their cavalcade. Most have them have commando protection -so what does the red light add to their stature or security? What about the Judges and the Vice Chancellors and all other minions of the Grand State need them for ? Is the rush with those spinning lights for delivering speedy justice or putting the education system on the fast track. Obviously it does bestow some super natural power for even the ordinary man hankers to have one and a black market has been created for it.
There will soon come a day when one will be proud to have a bare roof. After all if every one wears a Crown then the one who goes bare headed must be King!

Recipes - why they dont work for me

I longingly finger glossy recipe books - ogle at those written in magazines , drool over the pictures and finally get up my courage to try one of them on a saturday afternoon. So i shop for all the stuff i need gather them on the kitchen counter and with total dedication get into it. After i marinate, grind, saute, stir and grill or bake the stuff i turn out is a far cry from what i thought it would turn out to be. For a long time i thought it was my fault which i strange coz am a decent cook turning out perfectly enjoyable meals and an occasional exotic dessert ,too. I mentioned this to my Mother one day and the Keeper of all Mysterious Knowledge aka Mother told me why they never work so i pass it on to you. She said " They always leave out a key ingredient : if it is mentioned in the list of required items then they never tell you when to put it in or they tell you when to put something in but leave it out of the list so you never know how much. Ha- i thought so that is the flaw! "and" she continued " it isthe same with crochet or knitting. I pass on the wisdom to you so either only go by your mother's aunt's or some other kind souls recipe that was told to you properly and when you want the stuff in glossies just order or go to a restaurant.

my chennai

l live in this city which is like most cities anywhere- government buildings that are monstrosities, civic authorities who don't care , congested roads that cannot support the population, battered women crying silently within their homes and covering their bruises with make up , abused children scared and guilty blaming themselves for whats going on, old abandoned people - squalor and squelch.
So why do i love this city ?I love it coz you can still see green trees stretching their limbs out, the elderly walking around with grand children coz their own children have not abandoned them , simple people who still shout their wares to make a living. I can see temples where people actually come to pray and not just coz its a heritage sight. It has some simple shops where the attendant knows what you like and shows it to you unlike the glossy malls where no one cares a damn. I don't want these things to disappear but i know they will.
Parents of children who proudly say their children are successful abroad will one day sadly go to the home for the elderly. More of the beloved beach will turn into graveyards to bury future generations of dead politicians. More statues of people no body remembers will be put up to insult their memory by covering them in crow droppings.The mute statues do not seem to mind but does someone not get worked up about this desecration.
We will be soon automatons wheeling trolleys of food in aisles nodding at known faces glaring at queue jumpers- hassled , harried and inhuman. The little shop at the end of your road from where Gopal delivers your onion and tomatoes will move away and you will find an air conditioned shop selling you vegetable dehydrated by the air conditioning . Recollect how you felt after a 12 hour flight - that's how they feel even if they are wiped and sprayed with a layer of moisture before the store opens.
I love Chennai for its a city desperately trying to hold on to simple things but this little mite cannot hold out too long and we will all too soon sing the dirge for the city we loved.over cups of decaf in some false ceilinged coffee shop we will moan the passing of the kapi in dubara tumbler.