Love Letters to Bombay: Behram Contractor’s Daily Column
This week in Daak:
1. Love Letters to Bombay: Behram Contractor’s Daily Column
2. Surround Yourself with Art
3. Daak Recommends
1. Love Letters to Bombay: Behram Contractor’s Daily Column
Who says that love affairs necessarily involve people? Sometimes, they involve spaces and places, the coordinates which give life meaning, purpose and most importantly, joy.
Behram "Busybee" Contractor (1931-2001), a full-time satirist and humourist, was famous for his commentary on Bombay and the country at large. His writing often betrayed his enduring, unconditional love for the place he called home; he famously said that he would not live in any other city even if he were paid five months’ salary in one go.
His widely read and loved column, Round and About, was born when Contractor was asked to write a daily 400-word humorous article for the last page of a newspaper, to balance the dreariness of the crime section. Out of this chance beginning, Contractor became Bombay’s best chronicler, writing every day for The Free Press Journal, The Times of India, and Mid-Day, before establishing his own newspaper, The Afternoon Dispatch and Courier in 1985.
Like any urban dweller, he enjoyed Bombay’s deserted streets at night, a respite from the frantic pace of daytime.
When I can't sleep in the nights…I walk the streets of Bombay. Like some pale ghost I walk up and down the familiar roads. It is my way of spending sleepless nights. I like the empty streets, the sleeping city, the sense of freedom it all gives me. For a while I feel that the city exists for me and me alone. The big hoardings announcing the best films of 1967 seem to be there for my eyes only; the taxis, drivers sprawled on the front seats, for my convenience alone.
While he sought comfort in the stupor of nighttime, he also appreciated the break of day, gently waking the dreamers and hustlers of the megapolis.
I am a very early riser, very early, and though I do not go for a morning walk, I spend some 15 minutes on the balcony watching the birth of a new day. These mornings, I see the city gently covered in a muslin mist. And that is the point. Some people tell me, it is not mist, it is smog. I do not agree. I know mist when I see it, particularly when I feel it. And this is mist, the January mist of Bombay that comes swimming across the sea and settles over the city.
For a city that is barely touched by the cold, Contractor nonetheless loved the winter rituals of Bombay.
In every corner of Bombay there is a winter scene. The millhands wrapped up against the cold waiting for the gates of the mills to open for the early shift, the queues at the milk booths, huddled against the cold, like a dog snuggling down, the bonfires of the night before, still glowing spreading the last of their warmth.
Most people from the north, used to harder winters, dismiss our brief season. It is not winter, they say, feeling the air. But they are only feeling the temperature. There are other things to a Bombay winter. The baskets of fresh strawberries in the markets and on the pavements of Warden Road, the winter fishes at Sassoon Dock, the scent of woodfires, the arrival of the winter birds...
One may accuse Contractor of romanticising a city which houses squalor and glamour in equal measure. However, despite its problems, for Contractor, Bombay was made up of the grit and spirit of its people – the artists and intellectuals alongside the labourers and street children.
On the occasion of Children's Day, I would like to say something about Mumbai's street children. They are not beggars. They do not come to your car window, snivelling with their problems and begging for money to buy themselves a loaf of bread. They earn their living by doing little services. Wiping the windshield, selling flowers, guiding a car into a parking slot, looking after the vehicle. They are not thieves. They may con you for a little money, but they don't cheat and rob and pick pockets and grab your briefcase and run away. Their pride is their honesty and an ability to make a living without thieving.
I have seen them, I have watched them carefully for years and years when I was living at Churchgate…it did not matter to them where they came from, what religion and caste they were. The older ones looked after the younger ones, they shared their food, their smokes, their small earnings. When one of them was caught by the police, they ganged around the policeman and got him freed. They kept dogs, gave their little hearts to them, and the dogs reciprocated. They fed the dogs, kept water for them in empty tins, bought collars or garlands and put them round their necks, gave them names, mainly Moti.
If this is not love, what is — to doggedly look for beauty in the most broken places, to defend an imperfect thing against the judgment of the world, and to call it home.
2. Surround Yourself with Art
If you’re looking to add a pop of colour and inspiration to your home, check out our collection of gorgeous art prints with the woodblock paintings of Japanese traveller and artist, Hiroshi Yoshida.
3. Daak Recommends
If you also love Bombay, you are not alone! Read Kamala Das’ poem, “Farewell to Bombay” and see SH Raza’s paintings of the city.
Read some heartfelt tributes to Behram Contractor by his wife, Farzana Contractor, and friends, Dom Moraes, Vinod Mehta and Salil Tripathi.