  When one thinks of a museum in Mumbai, one tends to think only of the Chatrapati Shivaji vastu sangrahalaya - or the Prince of Wales museum, as it was formerly known. It is a very nice museum - lovely convenient location, extensive collection, lovely building and all that. But there is one museum in Mumbai which is far older - The Dr Bhau Daji Lad museum at Byculla! It was first conceived as ‘The Central Museum of Natural History, Economy, Geology, Industry and Arts’ and was the first museum in Bombay - way back in 1855!  George Buist - the editor of the Bombay Times (ancestor of ‘The Times of India’) - and 'The foremost man of letters in India' - took a keen interest in setting up this place. Buist was a very interesting fellow - the son of a rich and rather cantankerous Scottish minister (the priest kind - not the political one) - he was a man of wide learning and wide interests. He was one of the open-minded clergy of the era - trained to be in the ecclesial field, but more interested in science and botany (then called Natural Philosophy) than in preaching. He started as a newspaperman in Scotland and London and then accepted a post in 1839 to come to India and edit the Bombay Times. Imagine! Moving to India in 1839 to edit a bi-weekly newspaper! He remained the editor for 20 years till 1859 - when he resigned due to differences with the shareholders. But Buist was more than just a newspaper editor - he was a scientific man. He was a keen geologist and meteorologist - and became the unpaid inspector of the observatories of Bombay. During his time in England in 1845 he obtained special grants from the government for improving agricultural machines and rural economy in India, and for establishing 12 observatories, from Cape Comorin to the Red Sea, for meteorological and tidal research. He also formed the geological collection for the museum of Elphinstone College, Bombay. But 1857 as we all know - was a watershed year in India, being the year of the Great Sepoy Mutiny, or the First War of Independence, as we call it now. North India burnt and the Company sarkar tottered - but Mumbai and West India were largely peaceful. Buist was ousted from his post as editor because the Indian shareholders of the Bombay Times thought that he was too pro-British and not taking them to task over their brutal reprisal and revenge on Indians - and the East India company was nationalised and the Crown took over the country and India formally came under the British Raj.  This affected the museum as well - it was closed to the public and the collection was shifted to the Town Hall. But luckily for it, the eminent and learned Sir George Birdwood - the noted Indiophile and nature lover - was appointed curator of the collection and he drummed up support to create a new home for the collection.     A committee was formed of the who’s who of eminent Indian businessmen and philanthropists was formed - Dr. Bhau Daji Lad, Sir Jamshetjee Jeejeebhoy, David Sassoon and Jaganath Shunkerseth. They raised money for a new building for the museum and land was allotted in the precincts of the Victoria Zoo and Botanical gardens in Byculla - and the elegant building was built and inaugurated in 1872 as the Victoria and Albert museum. But in just a few years, this museum was deemed to be too small and a grand new museum was opened in central Fort area in 1905 - The Prince of Wales Museum - and this overshadowed the old museum entirely...so much so that people forgot that the older museum even existed! After Independence, people wanted to expunge all memories of the British and there was a wholesale renaming of all British names. The Prince of Wales museum became the ‘Chattrapathi Shivaji museum’ after the great Maratha ruler, and the Zoo and botanical garden were named after his mom ‘Jijamata udyan’. The Victoria and Albert museum was named after the first Indian founder of the museum - Dr Bhau Daji Lad.  Dr Bhau Daji Lad was a very remarkable personality - he was a doctor .. a physician, a sanskrit scholar and antiquary. He was born in Goa, but moved to Bombay ...because he was good at chess! An englishman noted his brilliance at chess, and told his dad that he should give the kid a good education. Well… the best education institutions were in Bombay - so the kid was sent to Bombay and was admitted in the Elphinstone institution. He did very well at school, and went on to take his medical degree at Grant Medical college - he was part of the very first graduating batch of GMC in 1850. (think of the context here - it would have been extremely unusual for a ‘native’ to be allowed to learn medicine in 1850! Remember, the whole mutiny happened because the British were racist and disgusting. He must have been really outstanding) He started practising as a doctor and was very successful. He mixed the learnings from traditional Indian medicine and modern western medicine and was a pioneer in using ancient methods for modern treatments. As a guy who came up from nothing just due to education - he was a great votary of getting people educated, and was a founding member of the University of Bombay. He was the first president of native origin, of the Students' Literary and Scientific Society. He was the champion of the cause of female education. A girls' school was founded in his name, for which an endowment was provided by his friends and admirers. He was twice chosen Sheriff of Mumbai, once in 1869 and again in 1871! (Again! Think of the context! A ‘native’ - not bue-blooded, not a rich plutocrat - being given such a respected post) He was an ardent historian as well - he amassed a large collection of rare ancient Indian coins and antiquities, which he studied - deciphering inscriptions and ascertaining the dates and history of ancient Sanskrit authors and stuff - and as we have already learnt - was the founding member of the first museum of Bombay. One can assume that the other luminaries - Sassoon, Jeejeebhoy and Shankarsett - provided the money, while Dr Lad and Dr Birdwood provided the intellectual underpinning.  Unfortunately, it was totally neglected after independence, and apart from changing the name - the museum was totally ignored and became quite a mess. Indian politicians and municipal leaders were more interested in lining their pockets and looting the country blind rather than maintaining the venerable little museum. But luckily for all of us, a bunch of public-spirited individuals came together to save the institution and convinced the government to adopt a public-private model to save the place! In 2003, the non-profit Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH) joined forces with the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai to undertake a painstaking refurbishment of the building, aided by historian and donor Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. The results were spectacular. In 2008, the building reopened with its High Victorian architecture fully restored, and the collection (which pays special attention to the history of the city of Mumbai), back on display amid high vaulted mosaic ceilings, intricate Minton tiled floors, etched glass and gold details, and freshly painted Corinthian columns.   The part I really loved was the painstaking dioramas which show the various scenes of day to day life in Bombay - and a very detailed gallery of the various communities which made up Bombay - and India, for that matter. These colourful portrayals of people were created by a clay modeller who was specially brought from Lucknow to work at the museum and was assisted by students of the JJ School of arts. The figurines were created as a way of scientifically documenting the identities of the people of India and their way of life during the early 20th century - and the then curator Ernest R Fern (1918 - 1926) noted that these clay figures were an immediate success and were very popular with the visitors. These have been painstaking restored and look awesome! Especially today - when all of india is becoming an amorphous mass of similarity and losing all the charming detail and uniqueness it used to have - I felt that this is very important for us modern day Indians to realise what our people used to look like and dress like. I really loved them! Now it is a most charming little space - and they are planning to expand and do more things in the future. It has lovely little art gallery, a little theatre, a cafeteria and a charming garden - which is the home of the original ‘Kala Ghoda’ - an equestrian statue of King George in black stone and the original ancient elephant statues of Gharapuri island which gave ‘Elephanta caves’ its name.   Both the major museums of Mumbai - CSVS and DBDL - have benefited through public-private partnerships, and I sincerely hope that things get better and better.
Check out the website - https://www.bdlmuseum.org And check out the story of the rebirth of the museum https://www.apollo-magazine.com/mumbais-oldest-museum-looks-to-the-future/ PS - I really wish they would sell copies of those figurines, or even a cool poster. 
May 1st is celebrated for many reasons… it is internationally famous as ‘International Labour day’ to commemorate various movements all over the world for worker’s rights. It is also ‘May Day’ - officially the ‘first day of summer’ for western countries since antiquity. It used to be celebrated as ‘Floralia’ by the ancient Greeks where they used to celebrate the goddess of love - Aphrodite and the god of wine - Dionysus - and I assume the festival involved a lot of drinking and lovemaking. Nowadays they have Mayday parades and dancing around Maypoles and May queens.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson even wrote a poem about it - ‘The May queen’ - ‘You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear; To-morrow ’ill be the happiest time of all the glad New-year; Of all the glad New-year, mother, the maddest merriest day, For I’m to be Queen o’ the May, mother, I’m to be Queen o’ the May.’ 
In India, we are already well into the hot summer by May, and our version of Floralia - Holi - is already over. We no longer celebrate wine or lovemaking - both are rather frowned upon officially! You need a license for one, and closed doors for the other.
But in Maharashtra we do have another reason to celebrate the 1st of May - It is celebrated as ‘Maharashtra day’ - the day that the states of Maharashtra and Gujarat were carved out from the erstwhile Bombay state. 
When the British came and conquered the entire land of India, they drew a new map over the bewildering patchwork of kingdoms and principalities of old and divided India into ‘Presidencies’ ruled over by a ‘Governor’ - all of whom reported to the boss of India - the ‘Governor-General’
The Western part of India was called the ‘Bombay presidency’ and encompassed parts of what is now Maharashtra, Gujarat, Sind (now in Pakistan) and even the Arabian lands of Aden and Socotra. 
Bombay Presidency
It was a fairly peaceful area - The Maratha empire was conquered and the area was largely quiet even during the 1857 Mutiny/ War of Independence.
The moneybags, merchants and others were already making huge money from the illegal Opium smuggling into China before the Mutiny - which had been officially arranged and organised by the East India Company - and after the Mutiny, the American civil war (1861 - 1865) gave rise to the Indian cotton boom as American cotton was no longer available, and huge fortunes were made by all the entities involved in the cotton trade - private merchants and government alike. A lot of money was pumped into building docks and facilities, building trains and laying track, building factories - and fancy buildings and huge impressive edifices. All kinds of people streamed into Bombay looking for work and education and the city grew rich and powerful. Bombay gained hugely in prominence due to the roaring trade and industry and became the ‘Urbs Prima Indis’ - the ‘Prime city of India’. Later the state of Sindh was hived off to become another state - and later, part of another country! 
Bombay State - British era
After Independence, the ‘Bombay Presidency’ was converted to ‘Bombay state’ - and the various kingdoms in the area - Baroda, Kolhapur, Dangs and numerous small states of Gujarat and Maharashtra - were merged into it. (Check out the book ‘The integration of Indian states’ by V P Menon for the fascinating story of how the old princely states were absorbed into the Union of India)
Bombay state - India
Later in 1956, there was a bit of reorganising due to the States reorganisation act, where the old states were redistributed on linguistic lines. Pandit Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel were not happy with the idea, and predicted that this will threaten the unity of the country and may even result in the Balkanisation of India (and were proven right too, to an extent) but the idea kept going - and one committed Telugu dude called Potti Sriramulu actually fasted to death for the cause of the creation of a separate state for the Telugu speaking people - Andhra Pradesh.
This sparked off a lot of unrest in the country and in 1956, the SRC (States Re-organisation Committee) recommended the creation of linguistic states of Andhra Pradesh (for Telugu speakers), Kerala (for Malayalam speakers) and Karnataka (for Kannada speakers) but recommended a bi-lingual state (speakers of Marathi and Gujarati) for Maharashtra-Gujarat, with Bombay as its capital but keep the state of Vidarbha (also Marathi speakers) outside Maharashtra.
This was greeted with a lot of protest in Bombay state - and this escalated to frenzied rioting! On 21 November 1955, demonstrators were fired upon by the police at Flora Fountain in the capital city of Bombay. Flora Fountain was subsequently renamed Hutatma Chowk or "Martyr's Crossroad" in their memory. It is estimated that in a total of 106 people were shot by security forces during the period of agitation and at different places. So ironic. Independent India shooting its own citizens. Morarji Desai, who was the then chief minister of Bombay State was later removed and replaced by Yashwantrao Chavan as a result of criticism related to the 21 November incident. The then Union Finance Minister - C D Deshmukh - resigned his post rather than continue with the Central government, as they did not support the cause of a separate state for Marathi speaking people. Finally, after a long and bloody campaign, the Kannada speaking districts of Belgaum, Dharwar, Bijapur and North Canara were shifted out into the neighbouring ‘Mysore state’ and the Marathi speaking districts of Marathwada and Vidarbha - formerly parts of Hyderabad state and Central provinces - were taken into Bombay state, as were the Gujarati speaking states of Saurashtra and Kutch. Thus the new Bombay state was known as the ‘Maha Dwibhashi rajya’ or ‘Great state with two languages’. But even the hiving off of the Kannada speakers was not enough for people - they wanted a ‘Marathi only’ state - and launched a campaign called the ‘Samyukta Maharashtra movement’ for the same. The Samiti demanded the creation of a new state from Marathi-speaking areas of the State of Bombay, a Marathi state, with the city of Bombay as its capital. The Gujjus can get lost! Finally, the Samiti achieved its goal and ‘Bombay state’ was split into the linguistic states of Gujarat and Maharashtra on 1st May 1960. Now even the name ‘Bombay’ has been removed from India and the city of ‘Bombay’ has been renamed as ‘Mumbai’ - so one can say that ‘Bombay state’ is gone forever. 
Bombay state after State reorganisation
Maharashtra state
While looking at this history of the ‘Maharashtra for Marathi-speaking people’ movement, it is interesting to study the story behind it.
At no time in the history of India, all the regions which now constitute the State of Maharashtra were politically one. They were ruled for centuries by different dynasties till Shivaji succeeded in carving out an independent kingdom for the Marathas in 1674. Even at that time, Shivaji’s father Shahaji was based in what is now Karnataka, and his half-brother Ekoji and family continued to stay there after Shahaji’s death. The Maratha empire extended well into South India - and when Aurangzeb attacked - Shivaji’s younger son Rajaram went to what is now Tamil Nadu, and holed up in the fortress of Gingee for years. Later, in the heyday of the Maratha empire. the Peshwas wielded considerable influence in the politics of North India. Marathi leaders ruled far-flung states such as in Gujarat (Gaekwads of Baroda), MP (Holkars of Indore, Bhosles of Berar, Scindias of Gwalior), UP (the famous ‘Rani of Jhansi’ Laxmibai was a Marathi lady) and many others - so why shouldn’t all these places also be part of ‘Marathi Maharashtra’? A fascinating thought. But of course, there are ‘n’ number of stresses and strains and political factors and self-interests that go into this kind of decision. Check out this article for more information and opinions on this. 
Extent of Maratha empire
Since those days we have had many more separations of states - The first linguistically separated state - Andhra Pradesh - itself got further separated on tribalistic grounds into Telangana and Andhra Pradesh! Wonder what Potti Sriramulu would have thought about that!
Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar got split into two (resulting in the new states of Uttarakhand, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand) on administrative grounds, in spite of having the same language… so one can easily see that politicians will always find some-or-the-other chauvinism to further separatist agendas. There are long-simmering demands for carving out states of Bundelkhand from MP, Gorkha land from West Bengal etc. There will always be some historical case for carving more and more - where will all this lead to? 
Anyway - all this is beyond the scope of this little article - which was supposed to be just about me going to attend the Maharashtra day parade for the first time - on cycle!
So - it’s a birthday party for Maharashtra state! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, M! The day starts with a parade at Shivaji Park, Dadar. The Governor of the state along with the state reserve police, home guards, Mumbai Police, BMC Force, traffic police, among others take part in the parade. (The guv doesn’t march btw - he makes a speech and salutes the marchers) Liquor sales to Indians are prohibited on Maharashtra Diwas across the state. (Why? I never understood this Indian passion to have ‘Dry days’ for every occasion. What is the point? Wouldn’t you like to have a party to celebrate a great day? Pop Champagne? Have a beer and barbecue? Be happy? If the idea is to deter a habitual drinker from getting drunk on that day - then won’t it be self-defeating...as the habitue would stock up on the eve of a dry day? It’s a most strange concept.) 
Anyway - coming back to the parade.. Delhi has the Republic Day parade, and we have the Maharashtra day parade - which I was going to see for the very first time! I cycled my way over to Shivaji park and locked the bike to a convenient post and went off to find the entrance to the viewing area.
The Maharashtra government does not really promote the parade as an event to attract viewers - more’s the pity - and there were minimal facilities for viewers, and there were pretty few viewers as well - a contrast to the teeming crowds for the R-Day parade in Delhi. We were pretty far from the bigwigs and could hardly make them out. The governor made a speech - but I couldn’t hear that clearly. And there wasn’t a clear field of view for us to see the parade while seated - the wall of bamboos impeded vision - as you can see from the photos. But the parade itself was quite nice. It was obviously not up to military standards, but the cops tried their best. They had a fancy band, a number of groups in various uniforms, sexes and battle gear. Apart from the cops, there were marching groups from various other groups like Home Guards, National Cadet Corps, National Social Service scheme - and even the Fire Brigade! 
The grand finale was the drive-around by various vehicles - the cops showed off their motorcycles, their patrol cars and paddy wagons and even their fancy armoured cars with big guns which looked like they would be better on the border than in a city!
But for sheer coolness, nothing could beat the fancy red fire-wagons and the long ladders of the Fire Brigade! 
I was very happy as I stepped out of the park - I had seen the M-Day parade! WOOHOO! Hopefully they will make it more spectator and citizen-friendly in the future.
I got on my bike and cycled home. Another Sunday well spent. PS - For me, the most important thing about May 1st was that it was my mom's birthday :) Trumped May day, Maharashtra day and any other day! Happy birthday mom! Miss you.  Nipposan Myohoji Japanese Buddhist temple Mumbai is full of small wonders, and the only thing that stops us - well...stopped me...from stopping to check them out is that we are busily going from one place to another and have no time to stop and explore them. One such thing for me was the enigmatic temple with a very Japanese name - I had seen it a zillion times while travelling on that road, but had never stopped to actually check it out. But now I said that I will make a point of it - and cycled there to check it out. The Nipposan Myohoji Japanese Buddhist temple turned out to be a little wonderland! An oasis of peace in busy Mumbai.     The Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Temple started out as a Japanese Buddhist monastery and dates back to 1931 when it was built by a Japanese monk, Nichidatsu Fujii, who was visiting India trying to follow the prophecy of the 13th century Japanese monk Maha Bodhisattva Nicherin. Nicherin believed that the ultimate salvation of humanity, who was contaminated by all that was evil, lay in India. That bit of history really intrigued me… a Bodhisatava who believed that India will be the source of salvation - back in the 13th century! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichiren  The story of the monk who came to India 600 years after the said prophecy is equally fascinating!  Nichidatsu Fuji was the founder of the Nipposan Myohoji order of Buddhism, which is deeply engaged in promoting world peace. Born August 6, 1885 in Aso, Kyushu Island, Japan, he became a Buddhist monk at age 19 in opposition to the tendencies of the time, which strongly encouraged a military career. As a pacifist, he was deeply impressed by the thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi. ‘I was astounded to see pictures of Gandhiji on the Salt March or spinning yarn. I felt I was witnessing something incredible unfold: at this time of modern scientific civilizations, a genuine revolutionary movement that does not rely on science or machines, which is, in fact, completely contrary to them, had been launched. Can such a movement overcome the solidly fortified institution of the modern state and create a different world, a world of nonviolence? Even if it does not succeed, I thought it to be a fine plan, with extraordinary insight. Spinning yarn or salt making are things even a disciple of the Buddha like myself can be part of and make a contribution. I decided to immediately leave for India to pray for the success of Gandhiji's revolutionary movement.’ He arrived in Calcutta in January 1931 and walked throughout the town chanting the daimoku and beating a drum, a practice known as gyakku shōdai. In 1933 he met Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram in Wardha. ‘My first opportunity to meet Gandhiji came on October 4, 1933 at the ashram in Warda. Our meeting lasted only 15 minutes, and there was hardly any time to speak on matters of substance. We met the following day and the day after that, but unfortunately I could neither speak English nor Hindi. I therefore submitted an English translation of my views to Gandhiji. This is how it came to pass that I found residence in the Wardha ashram.’ Gandhiji was so impressed by the concept of the gyakku shodai that he added it to their prayer routine.  He went back to Japan during WWII and despite the dangers to himself he declared himself in favour of pacifism and went round Japan actively promoting it. This was actively dangerous, as the government was completely hawkish and anyone resisting the war could be immediately imprisoned! He later recollected: “The Pacific war raged ever more brutally. I could no longer...keep silent about the war, in which people were killing one another. Thus I travelled through the whole of Japan and preached resistance against the war and [advocated] the prayer for peace. It was a time in which any person who only spoke about resistance to the war, would go to prison because of that alone” After the war, he became a very active campaigner for world peace - another dangerous activity during the intolerant atmosphere of the Cold War. “The reason I came to espouse nonviolent resistance and the antiwar, antiarms position was not because I met with Mr. Gandhi. Rather, it was because the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent women and children, burning and poisoning [the population], a tragedy without precedent in human history, leading Japan to sue for unconditional surrender. In this we see the mad, stupid, barbaric nature of modern warfare.”  At the end of World War II. Fujii returned to India and built a World Peace Pagoda in Rajgir, in 1965. He also built a Japanese style temple in Rajgir which is still inhabited today.  The Most Venerable Nichidatsu Fujii [1885-1985] was awarded the Nehru Award for International Understanding from India in 1979. Read this amazing statement by him here.  Nichidatsu Fujii recieving the award from the then PM Morarji Desai  In 1956, the same monastery was renovated into the present-day temple by the Birla family, whose trust maintains the temple to date. That is amazing too. This was Jugal Kishore Birla, the brother of GD Birla - Mahatma Gandhi’s close friend and devotee. The Birlas do a lot of quiet philanthropy - something that seems to differentiate the old guard from the new tycoons. I have never heard of the Ambanis doing any philanthropy! Even when they open schools and hospitals, they seem to be extremely overpriced premium stuff with a profit motive. (To be fair - if are doing quiet philanthropy, then obviously I wouldnt have heard of it! I do hope they are! )  The temple follows the order of Nicherin Buddhism and the main prayer of this school is ‘Na Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo’, a chant for peace. The resident monk, Bhikshu Morita, has been in India for over 30 years and has become something of a local legend after he fearlessly walked through streets during the bloody communal riots in 1992, beating his drum and loudly chanting ‘Na Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo’ as a call for peace. The chant, he says, is the key to total salvation. It’s not what you should understand but what you should adopt.’ Wow- That is another amazing story! Check out another story on this here And another one here "We must go out among the people." Fujii taught. "In the Sutra there is a line that states, 'So this man, practising in the world, shall disperse the gloom of living.' Religion, which does not 'go' will not be able to provide the relief which must be brought about." The prayers of the Daimoku are to disperse this gloom. "Religion becomes isolated from the happenings of the world because it tends to be occupied in seeking solutions to one's own spiritual matters. If we fail to prevent a holocaust, one's desire for security is nothing but a dream. All must be awakened."  Unfortunately for me, Bhikshu Morita was not around when I dropped in - or if he was, he was smart enough to keep his distance from a sweaty fat cyclist in tight clothes. I was so happy to have dropped in on this peaceful Japanese temple - Aum Mani Padme Hum! May their tribe increase. Every place is full of stories and wonders - we just need to seek them out!  
(This is an old ride - pre Corona :) )
Another Sunday, another day of exploring Mumbai by cycle. I was totally into this project - combining physical exercise with the zen of cycling and exploring the city. Inspite of having lived in Mumbai all my life, and having seen it a zillion times - I had never actually been to Haji Ali dargah - one of the icons of Mumbai. So today was the day - I left early morning to tick that off my list. I set out from Chembur and made my way first to Worli sea face - it was a really fun experience to ride the empty Mumbai roads and go up and down a number of flyovers to reach Worli and it is always fun to cycle on the sea face. The place is so full of positive vibes in the early morning - filled with walkers, joggers, cyclists and exercises of every description. The BMC (or whoever) has done a great job of putting up a number of interesting things out there - statues of R K Laxman’s ‘Common man’, benches... 
...and exercise stations! These exercise stations are the brainchild of - and are sponsored by - actor Dino Morea, and were first introduced in 2013. Dino put these up for the good of common citizens and to help them in their fitness goals. Good on you mate!
From Worli I made my way to Haji Ali and locked my bike in front of the famous ‘Haji Ali juice centre’ and walked to the dargah. Finally! I was at Haji Ali! Alhamdulillah!
The dargah has a very intriguing story… It is the mausoleum of a pious merchant from Uzbekistan! Pir Haji Ali Shah Bukhari was a Sufi saint and a wealthy merchant from Bukhara - in Uzbekistan.Bukhari gave up all his worldly possessions, made a pilgrimage to Mecca, travelled around the world in the early to mid 15th century, and eventually settled in present-day Mumbai.
Wikipedia tells some random story about a woman spilling oil and he making it gush out of the earth for her and so on - but the most interesting outcome to me was that a wealthy merchant turned mendicant would travel from Bukhara to settle in Mumbai...in the 15th century! He being a Sufi, apparently asked his followers not to bury him and make a fetish out of him - but to just chuck his body into the sea. But apparently his body - or his shroud - ended up on a rock off the coast...and of course his followers did just what he probably did not want them to do - and made a fetish out of it. They built a memorial on that rocky promontory - and in due course of time, pious merit-seeking people built a fancy dargah and mosque out there. 
It is about 500m from the coast, and they have built a little walkway to the place. It doesn't have railings and stuff and is covered by water during high tide - so you can visit only during low tide.
The walkway is normally chockful of beggars and pilgrims - but this being early morning was deserted and pleasant. 
The structure itself is built in the Indo-Saracenic style - marble domes and stuff. The tomb itself is covered by the usual green shawl, and is supported by an exquisite silver frame, supported by marble pillars - something that the ascetic Sufi saint might be bemused about!
It was very pleasant there in the early morning and one could get awesome views of the Mahalaxmi and Tardeo areas. 
After I exited Haji Ali - my eye caught another structure - a blue dome on the other side of the bay. I had wondered for years as to what it was - so I made my way there to investigate.
It turned out to be another mausoleum! It was erected in the memory of a lady saint - Saint Ma Hajiani, who may have been the sister of Pir Haji Ali.
The tomb was built in 1908 by- Haji Ismail Hasham, ‘a wealthy ship-owner and pioneer of Indian shipping.’ He founded the 'Bombay Steam Navigation company' in the 19th century and was one of the pioneering Indians of modern shipping.
(That sounds so exciting! I would love to read more about him and his life as a pioneer of Indian shipping) He himself died soon after - in 1912 - and was buried in that tomb he had built himself! Most Egyptian and pharaonic, I must say. His epitaph says ‘In memory of Amir-bahr Haji (I think it means rich sea-man who did the Hajj) Ismail Hasham Bahadur, A great captain and navigator of the Indian seas who died on 20th September 1912, and was buried in this tomb erected by himself. May he rest in peace.’ Well - good for him. May he rest in peace! 
This dargah is also made in the Indo-Saracenic style, which was all the rage at the time - and sits on a rocky outcrop 80 feet above the sea. It is in good condition because it is maintained by the family trust - which also owns institutions like the Ismail Yusuf College in Jogeshwari and the Marine college at Worli (Which has since moved to Nhava). Well - that was fascinating! I had no idea! What a discovery! (The place has apparently been through a major restoration since I visited it - check out the details here - https://www.livehistoryindia.com/snapshort-histories/2019/05/07/reclaiming-the-lost-glory-of-ma-hajiani )  I was doing a project of exploring Mumbai - it had started by me starting cycling! I started cycling as a new project for the year - it started by being a fitness thing, but I got bored of going around in circles and started going further and further and exploring and discovering unknown parts of Mumbai (well...unknown to me at least) on cycle. By this time I had gone and explored various ancient forts of Mumbai - Sion, Sewri, Mahim, Worli, Bandra, Dharavi - by cycle. (You can check out the blogs by clicking on the links) After doing this, the exploration bug kicked in a little more, and I started exploring even without a cycle. While going over the lists of tourist attractions in Mumbai - I saw that one of the main attractions was Mani Bhavan - Mahatma Gandhi's memorial in Mumbai. It was on the lists of all the Mumbai tour operators trips - and every firang visitor to the city seems to have seen it ... but I had never done so. It had never been in my mindspace at all - I had not known of it, not wanted to see it. Well - this is 'diya tale andhera' stuff, and so I decided to check it out. My friend Vijay claimed to know it well - as it was just behind his college - the Wilson college, Marine drive - and so we agreed to check it out together. I took an Uber and reached the place - and there was no sign of Vijay! He was late as usual. The building was in a fancy neighborhood - Laburnum road, just off Marine drive. I thought rather cynically that Gandhi seemed to have chosen to live with this rich seth in a fancy location, rather than in a poor and humble place. As per the Wikipedia entry - 'Mani Bhavan was Gandhi's Mumbai headquarters for about 17 years, from 1917 to 1934. The mansion belonged to Revashankar Jagjeevan Jhaveri, Gandhi's friend and host in Mumbai during this period. It was from Mani Bhavan that Gandhi initiated the Non-Cooperation, Satyagraha, Swadeshi, Khadi and Khilafat Movements. Gandhi's association with the charkha began in 1917, while he was staying at Mani Bhavan. Mani Bhavan is also closely associated with Gandhi's involvement in the Home Rule Movement, as well as his decision to abstain from drinking cow's milk in order to protest the cruel and inhuman practice of phookan meted out to milch cattle common during that period.' In 1955, the building was taken over by the Gandhi Smarak Nidhi in order to maintain it as a memorial to Gandhi - and I wonder if they paid the family anything for this prime piece of real estate? It would be worth many hundreds of crores today! I wonder what the family of Jhaveri seth feel about it now :)   I hung around outside Mani Bhavan waiting for Vijay - and was stunned at the amount of tourist traffic the place seemed to have. Every minute a little tourist taxi would zoom up, a guide would hop out with his clients and give them some info about the place and they would be in and out within five minutes and off to the next tick mark on the itinerary. My heart went out to the tourists - the guides were untrained and unqualified and obviously knew nothing about the place, about Gandhi, about Indian history or the freedom struggle. He would have mugged up something and duly replayed it to every client and just made up stuff when asked questions. Poor tourists. I finally gave up on Vijay and went inside alone. The place is rather depressing - being ill-maintained and utterly out of date. It doesn't seem to have been touched since 1955 and is a dead mausoleum. The first thing you see is a big Gandhi bust, and there is a library full of his writings. Imagine that - he wrote so much! And like all Indian libraries - the shelves are locked tight and are dust covered! The books are things to be worshipped from afar and not to touched or read! Go up the stair case - and you have his old room with a charkha and some knick-knacks of his. And a few cool dioramas - small scale models with little human figures and little houses and painted backdrops - depicting his life. But this too doesnt seem to have been touched or restored since 1955. There are some cool framed photos - Gandhi with his brother, him as a young man etc and some frames showing evolution of Indian flag etc.    But overall, it is rather sad and depressing - showing the utter disinterest successive governments - Congress and non-Congress - have had in Gandhi's message and philosophy. Which is a great pity. All they do is pay lip service and make everybody put a flower basket in front of Raj ghat. in 2010, Barack Obama became the first high-profile international visitor to visit Mani Bhava in the last 50 years. Before him, only Martin Luther King Jr. had visited Mani Bhavan in the 1950s. I think Rajkumar Hirani's movie 'Lage raho Munnabhai' was the finest modern-day tribute to Gandhi and his philosophy and reintroduced millions to Gandhi - and it would be great if some modern museum curator takes this place under their wings and reinvents it. Old and forgotten museums like the Bhau Daji Lad museum have been resurrected by modern curators, and hopefully a similar thing can happen here. It should bring out the ramifications of Indian history and Indian culture - British rule - the good and bad, why Indians fought for independence, the story of the freedom struggle, the uniqueness of Gandhi's approach and how it made a difference and why exactly Einstein said that 'future generations will not believe that such a dude ever walked this earth.' The Apartheid museum in South Africa is so powerful that it makes your flesh creep - and Gandhi section there is better than all Gandhi museums here. Maybe someday we can do a better job of presenting our own history. Till that happens, Gandhi will just be a face on a currency note - a legacy which MKG might not be very happy about. I was looking through old boxes of photo albums, looking for photos of long ago trips to put in the photo galleries of my book 'One Man Gets The Sack' when I found this awesome comic strip I had created when I was 13 years old.           I even attempted a second issue in book 2! And the artwork style was influenced by the new style being pioneered by Marvel at the time - of breaking through the little box panels and having splash panels all over the page. And I added a new character too...named after my brother!     Here's where I broke free of the grid and experimented with splash panels     It seems that the pressures of being writer, illustrator and colorist got to me then... the plot was clearly going downhill! Creative juices seem to have dried up at that point... Alas...I abandoned comic creation after this. A pity ... but I did continue to dabble in drawing in that notebook.  I seem to have been experimenting with political cartoons! This seems to be about the Hindu Muslim unrest faced by the Narasimha Rao government - the cartoon was called 'Mr Rao's dilemma' - so I assume the figure on the right was supposed to be PV Narasimha Rao...  Face cheeks and butt cheeks both got a beating here...  then some faces ... maybe this was supposed to be Murli Manohar Joshi?  This was probably supposed to be V P Singh  I never did enter the art field... or become any kind of artist... But I did draw the illustrations for my book covers! The covers of the 'One Man Goes Backpacking' series were drawn by me! 
I started a new podcast! It's called 'Travel with Ketan' and is available on Anchor.fm and Spotify and is being rolled out to other podcast apps as well.
To start with I will be doing a book reading of 'Three Men on Motorcycles' - a toe-dipping into Audiobook territory - do check it out. As of date I have put up 4 episodes - do check them out - click on the link above The awesome fun of doing something new! I am making this with just my phone - and nothing else! I am recording on the Anchor.fm app - it has an awesome and intuitive interface for recording, editing, embedding background music etc. No fancy mike, no sound editing software, no studio, no pros! I made the cover art myself at Canva.com - my favourite site. I use Canva to make every visual thing - my book covers, banners, channel art, visiting cards, social media banners - everything. Do give it a listen - and let me know what you think of it! You can ping me from the 'Contact me' on this site, or on facebook/twitter/instagram or send me an email at ketan@ketanjoshi.net - or even send me a voice message from the anchor.fm site! I got a pleasant surprise the other day, when I got a Twitter notification about an book review blog mentioning my book 'Three Men on Motorcycles' on whatshouldireadnext.com The article was titled 'Must-read alternative travel books about India' and mentioned four books - Three Men on Motorcycles, 'Truck de India' by Rajat Ubhyankar, 'Chai Chai' by Bishwanath Ghosh and 'Postcards from Ladakh' by Ajay Jain. Check out the article - click here   The lockdown is still on here in India, and it has been a boon in disguise for me - as, since I cannot travel, I can focus on writing and pushing out that long ‘To Be Written’ list of books! This is the third book I wrote during the lockdown - after ‘One man goes on a bus’ and ‘One man gets the sack’ - and is 4th book I released in 2020 (‘One man goes trekking’ was released in Feb, just before I went to Japan) This is my 10th travel book - so I am in double digits baby! Woohoo! And is my 14th book overall.    OK, now that all that self-congratulation is out of the way and I have nearly sprained my shoulder trying to pat myself on the back - let me tell you about this book. I took up cycling for many reasons - fitness, a challenge of doing something new, etc. As I mentioned in the book, I started by doing regular early morning cycling as an alternative to jogging or running - because a) Its too boring b) I was afraid of busting my knees c) I was afraid of causing potholes on the road by pounding such a heavy body on it. I got bored of just going round and round in circles and decided to use the time to go to various places in Mumbai and explore the place. I had explored so many far-flung places in my time - and it was a great pleasure to explore my close surroundings as well. It was like shifting from the telescope to the microscope. A deeper and sadder reason behind cycling exploration was that my mom was very sick and was in and out of hospitals all the time. I obviously could not go out of town and leave her, so I used to go on ‘micro-vacations’ - long rides on Sundays to explore the city. I would plan the trip the day before, and leave before first light so that I could do a 6 to 8 hour trip and be back for lunch. I would then tell my mom about it and show her the photos and she would be very happy. She succumbed to the big C in 2017 and I stopped cycling for some months at the time. But I remembered how I had been happy while cycling and exploring at the time, and how mom used to be happy to hear about my adventure and see the pics and so I got back into the saddle and started preparing for a long ride.  This book is the story of that cycling period - the fitness challenge, the local exploration, the micro-vacations, the long trip and the joy of cycling. The book is very funny (well, I hope so) and was a joy to write.
I didn't mention the sadness of that period and the memory of mom in the book as I didn't want it to be a downer book - but it is part of that cycling story and I thought that I might mention it here. Life comes at you, but you can take it on the chin and smile! Click here to check out the book Moments like these are what make writing worthwhile A reader from the US read the 'Amigos' motorcycling series and liked it so much that he got in touch with me and couriered me a gift from the US - 'guardian bells ' to protect the bike from gremlins...one for each of us :) jacket patches, and a very sweet letter. I was extremely touched. Thanks Mike.   |
Categories
All
Hi thereI blog about my travels - and the thoughts they set off! Sometimes the simplest destinations can be the most thought-provoking! Archives
September 2020
|
RSS Feed
Copyright © 2015