FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 13 JUNE 2006
Russy’s brother
Baji
There were two
Parsis who made news, literally, in the Bombay where I spent my youth in the
1950s – Russy Karanjia and Dosabhai Karaka. Karanjia was editor of Blitz, a progressive, aggressive, raucous,
sensation-loving weekly. He was sued time and again for defamation, but lost
only one suit. Karaka was editor of Current,
a lighthearted magazine of comment and entertainment. Those were days of
newsprint rationing. The private sector was puny, government advertisement was
a powerful source of patronage, and hence dissent was costly and hazardous. In
that tame, boring world, Blitz kept
making embarrassing exposures of power brokers in vigorous prose. Current did not have the same rebellious
spirit, but it kept its end up with gossip.
Unknown to me –
because I had left Bombay by the time he came onstage – Russy had a younger
brother, Baji, who too made a name in the media. He was not supposed to be
called Baji. According to his Rashi (stars), his name should have been Yuzud.
But after he was born, his maternal grandfather, Khan Bahadur Burjorji Patel of
Quetta, walked in and said that he wanted the little tyke to be named after
him; so it was Baji. The senior Burjorji was the son of a farmer from Kutiana
in Gujarat. He joined the British army during the second Afghan war of 1879-80;
since he had no military training, he was put in the commissary, and so learnt
to buy and sell. After the war he took building contracts on the Karachi-Quetta
railway line. Finally he settled down in Quetta, where he created an industrial
empire comprising flour mills, sawmills, mortar mills, coal mines, chromite
mines etc. He became immensely rich, and lived in a palace with a sprawling
garden. His grandson Dorab spent his childhood in Bombay with his cousins, but
went back to Pakistan, and eventually became a justice of the Supreme Court of
Pakistan – he was one of the two judges who opposed the hanging of Shah Nawaz
Bhutto.
In Quetta, Burjorji’s
daughter, Temina, grew up under an English governess and acquired proper
Victorian values; if she saw girls in short sleeves she would sniff at their nakedness.
When she was sixteen, Burjorji married her to 33-year Khurshedji Karanjia of
Bombay, who then proceeded to Edinburgh to do an FRCS and returned to practise
as an ophthalmic surgeon. Burjorji gave his favourite daughter Quetta Terrace,
a three-story house on Chowpatty (there was no Marine Drive in those days), another
villa in Lonavla, a Wolseley car, and a Blüthner piano. There Baji grew up to arias
of Händel, Gounod, Schubert and Fauré sung by Enrico Caruso, Fernando Gusso and
Lawrence Tibbet on 78-rpm records played on gramophones which were wound up
with a handle.
On leaving
school he went down the street to Wilson College, where he fell in with Abad.
Abad was the daughter of Eduljee Allbless, owner of Crawford and Company, the
auction house on Apollo Street. He lived on Laburnum Road (I lived twenty years
later at one end of it, on Owen Dunn Road). Soon Baji and Abad were wandering
up the garden paths to Hanging Gardens in the evening. With them went another
close friend, Adi Wadia. That placed Baji in a dilemma. On the one hand he was
in love with Abad; on the other hand, he would not have liked to deprive Adi of
her. Finally, Adi told Abad that Baji was the better man for her, and she
agreed. Abad and Baji were married on 6 May, 1943. Those were wartime days when
only 25 people could be invited to a wedding banquet. So apart from the
banquet, Edaljee threw a party at Allbless Baug in Charni Road; the drinks that
flowed there could have floated a navy. Then family members went to over to
Quetta Terrace, where the bhonu – the wedding banquet – was served by K R M
Bhoot, the popular Parsi caterer.
Baji sat for ICS
and passed. He was posted to the Supplies Department to work under M K Vellodi.
A student of literature, Baji found the figures confounding. He worked for one
morning and quit. Fearing to face his father, he went over to the home of Sir
Rustom Masani on Merryweather Road, behind Taj Mahal Hotel. Sir Rustom offered Baji
a job in a charity he ran, National War Front, and assuaged his father’s anger.
That job ended
with the war in 1945, and Baji was jobless. That was a boom time for the film
industry. Many goods were in short supply, which created black markets. Many
people had made big money during the war, and films and cinema houses were
favourite investments. So Baji launched a monthly film magazine, Cinevoice.
Although film
actresses earned much, they were not considered quite respectable at that time.
They used to find it difficult to get flats. To make them more respectable, Baji
sent three actresses – Nargis, Veera and Snehprabha – to cover a session of the
All India Congress Committee. Then in 1949, he organized A Nite with Stars, a charity show for the Indian army in Kashmir
featuring Kamini Kaushal, Raj Kapoor, Nargis, Motilal, Begum Para, Mubarak etc,
and collected Rs 80,000.
Cinevoice did not do well,
so Baji added Movie Times, a weekly. It
focused on current news and gossip. Thus it reported the phone call Suraiya
made from Lahore to Lata Mangeshkar, who must then have been in her twenties.
The call was cut off, so Suraiya rang up again, and asked Lata to sing for her.
As minutes passed, the Bombay operator got nervous and told them to terminate
the call. The Lahore operator asked him if he did not appreciate great singing,
and told him to stop interrupting. Lata and Suraiya went on singing for 21
minutes – at what astronomical cost to Suraiya is not known.
Then on 21
March, 1952, Baji organized a match between Raj Kapoor’s XXI and Motilal’s XXI.
Raj Kapoor had Nargis, Begum Para, Nalini Jaiwant, Dev Anand and Nimmi amongst
others in his side; Motilal had Sohrab Modi, Prithvi Raj Kapoor, Leela Chitnis
and Vanmala in his side. Nalini Jaywant was clean bowled, but refused to walk
back; so Motilal and Raj Kapoor carried her back to the pavilion. When Suraiya
bowled, one of her balls, instead of going to the batsman, ended up in the
hands of Begum Para at mid-off. As Begum Para hit a boundary, Premnath and
Nimmi ran hand in hand after the ball. When Nalini Jaywant’s turn came, she
took the crease, opened a book, Cricket
and How to Play It, and read it until someone snatched it away.
Anyway, I must
not recount all Baji’s jokes; and there were serious moments in his life as
well. His film magazines failed, but he went on to become editor of Film Fare and Screen. Indira Gandhi made him chairman of Film Finance
Corporation, but he resigned when the infamous V C Shukla became information
minister in the Emergency. He continues to live in Bombay, although Quetta
Terrace was sold and pulled down, and he has moved to a flat in Bandra. Those
who want to know him better may read his autobiography, Counting My Blessings (Viking/Penguin).
