Gordon’s
Passage to India
By Ihsan Aslam
Like
Pakistan, India is all for name changes. It perhaps
has more to do with claiming what is not yours
than shedding colonial legacies. Victoria Terminus
was built to mark Queen Victoria’s Golden
Jubilee. It has been renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus.
When Gordon Bleasdale was called upon to join
the British Army in August 1940 he couldn’t
have imagined he’d end up serving in India
within four years. His call-up included a leaflet
“Welcome to His Majesty’s Army”,
which reminded him: “You are about to become
a soldier. This will mean a big change in your
life. You will find yourself performing unfamiliar
duties in a new atmosphere.” But Bombay
was a long way from the hills of northern England.
Mr Bleasdale must have died for I recently acquired
some of his papers and photographs at an online
auction. What interested me was his connection
with pre-partition India. Although I have travelld
in India, I have not yet been to Bombay (Mumbai).
It is thanks to Gordon Bleasdale, and the care
with which he kept his souvenirs, that I’ve
had the chance to discover the city and to tour
some of the sites.
His notes at the back of an envelope tell us he
embarked HMS Strathmore in Greenock, Scotland
on August 20, 1944 and arrived in Bombay on September
21. It can’t have been a very pleasant “passage
to India” because soldiers were squashed
like sardines in the troop ship. The sight-seeing
along the way — Alexandria, Port Said, Port
Suez, Red Sea, Aden — must have made up
for the inconveniences, however.
To crown it all, there was the stunning view of
the Gateway of India and the awesome Taj Mahal
Hotel to greet the new arrivals in Bombay. Although
photographs in Bleasdale’s collection show
him in various places — in Secunderabad
and in Kashmir, for example — it is Bombay
that dominates. The usual tourist attractions
are all depicted: the Gateway, Victoria Terminus,
Crawford Market, Flora Fountain, and the Prince
of Wales Museum.
Like Pakistan, India is all for name changes.
It perhaps has more to do with claiming what is
not yours than shedding colonial legacies. Victoria
Terminus or VT, for instance, was built to mark
the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887.
However it has been renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji
Terminus. A memorial for Queen Victoria now recalls
King Shivaji.
Another name-change is that of Crawford Market
on Carnac Road. Completed in 1869 and decorated
by Rudyard Kipling’s father, Lockwood, the
grand covered market with fancy Moorish arches
and a clock tower was named after Arthur Crawford.
It is Crawford Market no more, but rather Jyotiba
Phule Market. The market in the name of Bombay’s
first municipal commissioner is now named after
a Hindu leader who had nothing to do with it.
One also finds photographs of recreational places
in the Bleasdale collection: the Regal and Metro
cinemas, Mahalaxmi Race Course, swimming pools
at Breach Candy. The British lads must have looked
forward to going out together and unwinding a
bit.
He names his colleagues on the back of the photographs:
Alf, Ben, Bill, Blondie, Ernie, Ginger, and Pete
— all very typically English. There he is
with Blondie outside the Parsee Temple in Hornby
Road, and there he is with Ginger at the Colaba
Transit Camp in 1946. An old Bombay tram ticket
labeled “Bombay ES & Tramways Co Ltd”
is also preserved in the collection. This one
anna ticket mentions 40 stops like Museum West,
Bori Bunder, Crawford Market, Dhobi Talao, Opera
House, Jakeria Musjid and so on.
Oh, wouldn’t you love to get on that tram
in old Bombay! And wouldn’t you like to
watch classics like Casablanca and Meet Me in
St Louis at the Metro, or Jane Eyre, Henry VI,
or Duel in the Sun at the Regal? Gordon Bleasdale
did.
(Ihsan Aslam is exploring public history at Ruskin
College, Oxford. He can be contacted at: timeshistoryman@yahoo.co.uk
or visited at: http://www.pakistanhistory.com)
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