The rolling hills shelter the gaur, the river banks shelter the otters, the broadleaf is the habitat of the baya, and Bombay, as it was known then, was the stomping ground of the bijibi.
For decades, Behram Contractor or ‘Bijibi’ was the city’s greatest columnist. His writings were about his charming, friendly and quirky conversations with the reader on contemporary topics related to Bombay or his own social and cultural life, so his subjects were diverse. But he is best known as a cultural and political satirist. It is an endangered species in India today; But even at that time, there were only a few people who did it so well and none for so long. To look for an equivalent to Busybee is to look outside the Indian newspaper sector. In such a situation, one of the names that come up is that of TV satirist Jaspal Bhatti. Today, we have many stand-up comedians who take a dig at culture and politics, but Busybee’s quirks are still best remembered by many fans of satire.
This is the year of his 25th death anniversary.
His ‘Round and About’ column began The Evening News of India In 1966, according to his obituary written by journalist Mark Manuel. The column took papers with it, and moved from typewriters to WordPerfect on DOS and possibly more modern word processors. its last home was Afternoon Despatch & CourierThe newspaper he founded. He wrote regularly until a few weeks before his death in 2001.
As a bookish child, I latched onto the fact that his writing was an expression of artistry, tenderness and whimsy that suited a ‘pragmatic’ society. It was something I wanted for myself. Not that I had imagined I would meet the great columnist and newspaper editor Busybee. It dawned on me later: senior journalists like him were available for small talk, if not always over a glass of cutting. Sadly, he died a year before I could enroll in journalism school in my city.
Growing up in the eighties and nineties, I read them AD&C. In the pre-Internet era, many people used his columns as a daily basis in their lives, such as, say, Brun Pav. His five hundred words – every day! – About Town, always timely, friendly and life-affirming, whimsical and humorous, and often hilarious, has kept thousands of people in the habit of reading.
For me, he did another thing: he helped me understand more my father, who was firmly one of those reticent Indian fathers who had layers of armor over the more tender, vulnerable parts of his personality. This quality we share can be a strength and a cage. He read Busybee during his long bus ride back from work.
Today I appreciate that he made up for some of his own shortcomings through Busybee’s warmth and friendliness. Rasik Heart. The cool, impersonal black and white newsprint between the controlled gutterspace, and the hot, glowing column in the middle of it; Now that I think about it, the afternoon seems to be a metaphor for the father’s psyche. He was one of the number who could not nurture his nascent interest in literature, growing up in a family of corporate professionals, and who abandoned it after marriage to support his own roof; a standard path for householder. He was a man tied to his job. His jaws had become hardened to endure daily hardships. Inside, he was lonely, as work and family naturally sent him and his vast group of friends in their respective directions. Reading Busybee was a bit like having a kind, enthusiastic friend on a lonely bus ride.
At first glance, our family had nothing to do with busyness. He was a writer, creator of culture, soboite of high level. However, as a writer he was ours.
His concerns, values, standards, virtues and joys were ours: his propensity to mock and take to heart the powerful and privileged, his jokes about dealing with a civic system that did not adequately empower him, his longing for honesty in governance, his passion for cricket, good food and the company of friends, his liveliness, his relative happiness in good weather, comfort with places that were not posh, and the BEST like a bus ride or a nice walk. Simple joys: The crisp, cool breeze in the morning. These were ours too.
Many of the issues plaguing the busy Bombay are seen as exacerbated in Mumbai: high rents, poor civic infrastructure, pollution, overloaded public transport, lack of public spaces, meaningless jobs. To say nothing of megalomania. The series of Sea-Link bridges, a proposal he considered a mistake, is being built for a segment of the city’s population who drive high-performance cars and can afford expensive tolls, and who regard fines for overspeeding as blips in the way of their personal land speed records. It reminds me of his column about his imaginary friend who bought a fleet of Mercedes because he ‘couldn’t afford public transportation.’ Sympathy!
Today, his work is a time capsule for a polarized present. Like the witty bit alluding to Bombay’s name change where he advises naming his talking dog Bolshoi Boxer Moti. Humor is just a way to adjust to a significant, non-consensual change. His food columns are all about relationships and culture, giving us a lot to chew on. He also has opinions about civil matters. Although much of his writing has lost its contemporary impact, much of it, broadly speaking, remains culturally relevant and current.
Nevertheless, much of his work has disappeared, at least from the public eye, due to archival lack. This includes a website dedicated to his writing, bidybeeforever.com; A working copy of it with some columns can be found at the Internet Archive. Only three to five anthologies of all his tremendous writings remain in circulation: one collection containing Boxer Bolshoi, two volumes of ‘Best of’, another with his columns on Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership, another on the subject of food, and one with his views on the Bombay riots and their consequences. These give a broad flavor of his style, range and personality, which is important. But equally so are the events to which they reacted. Hopefully his work exists in clippings stored in a forgotten cabinet, where one can still see the sunrise.
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Indira Gandhi’s humorous portrayal of the Emergency: “By the evening, the official censor of the Government of Maharashtra had come and sat in the office of the Times (of India), looking slightly embarrassed. All the copies were sent to him and the poor man spent half the evening correcting grammatical errors and making new ones”. (“Come and sat down” is Busybee’s colloquial, conversational style.) There is much to read between the lines here. He poked light fun at Rajiv Gandhi’s decisions and missteps during his tenure as Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, he also imparted his wisdom on powerful leaders of Maharashtra like Sharad Pawar, who might have taken his graceful elbow strikes with a gracious smile. As did industrialists like Dhirubhai Ambani.
Bijibi could be outspoken when needed, although he was always polite. A man who clearly believed in benign, non-violent forms of political expression dropped the suffix ‘Saheb’ from the name of the Shiv Sena supremo, without fearing the voices of ‘concerned citizens’, which the rest of us cannot say. This was only partly because they worked simultaneously as reporters and cartoonists Free Press Journal. It is no surprise that Bijibi chided Sena leaders like then mayor Chhagan Bhujbal, whose ‘Green Mumbai’ plan was fancied as ‘painting the entire city a uniform shade of green’. He wrote about his (imaginary) wife who wishes he would flattery With the Governor of Maharashtra to get official Work; Undoubtedly, it was a subtle dig at the dignitary of that particular state.
His gentle ‘punching’ was celebrated by his readers, and went down well with the targets of his jokes. This is partly because his humor was simply a good-natured call to honesty. It was directed towards the individual as an official and respected the boundaries of his personal life. Third, humor emerged in an environment that was supportive of free speech. Furthermore, his satire was part of a larger work.
An urban adventurer, he shared tales of hate speeches during Prohibition in Bombay in the sixties, visiting food-rich Amritsar and Delhi in the eighties, visiting Dehradun and Bangalore, sightseeing in Thimphu and traveling to Washington and, among other things, meeting columnist Art Buchwald in his office. Also a food columnist and urban historian, Busybee can write happily and lovingly about a scrumptious meal with his friends one day, and the next write some of the most literary yet accessible lines about Mumbai winters you’ll ever read. Well, almost winter.
He was also a gregarious man about town who recalled an evening spent with Raj Kapoor over glittering glasses chatting on his terrace. The cricketer recalled Sunil Gavaskar’s last Ranji Trophy match, “Only once in recent years did he allow himself to get a little emotional. That was on Monday, when he scored what appeared to be his last Ranji century on his home ground. Then, for a moment, he threw his cap in the air, his hands towards the sky.”
Their huge range makes them extremely readable – and collectible! – Today.
As if this was not enough, he was a fiction writer in the news field. He created a whole series of characters intended for comic and satirical commentary: his wife gently nudging him toward upward mobility; boisterous sons Darryl and Derek; His dog is a Bolshoi Boxer who does not bark but talks and has a good nose for current affairs; His very rich friend lives on the 21st floor of a building that is famous for being twenty stories high, and is even richer than the oil field owners.
His eccentric language is best described as Bombay English, with its musical puns, often accompanied by phrases like “And while we’re at it, let’s change our name too”, which were not so much nonsense as chirification. It was based on how Bombayites spoke in the decades when bland, non-idiomatic, ‘correct’ English had not yet emerged. This helped his writing go straight from the eye to the heart.
For example, I had memorized the beginning of his weekend column: “And, for one Saturday, some stray thoughts and some general observations and some viewpoints (all my own work)”. For a while, I adopted the effect of ending sentences with ‘also’, whether it was required or not, including in essay submissions in journalism school. My lecturer caught the turn of phrase, as it turned out she was also (late) Busybee’s friend and colleague. This happened shortly after his death.
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Afternoon…which reprinted his columns, folded around the time I was finding my feet as a journalist in Mumbai. My father has entered the last decade of his hard-won, successful career. Years passed. I began to develop as a writer of fact and fiction. One day the lockdown shut down the city. I was living alone, away from my people. Without consciously thinking about being busy, and just to drum up excitement in my own humble, small way, I started writing Facebook posts about having an imaginary girlfriend, which sparked deep engagement with many of my FB friends and connections. I wrote, My imaginary girlfriend worshiped a religious leader named Bobby Ramdisch. She idolized those politicians who were somewhat similar to Santa Claus and made imaginary promises like him. She was an avid runner who was so fast that no one even noticed her. She liked that I only had eyes for her, when the truth was that by not completely existing, I only had eyes for her. She broke up with me for a while to date a flag maker in Kerala; She ended things because there were too many red flags in the relationship. Oh, and she knitted me a dreamy sweater that was perfect for Mumbai winters.
Suhit Bombaywala’s factual and fictional writings appear in India and abroad. He tweeted @suhitbombywalla.
