Flora Annie Steel

Flora Annie Steel (2 April 1847 – 12 April 1929) was an English writer who was noted for writing books set in British India or otherwise connected to it.

 

Personal life

She was born Flora Annie Webster in Sudbury, Middlesex, the sixth child of George Webster. In 1867, she married Henry William Steel, a member of the Indian Civil Service, and for the next twenty-two years lived in India (until 1889), chiefly in the Punjab, with which most of her books are connected. She grew deeply interested in native Indian life and began to urge educational reforms on the government of India. Mrs Steel became an Inspectress of Government and Aided Schools in the Punjab and also worked with John Lockwood Kipling, Rudyard Kipling’s father, to foster Indian arts and crafts. When her husband’s health was weak, Flora Annie Steel took over some of his responsibilities.

She died at her daughter’s house in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire on 12 April 1929. Her biographers include Violet Powell and Daya Patwardhan.

Writing

Flora Annie Steel was interested in relating to all classes of Indian society. The birth of her daughter gave her a chance to interact with local women and learn their language. She encouraged the production of local handicrafts and collected folk-tales, a collection of which she published in 1894.

Her interest in schools and the education of women gave her a special insight into native life and character. A year before leaving India, she coauthored and published The Complete Indian Housekeeper, giving detailed directions to European women on all aspects of household management in India.

In 1889 the family moved back to Scotland, and she continued her writing there. Some of her best work, according to the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, is contained in two collections of short stories, From the Five Rivers and Tales of the Punjab.

Her novel On the Face of the Waters (1896) describes incidents in the Indian Mutiny. She also wrote a popular history of India. John F. Riddick describes Steel’s The Hosts of the Lord as one of the “three significant works” produced by Anglo-Indian writers on Indian missionaries, along with The Old Missionary (1895) by William Wilson Hunter and Idolatry (1909) by Alice Perrin. Among her other literary associates in India was Bithia Mary Croker.

Bibliography

•                Wide Awake Stories (1884)

•                From the Five Rivers (1893)

•                Miss Stuart’s Legacy (1893)

•                Tales of the Punjab (1894)

•                The Flower of Forgiveness (1894)

•                The Potter’s Thumb (1894)

•                Red Rowans (1895)

•                On the Face of the Waters (1896)

•                In the Permanent Way, and Other Stories (1897)

•                In the Tideway (1897)

•                The Hosts of the Lord (1900)

•                Voices in the Night (1900)

•                In the Guardianship of God (1903)

•                A Book of Mortals (1905)

•                India (1905)

•                A Sovereign Remedy (1906)

•                A Prince of Dreamers (1908)

•                India through the ages; a popular and picturesque history of Hindustan (1908)

•                King-Errant (1912)

•                The Adventures of Akbar (1913)

•                The Mercy of the Lord (1914)

•                Marmaduke (1917)

•                Mistress of Men (1918)

•                English Fairy Tales (1922)

•                A Tale of Indian Heroes (1923)

•                “Lâl”

•                A Cookery Book

•                Late Tales

•                The Curse of Eve

•                The Gift of the Gods

•                The Law of the Threshold

•                The Woman Question

The Garden Of Fidelity: Being The Autobiography Of Flora Annie Steel 1847–1929[

 

The Indian Toy Train

 

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, also known as the “Toy Train”, is a 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge railway that runs between New Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling in the Indian state of West Bengal, India. Built between 1879 and 1881, the railway is about 78 kilometres (48 mi) long. Its elevation level varies from about 100 metres (328 ft) at New Jalpaiguri to about 2,200 metres (7,218 ft) at Darjeeling. Four modern diesel locomotives handle most of the scheduled services; however the daily Kurseong-Darjeeling return service and the daily tourist trains from Darjeeling to Ghum (India’s highest railway station) are handled by the vintage British-built B Class steam locomotives. The railway, along with the Nilgiri Mountain Railway and the Kalka-Shimla Railway, is listed as the Mountain Railways of India World Heritage Site. The headquarters of the railway is in the town of Kurseong. Operations between Siliguri and Kurseong were temporarily suspended since 2010 following a Landslide at Pagla Jhora and another near Tindharia in 2011. However the normal Toy Train service has resumed between New Jalpaiguri (NJP) and Darjeeling from 2 December 2015

History

A broad gauge railway connected Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Siliguri in 1878. Siliguri, at the base of the Himalayas, was connected to Darjeeling by a cart road (the present day Hill Cart Road) on which “Tonga services” (carriage services) were available Franklin Prestage, an agent of Eastern Bengal Railway Company approached the government with a proposal of laying a steam tramway from Siliguri to Darjeeling. The proposal was accepted in 1879 following the positive report of a committee formed by Sir Ashley Eden, the Lieutenant Governor of Bengal. Construction started the same year.

Gillanders Arbuthnot & Co. constructed the railway. The stretch from Siliguri to Kurseong was opened on 23 August 1880, while the official opening of the line up to Darjeeling was on 4 July 1881. Several engineering adjustments were made later in order to ease the gradient of the rails. Despite natural calamities, such as an earthquake in 1897 and a major cyclone in 1899, the DHR continued to improve with new extension lines being built in response to growing passenger and freight traffic. However, the DHR started to face competition from bus services that started operating over the Hill Cart Road, offering a shorter journey time. During World War II, the DHR played a vital role transporting military personnel and supplies to the numerous camps around Ghum and Darjeeling.

After the independence of India, the DHR was absorbed into Indian Railways and became a part of the Northeast Frontier Railway zone in 1958. In 1962, the line was realigned at Siliguri and extended by nearly 4 miles (6 km) to New Jalpaiguri (NJP) to meet the new broad gauge line there. DHR remained closed for 18 months during the hostile period of Gorkhaland Movement in 1988-89.

The line closed in 2011 due to a 6.8 Magnitude earthquake. The line is currently loss-making and in 2015, Rajah Banerjee, a local tea estate owner, has called for privatisation to encourage investment, which was fiercely resisted by unions.

World Heritage site

DHR was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1999, only the second railway to have this honour bestowed upon it, the first one being Semmering Railway of Austria in 1998. To be nominated as World Heritage site on the World Heritage List, the particular site or property needs to fulfill a certain set of criteria, which are expressed in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and its corresponding Operational Guidelines. The site must be of outstanding universal value and meet at least one out of ten selection criteria. The protection, management, authenticity and integrity of properties are also important considerations.

Criteria for selection

The DHR is justified by the following criteria:

•                Criterion ii The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is an outstanding example of the influence of an innovative transportation system on the social and economic development of a multi-cultural region, which was to serve as a model for similar developments in many parts of the world.

•                Criterion iv The development of railways in the 19th century had a profound influence on social and economic developments in many parts of the world. This process is illustrated in an exceptional and seminal fashion by the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Authenticity and integrity

Since 1881, the original route has been retained in a remarkable condition. Only minimal interventions of an evolutionary nature, such as the reduction of loops, have been carried out. Most of the original steam locomotives are still in use. Like Tea and the Ghurka culture, the DHR has become not only an essential feature of the landscape but also an enduring part of the identity of Darjeeling.

Management and legal status

The DHR and all its movable and immovable assets, including the authentic railway stations, the line, and the track vehicles, belong to the Government of India entrusted to the Ministry of Railways. The Northeast Frontier Railway documented all the elements of the DHR in a comprehensive register. Apart from that, it handles the day-to-day maintenance and management. But moreover, several programs, divisions and departments of the Indian Railways are responsible for operating, maintaining and repairing the DHR. This includes technical as well as non-technical work. In principle, the only two legal protection mechanisms that apply to the conservation of the DHR are the provisions of the 1989 Railway Act and that it is a public property which is state-owned and therefore protected.

The route

UNESCO World Heritage Site

The railway line basically follows the Hill Cart Road which is partially the same as National Highway 55. Usually, the track is simply on the road side. In case of landslides both track and road might be affected. As long parts of the road are flanked with buildings, the railway line often rather resembles urban tramway tracks than an overland line.

To warn residents and car drivers about the approaching train, engines are equipped with very loud horns that even drown horns of Indian trucks and buses. Trains honk almost without pause.

Loops and Z-Reverses (or “zig-zag”s)

One of the main difficulties faced by the DHR was the steepness of the climb. Features called loops and Z-Reverses were designed as an integral part of the system at different points along the route to achieve a comfortable gradient for the stretches in between them. When the train moves forwards, reverses and then moves forward again, climbing a slope each time while doing so, it gains height along the side of the hill.

Stations

New Jalpaiguri Junction (NJP)

New Jalpaiguri is the railway station which was extended to the south in 1964 to meet the new broad gauge to Assam. Where the two met, New Jalpaiguri was created.

Siliguri Town Station

Siliguri Town was original southern terminus of the line.

Siliguri Junction

Siliguri Junction became a major station only when a new metre-gauge line was built to Assam in the early 1950s

From New Jalpaiguri Junction (NJP) till Siliguri Junction the 1676 mm, 5′ 6” broad gauge line from New Jalpaiguri to Siliguri Junction runs parallel to DHR.

Sukna Station

This station marks the change in the landscape from the flat plains to the wooded lower slopes of the mountains. The gradient of the railway changes dramatically.

Loop 1 (now removed)

Loop No.1 was in the woods above Sukna. It was removed after flood damage in 1991. The site is now lost in the forest.

Rangtong station

A short distance above Rangtong there is a water tank. This was a better position for the tank than in the station, both in terms of water supply and distance between other water tanks.

Loop 2 (now removed)

When Loop 2 was removed in 1942, again following flood damage, a new reverse, No.1, was added, creating the longest reverse run.

Reverse 1

Loop 3

Loop No.3 is at Chunbatti. This is now the lowest loop.

Reverse 2 & 3

Reverses No.2 & 3 are between Chunbatti and Tindharia.

Tindharia Station

This is a major station on the line as below the station is the workshops. There is also an office for the engineers and a large locomotive shed, all on a separate site.

Immediately above the station are three sidings; these were used to inspect the carriage while the locomotive was changed, before the train continued towards Darjeeling.

Loop 4

Agony Point is the name given to loop No.4. It comes from the shape of the loop which comes to an apex which is the tightest curve on the line.

Gayabari

Reverse 6

Reverse No.6 is the last reverse on the climb.

Mahanadi Station

Kurseong Station

There is a shed here and a few sidings adjacent to the main line, but the station proper is a dead end. Up trains must reverse out of the station (across a busy road junction) before they can continue on their climb. It is said that the station was built this way so that the train could enter a secure yard and stay there while the passengers left the train for refreshments.

Above Kurseong station, the railway runs through the bazaar. Trains skirt the front of shops and market stalls on this busy stretch of road.

Tung Station

Sonada Station

Sonada is a small station which serves town of sonada on Darjeeling Himalayan railway. It is on Siliguri – Darjeeling national highway (NH 55).

Rangbul Station

Jorebungalow Station

This is a small location near Darjeeling and a railway station on Darjeeling Himalayan railway. Jorebungalow was store point for tea to Calcutta. This is a strategical place to connect Darjeeling to rest of the country.

Ghum Station

Ghum, summit of the line and highest station in India. Now includes a museum on the first floor of the station building with larger exhibits in the old goods yard. Once this was the railway station at highest altitude overall and is the highest altitude station for narrow gauge railway.

Batasia Loop

The loop is 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Darjeeling, below Ghum. There is also a memorial to the Gorkha soldiers of the Indian Army who sacrificed their lives after the Indian Independence in 1947. From the Batasia Loop one can get a panoramic view of Darjeeling town with the Kanchenjunga and other snowy mountains in the back-drop.

Darjeeling Station

The farthest reach of the line was to Darjeeling Bazaar, a goods-only line and now lost under the road surface and small buildings.

Locomotives

Current

All the steam locomotives currently in use on the railway are of the “B” Class, a design built by Sharp, Stewart and Company and later the North British Locomotive Company, between 1889 and 1925. A total of 34 were built, but by 2005 only 12 remained on the railway and in use (or under repair).

In 2002, No. 787 was rebuilt with oil firing. This was originally installed to work on the same principle as that used on Nilgiri Mountain Railway No.37395. A diesel-powered generator was fitted to operate the oil burner and an electrically-driven feed pump, and a diesel-powered compressor was fitted to power the braking system. Additionally, the locomotive was fitted with a feedwater heater. The overall result was a dramatic change in the appearance of the locomotive. However, the trials of the locomotive were disappointing and it never entered regular service. In early 2011, it was in Tindharia Works awaiting reconversion to coal-firing.

In March 2001, No.794 was transferred to the Matheran Hill Railway to allow a “Joy Train” (steam-hauled tourist train) to be operated on that railway. It did not, however, enter service there until May 2002.

Diesel

Four diesel locomotives are in use: Nos. 601-2, 604 and 605 of the NDM6 class transferred from the Matheran Hill Railway.

Past

In 1910 the railway purchased the third Garratt locomotive built, a D Class 0-4-0+0-4-0.

Only one DHR steam locomotive has been taken out of India, No.778 (originally No.19). After many years out of use at the Hesston Steam Railway, it was sold to an enthusiast in the UK and restored to working order. It is now based on a private railway (The Beeches Light Railway) in Oxfordshire but has run on the Ffestiniog Railway, the Launceston Steam Railway and the Leighton Buzzard Light Railway.

In popular culture

The Darjeeling Himalayan Railway has long been viewed with affection and enthusiasm by travellers to the region and the Earl of Ronaldshay gave the following description of a journey in the early 1920s:

“Siliguri is palpably a place of meeting… The discovery that here the metre gauge system ends and the two foot gauge of the Darjeeling-Himalayan railway begins, confirms what all these things hint at… One steps into a railway carriage which might easily be mistaken for a toy, and the whimsical idea seizes hold of one that one has accidentally stumbled into Lilliput. With a noisy fuss out of all proportion to its size the engine gives a jerk— and starts… No special mechanical device such as a rack is employed— unless, indeed, one can so describe the squat and stolid hill-man who sits perched over the forward buffers of the engine and scatters sand on the rails when the wheels of the engine lose their grip of the metals and race, with the noise of a giant spring running down when the control has been removed. Sometimes we cross our own track after completing the circuit of a cone, at others we zigzag backwards and forwards; but always we climb at a steady gradient— so steady that if one embarks in a trolley at Ghum, the highest point on the line, the initial push supplies all the energy necessary to carry one to the bottom.”

The trip up to Darjeeling on railway has changed little since that time, and continues to delight travellers and rail enthusiasts, so much so that it has its own preservation and support group, the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway Society.

Several films have portrayed the railway. Especially popular was the song Mere sapno ki rani from the film Aradhana where the protagonist Rajesh Khanna tries to woo heroine Sharmila Tagore who was riding in the train. Other notable films include Barfi!, Parineeta and Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman. The Darjeeling Limited, a film directed by Wes Anderson, features a trip by three brothers on a fictional long-distance train based very loosely on the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Television

The BBC made a series of three documentaries dealing with Indian Hill Railways, shown in February 2010. The first film covers the Darjeeling-Himalayan Railway, the second the Nilgiri Mountain Railway and the third the Kalka-Shimla Railway. The films were directed by Tarun Bhartiya, Hugo Smith and Nick Mattingly and produced by Gerry Troyna. The series won the UK Royal Television Society Award in June 2010. Wes Anderson’s film The Darjeeling Limited also showcases three brothers riding the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

 

 

176 Years Of Bourne & Shepherd

Bourne & Shepherd was an Indian photographic studio and one of the oldest established photographic businesses in the world.  Established in 1863, at its peak, it was the most successful commercial firm in 19th-and early 20th-century India, with agencies all over India, and outlets in London and Paris, and also ran a mail order service. A devastating fire in 1991 destroyed much of the studio’s photographic archive and resulted in a severe financial loss to the firm. The long-term impact of the fire, legal difficulties with the Indian government, which owned the studio building, and the increasing dominance of digital technology, finally forced the studio’s closure in June 2016. At its closure, the studio had operated continuously for 176 years.

Though some sources consider its inception to be 1862, when noted British photographers, Charles Shepherd established a photographic studio, with Arthur Robertson, called ‘Shepherd & Robertson’ in Agra, which later moved to Shimla and eventually became the part of ‘Howard, Bourne & Shepherd’, set up by Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, along with William Howard, first established in Shimla around 1863, Howard’s studio in Kolkata dates back to 1840, where it is still operational today, at Esplanade Row, in Esplanade, Kolkata (Calcutta) under the same name. Today some of their earlier work is preserved at Cambridge University Library, the National Portrait Gallery, London, the National Geographic Society’s Image Collection and the Smithsonian Institution.

Samuel Bourne came to India in 1863, and set up a partnership with an established Calcutta photographer, William Howard, and they set up a new studio ‘Howard & Bourne’ at Shimla. William Howard had set up the Calcutta studio in 1840. Meanwhile, Charles Shepherd, had already established a photographic studio, with Arthur Robertson, called ‘Shepherd & Robertson’ in Agra in 1862, and subsequently he too moved to Shimla in 1864. At some point Robertson left the business and Charles Shepherd, joined Bourne company to form ‘Howard, Bourne & Shepherd’. In 1863, he made first of three major Himalayan photographic expeditions, followed by another one 1866, prior to which he took an expedition to Kashmir in 1864, in fact all photographic histories of that era carry his works. He was known to travel heavy, as he moved with a large retinue of 42 coolies carried his cameras, darkroom tent and chests of chemicals and glass plates, he was to become one of India’s greatest photographers of that era. Charles on the other hand became known as a master printer, he stayed back in Shimla and managed the commercial distribution and printing aspects of the business. Through the 1860s, Bourne’s work was exhibited in public exhibition in Europe and was also part of the Paris Universal Exposition in 1867. He also wrote several despatches for ‘The British Journal of Photography between’ 1863–1870, and the company became an avid provider of the Indian landscape views to the common visitors to the country and also to Britishers back home, and not just survived but the thrived in an era of fierce competition between commercial photographers.

In 1866 after the departure of Howard, the company became ‘Bourne & Shepherd’. In 1867 Bourne returned to England briefly to get married and came back to run the new branch in Calcutta, soon it became the company premier photographic studios in India, at their peak their work was widely retailed throughout the subcontinent by agents and in Britain through wholesale distributors, and were patronised by the upper echelons of the British Raj as well as Indian royalty, so much so that at one point no official engagement, investiture or local durbar was considered complete without being first captured Bourne & Shepherd photographers.

In 1870, the year when Bourne went back to England, Bourne and Shepherd were operating from Shimla and Calcutta. Soon he started cotton-doubling business at Nottingham, and founded the Britannia Cotton Mills, and also become a local magistrate. He sold off his shares in studios, and left commercial photography all together; he also left behind his archive of some 2,200 glass plate negatives with the studio, which were constantly re-printed and sold, over the following 140 years, until their eventual destruction, in a fire at Bourne & Shepherd’s present studio in Calcutta, on 6 February 1991.After Bourne’s departure, new photographic work was undertaken by Colin Murray from 1840 to 84, following which in the 1870s Charles Shepherd continued to photograph and at least sixteen Europeans are listed as assistants.

Later the Bombay branch was opened in about 1876, operated by Charles Shepherd until his own departure from India around 1879, the branch continued operations till about 1902. In 1880, they even brought their services to as far as Lahore for a month, where they advertised in a local newspaper, in fact newspaper advertising has been a primary reason of the success of many photographers of that era. Soon their work was widely retailed throughout the subcontinent by agents and in Britain through wholesale distributors.Between 1870 and 1911 the firm sent photographers to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma, Nepal and Singapore, had also become Art Publishers, with titles like ‘Photographs of Architecture of Gujarat and Rajputana’ (1904–05), and were now employing Indian photographers as well.

In 1911, they were the official photographers of the Delhi Durbar held to commemorate the coronation of King George V and Queen Mary as Emperor and Empress of India, where they were given the title, ‘Kaiser-e-Hind’ which they still use as part of their official letterhead. During World Wars the studio thrived on the contracts for photographing Indian, British and American services personnel.

In the following years, the studio changed hands several times, so much so the sequence of owners has been all but lost, however the last European owner, Arthur Musselwhite who took over the studio in the 1930s, later after a major business slump following the independence, and exodus of European community and the end of princely states, he held an auction in 1955, in which it was bought over by its present owners, and today the building itself is a heritage property.

Gallery

Lord Dufferin, in the regalia of the Viceroy of India, Photo by Bourne & Shepherd, Calcutta.

son of H.H. Chunnasee Rajoonath Pant, by Bourne and Shepherd, late 1860s, the Archaeological Survey of India Collections.

Tomb of Muhammad Ghaus at Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, taken by Bourne and Shepherd ca 1883, from the Archaeological Survey of India Collections.

Khusro Bagh, Allahabad, 1870s.

Parsi Marriage, Bourne & Shepherd, Bombay.

Rudyard Kipling, Bourne & Shepherd, c. 1892

Works

Album of early photographs of India, by Charles Shepherd, Samuel Bourne, James Robertson. Published by s.n.

An Album of Photographs of Indian Architecture, Views and People, by Robertson & Shepherd S. Bourne. Published by s.n.

Photographic Views in India, by Bourne & Shepherd. Published by [s.l.], 1866.

Photographic Views of Jumnootri, Mussoorie, Hurdwar, Roorkee, Nynee Tal and Bheem Tal, by Bourne & Shepherd. Published by Bourne & Shepherd., 1867.

A Permanent Record of India: Pictures of Viceroys, Moghul Emperors, Delhi Durbars, Temples, Mosques, Architectures, Types, All Indian Industries, Himalayan Scenes, Views from the Khybar Pass to the Andaman Islands : from 1840 to the Present Day, by Bourne & Shepherd. Published by Bourne & Shepherd.

India and Burma, by Bourne & Shepherd. Published by [s.l.], 1870.

Photographic Views in India, by Bourne and Shepherd, Simla, Calcutta, & Bombay. by Bourne and Shepherd. Published by Bourne & Shepherd.

Photographic Views in India, by Bourne & Shepherd, Calcutta and Simla, by Bourne & Shepherd, Published by Thomas S. Smith, City Press, 1878.

Photographic Views in India, by Bourne & Shepherd, Published by Howard Ricketts Limited.

People : Madhur Jaffrey.

Madhur Jaffrey CBE (Hindi: मधुर जाफ़री madhur jāfrī; born 13 August 1933) is an Indian actress, active in radio, theatre, television and film as well as a food writer, authoring numerous cookbooks and television chef and entrepreneur who, alongside acclaimed performances in such films as Shakespeare Wallah, Six Degrees of Separation and Heat and Dust, introduced the Western world to the many cuisines of India.

Early life

She was born Madhur Bahadur in Delhi, British India, and was educated at Miranda House (of the University of Delhi). After college, she worked for All India Radio. She then attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), from which she graduated with honours in 1957.

Personal life

She then met and married Indian actor Saeed Jaffrey and moved to New York City. She and Saeed divorced in 1965. They have three daughters, Meera, Zia and Sakina Jaffrey. In 1967, she married Sanford Allen, who at the time was a violinist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. She is the aunt of the British journalist Rohit Jaggi and his sister the literary critic Maya Jaggi (their mother Lalit being one of Madhur’s older sisters).

Merchant Ivory films

Madhur Jaffrey is said to have been responsible for introducing James Ivory and Ismail Merchant to one another. She appeared in several early Merchant Ivory films: Shakespeare Wallah (1965) (a role for which she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the 15th Berlin International Film Festival), The Guru (1969), Autobiography of a Princess (1976), Heat and Dust (1983), directed by Ivory, and The Perfect Murder (1988). She starred as the title character in their film Cotton Mary (1999) and co-directed it with Merchant.

Other films and television

She has appeared in Six Degrees of Separation (1993), Vanya on 42nd Street (1994) and Prime (2005). She starred in and produced ABCD (1999) and guest-starred in the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode “Name” as a psychiatrist, and the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode “The Healer” as a lecturer. In 1985, she was in the Hindi film Saagar where she played the role of Rishi Kapoor’s grandmother. In 1992–94 she appeared with Billie Whitelaw in the British television series Firm Friends. In 1999, she appeared with daughter Sakina Jaffrey in the film Chutney Popcorn. In 2003, she played Roshan Seth’s wife in Cosmopolitan, a film broadcast on PBS. She also starred alongside Deborah Kerr in the 1985 made-for-TV movie The Assam Garden. In 2012 she played a doctor in A Late Quartet who diagnoses Christopher Walken’s character with Parkinson’s Disease.

Theatre

In 1962, she appeared in A Tenth of an Inch Makes the Difference by Rolf Forsberg. In 1969, she appeared in The Guide, based on the novel by R. K. Narayan, and in 1970, she appeared in Conduct Unbecoming, written by Barry England. In 1993, she appeared in Two Rooms by Lee Blessing. In 1999, she appeared in Last Dance at Dum Dum by Ayub Khan-Din. In 2004, Jaffrey appeared in Bombay Dreams on Broadway, where she played the main character’s grandmother (Shanti).In 2005, she appeared in India Awakening by Anne Marie Cummings.

Cooking

Jaffrey is the author of cookbooks of Indian, Asian, and world vegetarian cuisines. Many have become best-sellers; some have won James Beard Foundation awards. She has presented cookery series on television, including Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery in 1982, Madhur Jaffrey’s Far Eastern Cookery in 1989 and Madhur Jaffrey’s Flavours of India in 1995. She lives in Manhattan and has a home in upstate New York. As a result of the success of her cookbooks and TV, Jaffrey developed a line of mass-marketed cooking sauces.

Ironically, she did not cook at all as a child growing up in Delhi. She had almost never been in the kitchen and almost failed cooking at school. It was only after she went to London at the age of 19 to study at RADA that she learned how to cook, using recipes of familiar dishes that were provided in correspondence from her mother. Her editor Judith Jones claimed in her memoirs that Jaffrey was an ideal cookbook writer precisely because she had learned to cook childhood comfort food as an adult, and primarily from written instructions. In the 1960s, after her award-winning performance in Shakespeare Wallah, she became known as the “actress who could cook” and was hired by the BBC to present a show on Indian cooking. After an article about her and her cooking appeared in the New York Times in 1966, she received a book contract that produced An Invitation to Indian Cooking, her first book. The recipes in that book came from her mother, although she adapted them for the American kitchen. During the 1970s, she taught classes in Indian cooking, both at the James A. Beard School of Cooking and in her Manhattan apartment. In 1986, the restaurant Dawat opened in Manhattan using recipes that she provided.

The social historian Panikos Panayi described her as the doyen of Indian cookery writers, but noted that their and her influence remained limited to Indian cuisine. Panayi commented that despite Jaffrey’s description of “most Indian restaurants in Britain as ‘second-class establishments that had managed to underplay their own regional uniqueness'”, most of her dishes too “do not appear on dining tables in India”.

Awards

• Best Actress Award from the Berlin Film Festival in 1965 for her performance in Shakespeare Wallah
• Taraknath Das Foundation Award presented by the Taraknath Das Foundation of the Southern Asian Institute of Columbia University in 1993
• Named to Who’s Who of Food and Beverage in America by the James Beard Foundation in 1995.
• Muse Award presented by New York Women in Film & Television in 2000.
• Honorary CBE awarded on 11 October 2004 “in recognition of her services to cultural relations between the United Kingdom, India and the United States, through her achievements in film, television and cookery”.

Books

Cookery

• An Invitation to Indian Cooking (1973) (James Beard Foundation Awards Cookbook Hall of Fame winner) – ISBN 978-0-224-01152-5
• Madhur Jaffrey’s World of the East Vegetarian Cooking (1981) (James Beard Foundation Awards winner) – ISBN 978-0-394-40271-0
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cooking (1973) – ISBN 978-0-8120-6548-0
• Eastern Vegetarian Cooking (1983) – ISBN 978-0-09-977720-5
• A Taste of India (1988) – ISBN 978-1-86205-098-3
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Cookbook: Easy East/West Menus for Family and Friends (1989) — ISBN 978-0-330-30635-5
• Indian Cooking (1989) — ISBN 978-0-600-56363-1
• A Taste of the Far East (1993) (James Beard Foundation Awards Cookbook of the Year winner) — ISBN 978-0-517-59548-0
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Spice Kitchen (1993) — ISBN 978-0-517-59698-2
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Recipes (1994) — ISBN 978-1-85793-397-0
• Entertaining With Madhur Jaffrey (1994) — ISBN 978-1-85793-369-7
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Flavors Of India: Classics and New Discoveries (1995) — ISBN 978-0-517-70012-9
• Cookbook Food for Family and Friends (1995) — ISBN 978-1-85813-154-2
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick & Easy Indian Cooking (1996) — ISBN 978-0-8118-5901-1
• The Madhur Jaffrey Cookbook: Over 650 Indian, Vegetarian and Eastern Recipes (1996) — ISBN 978-1-85501-268-4
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Illustrated Indian Cookery (1996) — ISBN 978-0-563-38303-1
• Madhur Jaffrey Cooks Curries (1996) — ISBN 978-0-563-38794-7
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Complete Vegetarian Cookbook (1998) — ISBN 978-0-09-186364-7
• Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian (1999) (James Beard Foundation Awards winner) — ISBN 978-0-517-59632-6
• The Essential Madhur Jaffrey (1999) — ISBN 978-0-09-187174-1
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step Cooking (2001) (James Beard Foundation Awards winner) — ISBN 978-0-06-621402-3
• Foolproof Indian Cooking: Step by Step to Everyone’s Favorite Indian Recipes (2002) — ISBN 978-1-55366-258-7
• Madhur Jaffrey Indian Cooking (2003) — ISBN 978-0-09-188408-6
• From Curries to Kebabs: Recipes from the Indian Spice Trail (2003) (James Beard Foundation Awards winner) — ISBN 978-0-609-60704-6
• Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible (2003) — ISBN 978-0-09-187415-5
• Simple Indian Cookery (2005) — ISBN 978-0-563-52183-9
• At Home with Madhur Jaffrey: Simple Delectable Dishes from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka (2010) — ISBN 978-0-307-26824-2
• Curry Easy (2010) — ISBN 978-0-09-192314-3
• My Kitchen Table: 100 Essential Curries (2011) — ISBN 978-0-09-194052-2

Other

• Seasons of Splendour: Tales, Myths, and Legends of India (Pavilion, 1985) — ISBN 978-0-340377260
• Market Days: From Market to Market Around the World (1995) — ISBN 978-0-8167-3504-4
• Robi Dobi: The Marvelous Adventures of an Indian Elephant (1997) — ISBN 978-0-8037-2193-7
• Climbing the Mango Trees: A Memoir of a Childhood in India (2006) — ISBN 978-1-4000-4295-1

People : Charles Correa Architect Of A Nation ….

Charles Correa (1 September 1930 – 16 June 2015) was an Indian architect, urban planner and activist. An influential architect credited for the creation of modern architecture in post-Independence India. He was noted for his sensitivity to the needs of the urban poor and for his use of traditional methods and materials.

He had been awarded the Padma Shri in 1972, and second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 2006, given by Government of India. He was also awarded the 1984 Royal Gold Medal for architecture, by the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Early life and education

Charles Mark Correa was born on 1 September 1930, in Secunderabad.

Correa began his higher studies at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai at the University of Bombay, and he went on to study at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (1949–53) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (1953–55). In 1958 he established his own Mumbai-based professional practice.

Career

In 1958 he established his own Bombay-based professional practice.

Charles Correa was a major figure in contemporary architecture around the world. With his extraordinary and inspiring designs, he played a pivotal role in the creation of an architecture for post-Independence India. All of his work – from the carefully detailed memorial Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Museum at the Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad to Kanchanjunga Apartment tower in Mumbai, the Jawahar Kala Kendra in Jaipur, the planning of Navi Mumbai, MIT’S Brain and Cognitive Sciences Centre in Boston, and most recently, the Champalimad Centre for the Unknown in Lisbon, places special emphasis on prevailing resources, energy and climate as major determinants in the ordering of space. He designed the Parumala Church as well.

His first important project was “Mahatma Gandhi Sangrahalaya” (Mahatma Gandhi Memorial) at Sabarmati Ashram in Ahmedabad (1958–1963), then in 1967 he designed the Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly in Bhopal. He also designed the distinctive buildings of National Crafts Museum, New Delhi (1975–1990), Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal (1982), Jawahar Kala Kendra (Jawahar Arts Centre), in Jaipur, Rajasthan (1986–1992), British Council, Delhi, (1987–92) the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT, Boston (2000–2005), City Centre (Salt Lake City, Kolkata) in Kolkata (2004), and the Champalimaud Centre for The Unknown in Lisbon, Portugal (2007–2010).

Also he designed state-of-the-art research and development facility of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd (Mahindra Research Valley)at Chennai, which is the epicentre of various R&D networks of Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd.

From 1970–75, he was Chief Architect for New Bombay (Navi Mumbai), an urban growth center of 2 million people across the harbour from the existing city of Mumbai, here along with Shirish Patel and Pravina Mehta he was involved in extensive urban planning of the new city. In 1985, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi appointed him Chairman of the National Commission on Urbanization.

In 1984, he founded the Urban Design Research Institute in Bombay, dedicated to the protection of the built environment and improvement of urban communities. Over the last four decades, Correa has done pioneering work in urban issues and low-cost shelter in the Third World.

2005–2008 he was Chairman of the Delhi Urban Arts Commission. In 2008 he resigned his commission as the head of Delhi Urban Arts Commission.

On 18 December 2011, the eve of the Golden Jubiliee of Liberation of Goa, Charles Correa was bestowed with Goa’s highest civilian honour, the Gomant Vibhushan.In 2013, the Royal Institute of British Architects held an retrospective exhibition, “Charles Correa – India’s Greatest Architect”, about the influences his work on modern urban Indian architecture.

Last projects

One of Correa’s most important later projects is the new Ismaili Centre in Toronto, Canada that is be located in the midst of formal gardens and surrounded by a large park designed by landscape architect Vladimir Djurovic. It shares the site with the Aga Khan Museum designed by Fumihiko Maki.

The Champalimaud Foundation Centre in Lisbon was inaugurated on 5 October 2010 by the Portuguese President, Cavaco Silva.

Death

Charles Correa died at his residence at Mumbai after a brief illness in the age of 84 on June 16, 2015.

Awards

• RIBA Royal Gold Medal – 1984.
• Padma Vibhushan (2006) and Padma Shri (1972).
• Praemium Imperiale (1994)
• 7th Aga Khan Award for Architecture for Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly (1998)
• Austrian Decoration for Science and Art (2005)
• His acclaimed design for McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT was dedicated recently

The International Union of Architects UIA Gold Medal 1990

India : Jaipur, Hawa Mahal, Palace Of Winds …

Hawa Mahal (Hindi: English translation: “Palace of Winds” or “Palace of the Breeze”), is a palace in Jaipur, India, so named because it was essentially a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivities while unseen from the outside. Constructed of red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the City Palace, and extends to the zenana, or women’s chambers.

History

The structure was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh designed by Lal Chand Ustad in the form of the crown of Krishna, the Hindu god. Its unique five-storey exterior is akin to the honeycomb of a beehive with its 953 small windows called jharokhas decorated with intricate latticework. The original intention of the lattice was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen, since they had to obey strict “purdah” (face cover). The lattice also allows cool air from the Venturi effect (doctor breeze) through the intricate pattern, air conditioning the whole area during the high temperatures in summers.

In 2006, restoration and renovation works on the Mahal were undertaken, after a gap of 50 years, to give a face lift to the monument at an estimated cost of Rs 4568 million. The corporate sector lent a hand to preserve the historical monuments of Jaipur and the Unit Trust of India has adopted Hawa Mahal to maintain it. The palace is an extended part of a huge complex. The stone-carved screens, small casements and arched roofs are some of the features of this popular tourist spot. The monument also has delicately modeled hanging cornices. Just like the other monuments of Jaipur, the palace is also constructed in pink and red colored stone.

Architecture

The palace is a five-storey pyramidal shaped monument that rises 50 feet (15 m) from its high base. The top three floors of the structure have a dimension of one room width while the first and second floors have patios in front of them. The front elevation, as seen from the street, is like a honeycomb web of a beehive, built with small portholes. Each porthole has miniature windows and carved sandstone grills, finials and domes. It gives the appearance of a mass of semi-octagonal bays, giving the monument its unique façade. The inner face on the back side of the building consists of need-based chambers built with pillars and corridors with minimal ornamentation, and reach up to the top floor. The interior of the Mahal has been described as “having rooms of different coloured marbles, relieved by inlaid panels or gilding; while fountains adorn the centre of the courtyard”.

Lal Chand Ustad was the architect of this unique structure. Built in red and pink coloured sand stone, in keeping with the décor of the other monuments in the city, its colour is a full testimony to the epithet of “Pink City” given to Jaipur. Its façade depicts 953 niches with intricately carved jharokhas (some are made of wood) is a stark contrast to the plain looking rear side of the structure. Its cultural and architectural heritage is a true reflection of a fusion of Hindu Rajput architecture and the Islamic Mughal architecture; the Rajput style is seen in the form of domed canopies, fluted pillars, lotus and floral patterns, and the Islamic style as evident in its stone inlay filigree work and arches (as distinguished from its similarity with the Panch Mahal – the palace of winds – at Fatehpur Sikri).

The entry to the Hawa Mahal from the city palace side is through an imperial door. It opens into a large courtyard, which has double storeyed buildings on three sides, with the Hawa Mahal enclosing it on the east side. An archaeological museum is also housed in this courtyard.

Hawa Mahal was also known as the chef-d’œuvre of Maharaja Jai Singh as it was his favourite resort because of the elegance and built-in interior of the Mahal. The cooling effect in the chambers, provided by the breeze passing through the small windows of the façade, was enhanced by the fountains provided at the centre of each of the chambers.

The top two floors of the Hawa Mahal are accessed only through ramps. The Mahal is maintained by the archaeological Department of the Government of Rajasthan.

India : The Red Fort Delhi, A Bucket List Must …

The Red Fort was the residence of the Mughal emperor of India for nearly 200 years, until 1857. It is located in the centre of Delhi and houses a number of museums. In addition to accommodating the emperors and their households, it was the ceremonial and political centre of Mughal government and the setting for events critically impacting the region.

The Red Fort, constructed by Shah Jahan, was built as the fortified palace of Shahjahanabad, capital of the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan, in 1648. Named for its massive enclosing walls of red sandstone, it is adjacent to the older Salimgarh Fort, built by Islam Shah Suri in 1546. The imperial apartments consist of a row of pavilions, connected by a water channel known as the Stream of Paradise (Nahr-i-Behisht). The Red Fort is considered to represent the zenith of Mughal creativity under Shah Jahan. Although the palace was planned according to Islamic prototypes, each pavilion contains architectural elements typical of Mughal buildings, reflecting a fusion of Timurid, Persian and Hindu traditions. The Red Fort’s innovative architectural style, including its garden design, influenced later buildings and gardens in Delhi, Rajasthan, Punjab, Kashmir, Braj, Rohilkhand and elsewhere. With the Salimgarh Fort, it was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007 as part of the Red Fort Complex.

The Red Fort is an iconic symbol of India. On the Independence Day of India (15 August), the Prime Minister of India hoists the national flag at the main gate of the fort and delivers a nationally-broadcast speech from its ramparts.

Hidden India : The Toy Train Form Kalka To Shimla …… Step Back In Time

The Kalka–Shimla Railway is a 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) narrow gauge railway in North-West India travelling along a mostly mountainous route from Kalka to Shimla. It is known for dramatic views of the hills and surrounding villages.

History

Shimla (then spelt Simla) was settled by the British shortly after the first Anglo-Gurkha war, and is located at 7,116 feet (2,169 m) in the foothills of the Himalayas. By the 1830s, Shimla had already developed as a major base for the British. It became the summer capital of British India in 1864, and was also the headquarters of the British army in India. Prior to construction of the railway, communication with the outside world was via village cart.

The 1,676 mm (5 ft 6 in) broad gauge Delhi-Kalka line opened in 1891. The Kalka–Shimla Railway was build on 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge tracks by the Delhi-Ambala-Kalka Railway Company beginning in 1898. The estimated cost was Rs 86,78,500 but the cost doubled during construction.The 96.54 km (59.99 mi) line opened for traffic on November 9, 1903. It was inaugurated by Viceroy of India Lord Curzon. Because of the high capital and maintenance costs and peculiar working conditions, the Kalka–Shimla Railway was allowed to charge higher fares than on other lines. However, the company was still not profitable and was purchased by the government on January 1, 1906 for Rs 1,71,07,748. In 1905 the line was regauged to 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) to conform to standards set by the Indian War Department.This route passes through a city named Solan, which is also known as mini Shimla. A festival celebrating the goddess Shoolini Devi, after which the city is named, is held each summer in June.

In 2007, the government of Himachal Pradesh declared the railway a heritage property. For about a week starting on September 11, 2007, an expert team from UNESCO visited the railway to review and inspect it for possible selection as a World Heritage Site. On July 8, 2008, the Kalka–Shimla Railway became part of the World Heritage Site Mountain Railways of India. alongside Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, Nilgiri Mountain Railway, and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.

Route

The Kalka–Shimla Railway was built to connect Shimla, the summer capital of India during the British Raj, with the Indian rail system. Now, Shimla is the capital city of Himachal Pradesh and Kalka is a town in the Panchkula district of Haryana. The route is famous for its scenery and improbable construction.

Stations

The route winds from the Himalayan Sivalik foothills at Kalka to several important points such as Dharampur, Solan, Kandaghat, Taradevi, Barog, Salogra, Totu (Jutogh), Summerhill and Shimla at an altitude of 2,076 meters (6,811 ft).

Tunnels

Originally 107 tunnels were built on Kalka Shimla Railway Track and 102 remain in use. The longest tunnel is at Barog. Engineer Colonel Barog dug the tunnel from both ends and could not align them and was symbolically fined one rupee. He couldn’t live with the shame and committed suicide inside the incomplete tunnel. Chief Engineer H.S. Herlington later completed the tunnel with help from Bhalku, a local sadhu.

Infrastructure

The line has 864 bridges. The railway has a ruling gradient of 1 in 33 or 3%. It has 919 curves, the sharpest being 48 degrees (a radius of 37.47 m or 122.93 feet). Climbing from 656 meters (2,152 ft), the line terminates at an elevation of 2,076 meters (6,811 ft) at Shimla. The line originally used 42 lb/yd (21 kg/m) rail but this was later relaid to 60 lb/yd (30 kg/m) rail.

Locomotives

The first locomotives to arrive were two class “B” 0-4-0ST from the famous Darjeeling Himalayan Railway. These were built as 2 ft (610 mm) gauge engines, but were converted to 2 ft 6 in (762 mm) gauge in 1901. They were not large enough for the job, and were sold in 1908. They were followed by 10 engines with a 0-4-2T wheel arrangement of a slightly larger design, introduced in 1902. These locomotives weighed 21.5 tons (21.85 tonnes) each, and had 30″ (762 mm) driving wheels, and 12″x16″ (304.8 mm x 406.4 mm) cylinders. They were later classified into the “B” class by the North Western State Railways. All these locomotives were constructed by the British firm of Sharp, Stewart and Company.

Larger locomotives were introduced in the form of a 2-6-2T, of which 30 were built with slight variations between 1904 and 1910. Built by the Hunslet and the North British Locomotive Company, these locomotives were about 35 tons (35.56 tonnes), with 30″ (762 mm) drivers and 14″x16″ (355.6 mm x 406.4 mm) cylinders. These locomotives, later classed K and K2 by the North Western State Railways, subsequently handled the bulk of the railways traffic during the steam era. A pair of Kitson-Meyer 2-6-2+2-6-2 articulated locomotives, classed TD, were supplied in 1928. They quickly fell into disfavour, as it often took all day for enough freight to be assembled to justify operating a goods train hauled by one of these locomotives. Shippers looking for a faster service started to turn to road transport. These 68 ton (69.09 tonnes) locomotives were soon transferred to the Kangra Valley Railway, and subsequently ended up converted to 1,000 mm (3 ft 3³⁄₈ in) metre gauge in Pakistan.

Steam operation of regular trains ended 1971.

The first diesel locomotives on the Kalka–Shimla Railway, class ZDM-1 by Arnold Jung Lokomotivfabrik (articulated with two prime movers), started operation in 1955. In the 1970s they were regauged and reclassified as NDM-1, then used on the Matheran Hill Railway.

In the 1960s, class ZDM-2 built by Maschinenbau Kiel (MaK) was introduced. These locomotives were later transferred to other lines.

Today this line is operated with class ZDM-3 diesel-hydraulic locomotives (522 kW, 50 km/h), built 1970 to 1982 by Chittaranjan Locomotive Works with a single cab road switcher body. Six locomotives of the same class were built in 2008/2009 by Central Railway Loco Workshop Parel with updated components and a dual cab body providing better visibility of the track.

Rolling stock

The railway opened using conventional four-wheel and bogie coaches. The tare weight of these coaches meant that only four of the bogie coaches could be hauled upgrade by the 2-6-2T locomotives. In an effort to increase loadings in 1908 the entire coaching stock was rebuilt as bogie coaches 33′ long by 7′ wide, using steel frames and bodies. To further save weight the roofs were constructed using aluminium. Savings in weight meant the locomotives could now haul six of the larger coaches, significantly expanding capacity. This was an early example of the use of steel in construction of coaches to reduce the coaches’ tare.

Goods rolling stock was constructed on a common pressed steel underframe, 30′ long and 7′ wide. Both open and covered wagons were provided, the open wagons having a capacity of 19 tons and the covered wagons 17.5 tons.

Trains.

• 52451/52452 Shivalik Deluxe Express (KLK 5:30 – 10:15 SML 17:40 – 22:25 KLK) with more comfortable chair cars and meal service
• 52453/52454 Kalka Shimla Express (KLK 6:00 – 11:05 SML 18:15 – 23:20 KLK) with first, second class and unreserved seating
• 52455/52456 Himalayan Queen (KLK 12:10 – 17:20 SML 10:30 – 16:10 KLK) with chair cars, connecting in Kalka to the Mail/Express train of the same name and the Kalka Shatabdi from/to Delhi
• 52457/52458 Kalka Shimla Passenger (KLK 4:00 – 9:20 SML 14:25 – 20:10 KLK) with first, second class and unreserved seating
• 72451/72452 Rail Motor (KLK 5:10 – 9:50 SML 16:25 – 21:35 KLK), a railbus originally used to transport upper class travellers, first class seating only, glass roof and possibility to look out to the front
• Shivalik Queen: This luxury coach can be booked by couples or groups up to eight people through IRCTC Chandigarh office and attached to regular trains. It has four elegantly furnished coupés with two toilets, wall to wall carpets and big windows. The journey costs 4200 INR for four couples including lunch.

Television film

The BBC made a series of three documentaries about Indian Hill Railways. The Kalka–Shimla Railway was the subject of the third program.

The Kalka-Shimla railway was also featured in the Punjab episode of CNN’s Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.

People : Ruth Prawer Jhabvala , Novelist & Screenwriter, The Third And Valuable Member Of Merchant Ivory Productions …..

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE (7 May 1927 – 3 April 2013) was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her long collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant. Jhabvala wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.

Early life

Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus and Eleanora (Cohn) Prawer. Marcus was a lawyer who moved to Germany from Poland to escape conscription and Eleanora’s father was cantor of Cologne’s largest synagogue. Her father was accused of communist links, arrested and then released and she witnessed the violence unleashed against the Jews during the Kristallnacht. The family was among the last group of refugees to flee the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain.Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon (1925–2012), an expert on Heine and horror films, was fellow of The Queen’s College and Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford.

During World War II, Prawer lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and began to speak English rather than German. Charles Dickens’ works and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind kept her company through the War years and the latter book she read while taking refuge in air raid shelters during the Luftwaffe’s bombing of London.She became a British citizen in 1948. The following year, her father committed suicide after discovering that forty members of his family had died during the Holocaust. Prawer attended Hendon County School (now Hendon School) and then Queen Mary College, where she received an MA in English literature in 1951.

Literary career

Years in India

Jhabvala lived in India for 24 years from 1951. Her first novel, To Whom She Will, was published in 1955. It was followed by Esmond in India (1957), The Householder (1960) and Get Ready for the Battle (1963). The Householder, with a screenplay by Jhabvala, was filmed in 1963 by Merchant and Ivory. During her years in India she wrote scripts for the Merchant-Ivory duo for The Guru (1969) and The Autobiography of a Princess (1975) and collaborated with Ivory for the screenplays for Bombay Talkie (1970) and ABC After-school Specials: William – The Life and Times of William Shakespeare (1973).

In 1975, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and Dust which was later adapted into a movie. That year, she moved to New York where she wrote The Place of Peace.

Jhabvala “remained ill at ease with India and all that it brought into her life” and wrote in an autobiographical essay, Myself in India, published in the London Magazine, that she found the “great animal of poverty and backwardness” made the idea and sensation of India intolerable to her, a “Central European with an English education and a deplorable tendency to constant self-analysis”. Her early works in India dwell on the themes of romantic love and arranged marriages and are portraits of the social mores, idealism and chaos of the early decades of independent India. Writing of her in the New York Times, novelist Pankaj Mishra observed that “she was probably the first writer in English to see that India’s Westernizing middle class, so preoccupied with marriage, lent itself well to Jane Austenish comedies of manners”.

Life in the USA

Jhabvala moved to New York in 1975 and lived there until her death in 2013, becoming a naturalised citizen of the United States in 1986. She continued to write and many of her works including In Search of Love and Beauty (1983), Three Continents(1987), Shards of Memory (1995) and East Into Upper East: Plain Tales From New York and New Delhi (1998), portray the lives and predicaments of immigrants from post-Nazi and post-World War Europe. Many of these works also feature India as a setting where her characters go to in search of spiritual enlightenment only to emerge defrauded and exposed to the materialistic pursuits of the East. The New York Times Review of Books chose her Out of India (1986) as one of the best reads for that year. In 2005 she published My Nine Lives: Chapters of a Possible Past with illustrations by her husband and the book was described as “her most autobiographical fiction to date”.

Reception

Her literary works were well received with C. P. Snow, Rumer Godden and V. S. Pritchett variously describing her work as “the highest art”, “a balance between subtlety, humour and beauty” and as being Chekhovian in its detached sense of comic self-delusion. Salman Rushdie described her as a “rootless intellectual” when he anthologised her in the Vintage Book of Indian Writing while John Updike described her an “initiated outsider”. Jhabvala was initially assumed to be an Indian herself among the reading public on account of her perceptive portrayals of the nuances of Indian lifestyles in her works. Later, the revelation of her true identity led to falling sales of her books in India and made her a target of accusations about “her old-fashioned colonial attitudes”.

Jhabvala’s last published story was “The Judge’s Will”, which appeared in The New Yorker on 25 March 2013.

Merchant Ivory Productions

In 1963, Jhabvala was approached by James Ivory and Ismail Merchant to write a screenplay for their debut black-and-white feature The Householder based on her 1960 novel. During their first encounter, Merchant later said, Jhabvala, seeking to avoid them pretended to be the housemaid when they visited her. The movie, released by Merchant Ivory Productions in 1963 and starring Shashi Kapoor and Leela Naidu, met with critical praise and marked the beginning of a partnership that resulted in over 20 films.

The Householder was followed by Shakespeare Wallah (1965), another critically acclaimed film. There followed a series of films including Roseland (1977), Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures (1978), The Europeans (1979), Jane Austen in Manhattan (1980), Quartet (1981), The Courtesans of Bombay (1983) and The Bostonians (1984). The Merchant Ivory production of Heat and Dust in 1983 won Jhabvala a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the following year.

She won her first Academy Award for her screenplay for A Room with a View (1986) and won a second in the same category for Howards End six years later. She was nominated for a third Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay the following year for The Remains of the Day.

Her other films with Merchant and Ivory include Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990), Jefferson in Paris (1995), Surviving Picasso (1996), A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries (1998), the screenplay for which she co-authored with Ivory, The Golden Bowl (2000) and The City of Your Final Destination (2009) which was adapted from the eponymous novel by Peter Cameron and was her last screenplay. Le Divorce which she co-wrote with Ivory was the last movie that featured the trio of Merchant, Ivory and Jhabvala before Merchant’s death that year. The Merchant-Ivory duo was acknowledged by the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest collaboration between a director and a producer although Jhabvala too was a part of the trio from the very beginning. It was she who introduced the composer Richard Robbins, who went on to score music for almost every production by Merchant-Ivory beginning with The Europeans in 1979, to the duo after meeting him while he was the director of Mannes College of Music, New York. Madame Sousatzka (1988) was the one film she wrote which was not produced by Merchant Ivory.

Some of Jhabvala’s scripts also generated controversy. Jefferson in Paris attracted charges of historical inaccuracies and racism while Surviving Picasso ran into trouble with the Picasso estate which denied them permission to use his paintings in the movie.

Personal life

In 1951, Prawer married Cyrus S. H. Jhabvala, an Indian Parsi architect and, later, head of the School of Planning and Architecture. The couple moved into a house in Delhi’s Civil Lines where they raised three daughters: Ava, Firoza and Renana. In 1975 Jhabvala moved to New York and divided her time between India and the United States. In 1986, she became a naturalised citizen of the United States.

Death

Jhabvala died in her home in New York City on 3 April 2013 at the age of 85. James Ivory reported that her death was caused by complications from a pulmonary disorder. She was survived by her husband, her three daughters and six grandchildren.Reacting to her death, Merchant-Ivory Productions noted that Jhabvala had “been a beloved member of the Merchant Ivory family since 1960, comprising one-third of our indomitable trifecta that included director James Ivory and the late producer Ismail Merchant” and that her death was “a significant loss to the global film community”.

Awards

Winner:

• 2003: Henry Prize Winner for “Refuge in London”
• 1994: Writers Guild of America’s Screen Laurel Award
• 1992: Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay – Howards End
• 1990: Best Screenplay Award from the New York Film Critics Circle for & Mrs. Bridge
• 1987: Writers Guild of America – Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for: A Room with a View^[
• 1986: Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay – A Room with a View
• 1984: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – Heat and Dust
• 1984: London Critics Circle Film Awards – Screenwriter of the Year for: Heat and Dust
• 1984: MacArthur Fellowship
• 1979: Neil Gunn Prize
• 1975: Booker Prize – Heat and Dust

Nominated:

• 1993: Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay – The Remains of the Day
• 1993: Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay – The Remains of the Day
• 1993: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – The Remains of the Day
• 1992: Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay – Howards End
• 1992: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – Howards End
• 1986: BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay – A Room with a View

Selected works

Novels and short stories

• To Whom She Will (1955; published in the United States as Amrita)
• The Nature of Passion (1956).
• Esmond in India (1958)
• The Householder (1960)
• Get Ready for Battle (1962)
• Like Birds, Like Fishes (1963)
• A Backward Place (1965)
• A Stronger Climate (1968)
• An Experience of India (1971)
• A New Dominion (1972; published in the United States as Travellers)
• Heat and Dust (1975)
• How I Became a Holy Mother and other stories (1976)
• In Search of Love and Beauty (1983)
• Out of India (1986)
• Three Continents (1987)
• Poet and Dancer (1993)
• Shards of Memory (1995)
• East Into Upper East: Plain Tales from New York and New Delhi (1998)
• My Nine Lives (2004)

Selected screenplays

Year	Title	Other notes
2008	The City of Your Final Destination	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Peter Cameron
2003	Le Divorce	co-written by James Ivory, adapted from the novel by Diane Johnson
2000	The Golden Bowl	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1998	A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Kaylie Jones
1996	Surviving Picasso	screenplay
1995	Jefferson in Paris	written by
1993	The Remains of the Day	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Kazuo Ishiguro
1992	Howards End	screenplay, adapted from the novel by E. M. Forster
1990	Mr. and Mrs. Bridge	screenplay, adapted from the novels by Evan S. Connell (“Mr. Bridge” & “Mrs. Bridge”)
1988	Madame Sousatzka	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Bernice Rubens. Directed by John Schlesinger
1985	A Room with a View	screenplay, adapted from the novel by E. M. Forster
1984	The Bostonians	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1983	Heat and Dust	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jhabvala
1981	Quartet	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jean Rhys
1980	Jane Austen in Manhattan	written by, inserted libretto “Sir Charles Grandison” by Jane Austen
1979	The Europeans	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Henry James
1978	Hullabaloo Over Georgie and Bonnie’s Pictures	written by
1977	Roseland	story and screenplay
1975	Autobiography of a Princess	written by
1970	Bombay Talkie	screenplay
1969	The Guru	screenplay
1965	Shakespeare Wallah	screenplay
1963	The Householder	screenplay, adapted from the novel by Jhabvala

Plant Hunters : Tom Hart – Dyke, Young Inspirational Man on a Mission….. His Story Would Make For an Exceptional Film…..

Thomas Guy Hart Dyke (born 12 April 1976) is an English horticulturist and plant hunter. He is the son and heir of Guy and Sarah Hart Dyke at the family seat of Lullingstone Castle, Eynsford, Kent. He is the designer of the World Garden of Plants located on the property. The World Garden contains approximately 8,000 species of plants, many collected by Hart Dyke from their native environments. He presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival in 2013.

Early life and education

Hart Dyke attended a state primary school in Eynsford and then transferred to St. Michael’s School in Otford. He attended Stanbridge Earls in Hampshire until age seventeen and then entered Sparsholt College Hampshire, near Winchester, where he studied tree surgery and forestry.

In an interview in 2006, Hart Dyke credits his grandmother as having first interested him in plants at age three.

Tom Hart Dyke is first cousin of the English comedian Miranda Hart.

Kidnapping

Hart Dyke follows a tradition of Victorian and Edwardian British plant hunters, such as Francis Masson, who risked life and limb to acquire rare species of plant. In 2000, Hart Dyke was kidnapped by suspected FARC guerrillas in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia while hunting for rare orchids, a plant for which he has a particular passion.

He and his travel companion, Paul Winder, were held captive for nine months and threatened with death. He kept himself going by creating a design for a garden containing plants collected on his trips, laid out in the shape of a world map according to their continent of origin.

Tom wrote about his experiences in Colombia in his book, The Cloud Garden. The story of his kidnapping ordeal was dramatised in the Sky1 documentary series “My Holiday Hostage Hell”.

World Garden of Plants

On his return home, Hart Dyke put his design into practice within the walls of the family’s Victorian herb garden. The story of the creation of The World Garden of Plants was the subject of a BBC2 6-episode series, “Save Lullingstone Castle” (KEO Films) in 2006. This was followed by a second 6-episode series, “Return To Lullingstone Castle” on BBC2 in 2007.

In May 2006, Hart Dyke managed to get an Australian Eucalyptus caesia plant (common name Silver Princess) to flower for the first time in the UK. He was inspired by orchids at his first school, St. Michaels, Otford, Kent.

Hart Dyke featured in the PBS Nova programme in 2002, Orchid Hunter that documented his return to hunting rare orchids in dangerous terrain in another politically unstable area in Irian Jaya in the rainforests of Western New Guinea.

Toms books are a fascinating read and a real inspiration and i highly recommend them both. As for the ‘World Garden’ this is developing beautifully now and i enjoy going throughout the season to appreciate differing elements. Well worth a visit, the whole family really welcome you and are happy to talk and explain. Tom’s enthusiasm is infectious and i challenge anyone not to want to pick up a trowel the moment you get home.