Page 93 - English Expedition Class 6

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of children. In all the years of raucous hide-and-seek and subsequent cowering under the large
bed, we were grateful for this. He was never able to fi nd us; it never occurred to him to look under
the bed.

Goodies from the Kitchen

Salim M lived with my grandparents, Nani and Nana, in their spacious bungalow at 46 Pali Hill,
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Bandra, Bombay 50. It was a veritable Downton Abbey , with endless rooms and anterooms and
parlours and a whole world of below stairs ruled by their wonderful cook Shamsoo, who made
kababs and puddings and jams, jellies, peanut brittle and other ‘gotso’, as Salim M called goodies.
Th is was one of the many words unique to the family and might have come from Japan or
Burma or Gujarat, places where Nani, Nana and Salim M had
lived. Other such vocabulary included nemaki (nightgown)
and nakori (left overs). Nakori, however, was rare at 46 Pali Hill,
because us cousins demolished food like locusts. And Nani loved
to pamper us.
But the most pampered was Salim M, or Saloo as she called
him … to whom she and her sister Farhat had been substitute
mums aft er the death of their parents.
When little Saloo adopted a baby sparrow that refused to
become toilet-trained, Nani stitched a pair of knickers for it.
Saloo developed a passion for birds in early childhood, and
his siblings encouraged and developed it in every possible way, then and all his life. In this, they
were way ahead of their time, because this was way before ‘naturalist’ was a bona fi de career; men
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were supposed to earn a living, not go chasing aft er weavers and sunbirds.
When his wife Tehmina died, Nani and Nana invited him to live with them at 46. And sadly for
us cousins, his suite of rooms was directly below the guest room where my sister and I stayed on
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our frequent visits, and where various cousins congregated to play hide-and-seek, charades and
Monopoly.

Typing and Reading

When not in the fi eld, Salim M was in his offi ce, clacking away at his typewriter or reading bird
stuff or writing up fi eld notes in the most beautiful handwriting I have ever seen.
He would only emerge for meals, and for his evening walk of several miles. At meal times, his
famous sense of humour had us all in gales of laughter; but relating his jokes is diffi cult because
the props – gestures, context, expressions, tone – are missing. He and my grandparents had some

7 raucous: extremely loud and noisy 10 anteroom: a small room, usually used as a waiting area,
8 cowering: the act of shrinking or crouching in fear which leads to the main room
9 The author means that her grandparents’ house was 11 bona fi de: genuine
comparable in its size and set-up to Downton Abbey, 12 congregated: assembled
which is a grand, fi ctional British countryside estate
owned by an aristocratic family, featured in a popular
television series of the same name.
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