Horticultural Gardens & Parineeta - Pasteur Laboratories Pvt. Ltd. Tour

We had 11 and a half hashers on Sunday morning. Nitish brought his three year old son Nishant who walked and was carried alternatively. Gherdie returned after ages and enjoyed chatting with newcomers Lilly working with The Statesman and her friend Patrick from Delhi who was in Cal for the weekend and were delighted to join us for a walk around the Horticultural Gardens on Sunday 20th November. I was able to point out to them the Mad tree, the cannon ball tree, Elephant Foot tree, and Camel Foot tree!

Zoria, Patrick and Lilly and I went to Francois house to watch the film of Parineeta. It probably took us half an hour to get the subtitles and not the director’s comments version of the movie. The movie was good tho’ I don’t know whether Zoria cried at the end like Lilly because I went home to shower and pick up Josette a French lady staying at my house and cake for our host.

The Pasteur Laboratories Pvt. Ltd., Mr. Subhendu Law’s house was where certain scenes of Parineeta was filmed. Peter and Rosie, Emma and Olivier Urman who did the "the-no-music room", 13 images in Plexiglas met us on College Street. Subhendu gave us a guided tour of his ancestral home built in 1906. We saw the nautchghar, the various blue rooms, rose rooms, green rooms so called by me according to the colour of the chandeliers and the ceilings! Zoria’s favourite was a picture of our host’s father as a child beside a Shetland Pony. Peter preferred the pictures of his great grandfather, consul of Haiti in his regimental gear with cavalry sword. Olivier felt humiliated when he saw all the chandeliers some covered in dustsheets that were more resplendent than his images in Plexiglas. Emma took pictures. Patrick was delighted to find amongst the medallions a key chain of Montreal 1976 his hometown and birth year. I was most impressed with the wall lights with coat of arms etchings in the dining room that according to Peter sheds a whole new light on “come and see my etchings”. Rosie who has been to the loos of Buckingham palace was delighted with the bathroom there. Francois must have been happy to see a bust of Napoleon till Peter pointed out he was Corsican. Peter would gladly give up his holidays to catalogue the library which had a very interesting book called Popular Delusions! I guess we all left there with delusions of grandeur after seeing the Daimler that may be restored in time for the Statesman Vintage Car rally in January 2006. We had cold drinks with our host at their grand dining table where the 14 members of the joint family who still live there dine every evening. Not to worry it’s a huge house with enough rooms and antechambers though we didn’t get to see the private chambers. We even took a long tram ride back to Esplanade.