What's in there: a centenary, the Gateway and a shed

Meanwhile, over in Delhi, they’re meandering through a bout of colonial-itis: the dilemma of how to regard a colonial past. On 12 December 1911, Britain’s King George V stood in splendour somewhere in the future NCR, to announce to thousands of apparently adoring Indian subjects that Delhi would be India’s new capital. It’s one hundred years since then, so why was this centenary not widely celebrated in Delhi? Why did Tim Sullivan of the AP call this “an unmarked date [that] reflects Indian ambivalence”? I don’t know. What I do know is, you’ll find answers of sorts in an ordinary shed in south Bombay. It is absolutely my favourite Bombay sight. Not because of what’s in there, but because of the thoughts you think after seeing what’s in there. Plenty of visiting friends have trekked to the spot, armed only with directions and an assurance that it’s worth their while, with not an inkling of what to expect. A couple from Wisconsin called from the shed, spluttering with wonder. Exactly that astonishing. So … On the left of Elphinstone College as you face it from MG Road, there’s a small lane. Walk in, 25 metres or so. Find another small lane, branching to the left. As you turn onto it, you’ll see two Sintex water tanks on your right. Behind them, a garden-variety grey shed: you know, one of those that are built of what’s loosely called asbestos, corrugated. You notice it only because you’ve read these words and are intrigued enough to check it out. Otherwise, it would not even register. Exactly that nondescript. [caption id=“attachment_158044” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“This “national monument”, our “Indian Heritage”, is itself a British legacy. No, it’s more. It is unequivocally a monument to British rule over us. Reuters”]  [/caption] You walk up to it. At eye level, there’s a hole in the corrugation. You put your eye to it. It gets used to the dark. Then you see something. You see some more. Suddenly you realise what you’re looking at, what’s in there, and you look all around as best as you can and the enormity of it all, in more ways than one, hits you like an express train. So here’s what I thought about, when I first saw what’s in there. I thought about the wedding-cake edifice, no more than a kilometre away, that arguably stands for Bombay: the Gateway of India. In particular, I thought about what happened there in 2000, when the French crystal maker Baccarat wanted to hang the world’s largest chandelier, their creation, inside the Gateway. Cue severe heartburn in patriotic circles. This “foreign agency”, blustered political activists of different stripes but the same proclivity for empty patriotism, could not be allowed to hang the chandelier from a “national monument”. Many of them formed a “human chain” at the Gateway to “protect” it. One placard warned, I still remember: “Don’t commercialise Indian Heritage”. Yet this “national monument”, our “Indian Heritage”, is itself a British legacy. No, it’s more. It is unequivocally a monument to British rule over us, to everything we fought against to win freedom, and don’t take my word for it. It says so on the monument itself: “Erected to commemorate the landing in India of their imperial majesties King George V and Queen Mary on the second of December MCMXI.” The second of December 1911. One hundred years ago this month. Days before the same imperial majesty, George V, made his momentous announcement in Delhi. Yet nobody I know of marked the centenary of this “national monument”. Colonial-itis: the schizophrenia with which we look back on a colonial past. Don’t mark the centenary of a King’s Delhi proclamation. But embrace as our own a monument to the same King. But don’t mark its centenary either. WTF, you know. But (you thought I’d forgotten) what’s in the shed? Looking in, you catch sight of what look like buttons, then you realise they are part of a military uniform, no it’s a larger-than-real-life statue of a man with a moustache and a stern gaze. No, it’s two statues of men, similarly outfitted and stern. Two colonial-era statues. Statues of King Edward VIII and his royal predecessor, King George V. The very same George V, hidden away in this shed. But the monument to his imperium, it stands splendid on the shore. So I say: Go. Go in droves. Go look, at what’s in there. DD left Bombay for 17 years to study computer science and, once done with that, work. Since he got back, he’s been trying to make up for lost time in many different ways. These days he writes for his daily zunka-bhakar. He lives in Bombay with his wife, their two children, and two cats. You can follow him on Twitter at @DeathEndsFun). He blogs at Death Ends Fun.