Cat 64er Brinda (nee Chinappa) Somaya

Cat 64er Brinda (née Chinappa) Somaya

Brinda

Anand and Brinda

I just saw on Facebook a post by Brinda (née Chinappa) Somaya about the renovation of Thomas House on DN Road in Mumbai carried out by her company, SNK, one of India’s leading architectural companies.

Brinda, born as the second daughter to Mr. K. M. Chinappa and Ganavati, who were close friends of my parents from their Bangalore days when my dad and Ganavati were childhood friends.

When my dad moved from the post of Chief Engineer of B.E.S.T and joined as Engineering Advisor to Killick Nixon, of which Bombay Suburban was part, K. M. Chinappa, who was a Board member of Tata Sons, requested my dad to get the Tata Engineering Consultancy Services (TECS) which was a small operation of Tata’s working out of a premises at the dockside end of Carnac Bridge 

Dad took on the challenge. With a handful of young engineers, TECS  was soon moving. They started with power plants. Within a few years TECS became the leading engineering power consulting company on par with the Government owned Engineers India. 

Dad’s office moved to Bombay House near Flora Fountain, but he spent most of his time with the engineers at their office. 

TECS was initially involved with setting up all types of power plants, especially thermal and nuclear, all over India. With the steady guiding hand of Mr. Chinappa and the executive engineering experience of my father in power generation and distribution, there was no stopping this team which grew quickly to 400 top quality engineers of all disciplines in Bombay. (Later. after his retirement, my dad started the Bangalore operation of TECS which grew from a handful of engineers to over 500 engineers.)

Chinappa and Ganavati were regular visitors to our home in Bhaktavar at the end of Colaba Causeway. The building was owned by the largest private shareholder of Tata, the building group, Shaporji Pallonji. 

The fabulous apartment was a perk which went with dad's job. Our immediate neighbour were the parents of the late Cyrus Mistri, Pallonji and Pat Mistri. Pat was a classmate of my elder brother in Cathedral School.

But I digress, as the children of Chinappa and Ganavati were also regular visitors to our home. The elder daughter. Ranjini, was a classmate of my younger sister, Elizabeth. The younger daughter, Brinda was a lovely little girl.

School photo of Brinda who is on the extreme right. (Photo from Brinda’s Facebook site)

Our paths did not cross for many years until I connected with Brinda's son, Vikram, who was studying in Yale University in the US. He had started a list on internet which connected Cathedralites. (Presently Vikram is SVP, Chief Data and Analytics Offcer in PepsiCo and a member of the Board of Directors of Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment.)

Because of Vikram's pioneering hard work, I started the Seventh Heaven website connecting Cathedralites world-wide with nostalgic stories from our school past. 

Our readership grew by leaps and bounds. It was later turned into this blog. Out of this I started the Seventh Heaven  Google Group  in 2005 for my 1959 classmates, known as the 59ers. 

“This Seventh Heaven Google Group was set up in 2005 by Annikki and Jacob Matthan (Moderators). It had been meant for 59ers from Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai, India, to discuss issues which would lead up to the 50th Year Reunion in November 2009.

Their 50th Year Reunion is over. It was the Mother of All Golden Reunions. It was 7 days of fellowship, fiesta and frolic and fun in Mumbai and Alibaug.”

This Google Group is still going strong as we move to our 65th Reunion, which I hope will be absolutely novel.

I hold the group together. We are now still 67 strong.

Beause of this bond, we were able to organise the Mother of all Golden Reunions in 2009, attended by over 100 classmates and spouses with a week long of events and dinners, and Annikki and I brought out the Coffee Table Directory and we also hosted a Findians evening.

59er Group photo taken at Madhu (w/o Ashok) Kapur's Alibaug home. (Photo Novcember 2009 by late Hasnain  Chinwala, )

Just before that, in October 2009, Brinda and her husband, Anand, a leading cardiovascular doctor in Bombay visited Helsinki. Annikki and I drove down From Oulu to meet them and shared a very pleasant evening with them and Ruki and Devinder Kumar. (Dev had been instrumental in the launch of Nokia Mobile in India and then moved to Nokia Finland.) 

 

49er Yezad Kapadia, his late wife, daughteer Ruki and her sister. from New Zealand, in Helsinki.

Dev's wife, Ruki, is the daughter of Yezad Kapadia, Cathedral School Captain in 1949, who was a regular reader of my Seventh Heaven website and also a member of my Google Group for 59ers and later also this Seventh Heaven blog. 

Brinda was so kind to hand over two books to me, one on her company, SNK, and another on the traditional architecture of Coorg, one of the most beautiful parts of India.

In this blog I will concentrate only on the work of SNK as far as our school is considered.

Many years ago, when Brinda and her team did the renovation of what is now called the Senior School, what at our time was the Boys School, they discovered something hidden.

When I joined school, it was in the 6th Standard. Next to us was the Physics Laboratory. When they started to do the renovation, they found a room between the 6th Standard and the Physics laboratory which had be boarded up many years ago and forgotten. It was a small chapel with beautiful stained glass windows. It had been boarded up to prevent damage due to war.

It was a great find.

There were several other photographs shared which brought back fond memories of our school.

Front entrance

Name plaque

First floor lobby

Inaugural Stone

Chemistry laboratory

School Hall

Staircase to heaven

School quad

School quad

Classroom

Chemistry laboratory

Pictures of the Middle School (formerly the Girls School) and the Junior School (formerly the Kindergarten) were also outstanding pieces of renovation work. These are documented in the SNK publication.

The latest renovation that Brinda posted on Facebook was of Thomas House on DN Road. I produce these pictures I retrieved from Facebook

Brinda and her team.

I am not putting any data of Brinda here as there is a wonderful Wikipedia page about her to which I can add nothing. All I can say is that she is  tribute to Indian women who have succeeded despite male chauvanism and the patriarchal society that has prevailed in our country for generations. 

Compliments to her wonderful late parents and the amazing Coorgi community, which I know so well and who have served our nation in so many wonderful ways.

Special thanks to Brinda's son, Vikram, who put me on my way to be of some small service to our wonderful Cathedralite Community.

(My very first issue of Seventh Heaven in 1996 is a thanks to Vikram Somaya!)

Living and coping with dementia

It is heart breaking to live a tragedy unfolding in front of you, day by day. 

This blog entry tells a story of our lives, Annikki and Jacob, as it is today and the history behind it.

As a postscript to this entry, I have added an AI generated essay about dementia.

Please the full blog at:

https://jmatthan.blogspot.com/2023/09/living-and-coping-with-dementia.html

Outstanding Alumni: Padma Bhushan 54er Rahul Bajaj

My second choice for my Outstanding Alumni Series, Padma Bhushan 54er/58er Rahul Bajaj, is another person who shared two alumni with me - Cathedral and John Connon School in Mumbai and St. Stephen's College in Delhi University.

Rahul was appointed as a Prefect in Standard 10 in school, an honour whim ch two 59ers, late Ashok Kapur and me, share with him. Like me, Rahul was also House Captain - of Savage House! 

Unlike me, he was also brilliant in studies. I was certianly deeply interested in sports but I was a very average student. I was fortunate to do well in my studies. I was no where near becoming 9th rank in the whole of Bombay State, as did Rahul! This is well evident in that Rahul has used his academic brilliance to build his industrial empire and received the Padma Bhushan in  2001 and in 2016 stood 722 in the Forbes List with a wealth of around $2.4 billion!

This is a revealing quote from Rahul which appeared in 2008:

"1946, we shifted for business purposes from Wardha to Mumbai. From then, till I passed out my senior Cambridge, I was in Cathedral School.

I did very well at school and passed out in 1954 with a distinction securing 9th rank in the whole of the then Bombay state. I learnt a great deal at Cathedral. The teaching methods were very good and there was a lot of personal touch.

I became a Prefect in Standard 10 and a Prefect and House Captain in Standard 11 and my classmates always wondered how I could be so good at studying and yet fulfill all these responsibilities. I was also the School Captain in table tennis and boxing. I also debated." (India  Today April 4th 2008.)

When I  arrived in Cathedral School from Bangalore in January 1954, I observed many of my seniors. Being my House Captain, Rahul was an immediate hero in my life. 54ers Antony Ramsinh, Ravi Jaitly and School Captain Sonawala were three others that made a deep impression on this new Cathedralite!

When I joined St.Stephen's College in 1960, when I told the staff, including the then Principal Sircar and Dean Rajpal, that I was from Cathedral School, Bombay, they all told me that I had big footsteps, those of Rahul, to fit into!

Rahul's accomplishments are recorded on the Wikipedia page about him.

I was greatly honoured when I visited Delhi with Annikki in 2009, 64er Deeepak Deshpande organised a get together of Delhi Cathedralites as a token of his respect for me. It was well attended, but what was the greatest tribute was that Rahul, then a Rajya Sabha member, who normally returned to Pune for the weekend, stayed on to attend this evening event. Rahul took the time to ask me a few pertinent questions about my life in Finland and also what India could learn from this small country which was then considered to be the most Innovative in the world!

Passing of Bill Shiri

It is with great sadness that I inform fellow Cathedralites of the passing our beloved Physics teacher Bill Shiri last week.

Bill and Pushpa

Staff photo 

Bill was especially loved by us 59ers. He travelled to India with his wife, Pushpa, in 2009 to attend our Golden Jubilee Reunion.

We joined Bill and Pushpa to celebrate his 85th and his 90the birthday.

Other 59ers as Narsys Irani and Viney Sethi have visited Bill and Pushpa in Toronto.

Thanks to late Hasnain Chinwala (Chinnie) Bill was always close to us, as Chinnie used to visit him frequently, carry news of us 59ers to him and then keeping us informed of dear Bill.

I give the email received from Pushpa about the funeral arrangements for Bill this Friday:

Hello, 

Below are funeral / viewing details for William (Bill) Shiri... 

• There is a web page from the funeral home with details about the viewing / funeral, and options for leaving condolence messages.
• There is a webcast streaming link for those wishing to view the service online (accessible from the web page.)

Andrews Community Funeral Centre Web Page:

• View details about the date(s) and location for the viewing and funeral here: https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/brampton-on/william-shiri-11470932

William Shiri Obituary - Brampton, ON Celebrate the life of William Shiri, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Andrews Community Funeral Centre - Bramalea Chapel. www.dignitymemorial.com



We welcome your presence either online or in-person. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. 

Pushpa.

I do hope as many of you who can take part virtually will do so.

May our dear Bill,  who educated all of us Rest in cricfree.io

Peace. 

Deepest condolences to Pushpa in their family.

Guest Blog: John Billington - Classmaster Std. XIA 1959

I requested the classmaster of Standard XIA in 1959, John Billington, to write the Guest Blog to coincide at the time our 59ers are joining together in Khandala/Lonavala on the old Mumbai-Pune Highway this week at our 60th year Reunion.

(You can see  the picture of the unique "Golden Reunion", Directory of 1959ers which was released at the 50th year Reunion in 2009.)

Not only John, from UK, but also our Physics Teacher, William Shiri, and his wife, Pushpa, from Canada, did make it and attend what is now known as the Mother of Reunions! ".

The picture of most of those who attended oir 2009 Golden Reunion has been included in John's Guest Blog.

From our personal correspondence I learnt that  John is still playing his morning game of tennis!

Thank you John for this Guest Blog contribution.

"Jacob has asked me for some recollections, so here goes: 

The Class of 1959 was my second year of teaching at CBS, as I arrived in Bombay in the middle of the monsoon in 1958 just days after receiving my degree at Oxford. I chose India for my first job because from the age of 16 or 17 in England I had been drawn greatly to India for its spiritual heritage. Young people are often interested in the great unanswerable questions (Why are we here? What is the purpose of life? Why is there so much suffering? etc.) but I was unusual in that I had read Jiddu Krishnamurti while doing my O levels in 1952, and Paramhansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi and Christmas Humphrey's Buddhism in the same year – closely followed by the works of Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna. So I arrived in India not just to teach but to learn. 
From the start I loved India. In few (if any) other countries can you drop into a roadside cafe and find yourself deeply involved in a serious conversation on matters spiritual. Western males especially shy away from talk about the "inner life", preferring the safety of football or politics as topics for conversation. 

The Indian practice of referring even to casually encountered people as bhai or bahaina (brother/sister) struck me as profoundly wise and right, and indicated a way of thinking about other people very different from Western practice. I gave a talk in London three weeks ago about relations between Tibet and China and found myself taking about our "brothers and sisters in Tibet" and the need to persuade "our Chinese brothers and sisters" of the injustice of their treatment of Tibet. I owe the locution to India. 

I was enormously impressed by the CBS students. Their intelligence, commitment to learning and the inter-communal harmony they exemplified were admirable. 1959 was a good time to be in India for the idealism of a recently-independent country was still untarnished and India led the way for a high-minded grouping of non-aligned countries, steering a path between the communist USSR and the capitalist West. That idealism has long since gone and the world is poorer for it, but it was probably China's betrayal of the Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai catch-phrase and the 1962 border war that hastened its, and Nehru's, demise. 

1959 also saw the flight of the Dalai Lama from Tibet to India. A notorious left-wing Bombay rag called BLITZ, probably funded by the communist party, lampooned him mercilessly and was vociferously pro- communist. I bought an old Grammar of Colloquial Tibetan from a bookshop near the Prince of Wales (as it then was) Museum and took the train to Darjeeling to find out more. Sixty years later I am still an advocate for Tibetans to have the right to determine their own future. 
Bombay (as I still think of it) was a fascinating city culturally because of its rich ethnic, religious and linguistic mix. I visited all the temples I could get entry to, attended concerts of Indian classical music and dance, and was a fan of Ustad Vilayat Khan and Mrinalini Sarabai, among others. Oh, and I attended a talk by Krishnamurti at the J.J. School of Art. 

I said I was highly impressed by CBS students. Names and years get muddled up but I enjoyed taking a small number of pupils for A level and among them Statira Guzdar and Yasmin Batliwala from the Cathedral Girls' School joined Madan and Hussain from the Boys' side. They were very bright and a pleasure to teach, as were the O level classes. First names now escape me in many cases but Sethi (Ed: Viney), Ashok Kapur, Parasuraman, Jacob Matthan of course, Dabolkhar (Ed: Vinay), Sabnis, Ajgaonkar, Cyrus Guzdar, David Colaco, Trevor Newnes, Choksi (Ed: Armeane), Stevenson (Ed: Abe), Venkat Kurma, Mark Sopher, O'Halloran and Peter Miovic all come readily to mind – as would others if I saw their names or photographs --- but I will certainly have muddled up people's years. (Ed: Names in bold are 59ers)

 Picture of 59ers at St. Thomas Cathedral Church after the 
2009 Founders Day Service on 14th November 2009. 
(Photo Courtesy 59er Hasnain Chinwala)




 A number of your year I did, of course, meet again ten years ago at your Bombay re-union and Peter Miovic is one with whom I have remained in contact and met a year or two later in Wales, and again this year when he very kindly invited me to visit his native Slovenia – a lovely country, iridescently green from its Alps to the sea, and the highlight of my year's travels. With some staff also I remained in contact until they died, including Rider Salmon, James Clarke, Alberto Zavala and Olpherts Gregory; and I am still in touch occasionally by email with Willie Shiri, and regularly receive messages from Mohan Rao. 

( Picture courtesy 64er Rajiv Ved- 2009)

And I meet Pauline Salmon annually when I visit north Wales to see the Welsh Opera. I have always admired her cheerful outlook and in her late eighties she continues to paint and to exhibit with undiminished creativity. Which reminds me of Lady Marie Temple... But I must stop! 

Faces and memories merge with age but are not forgotten – they are all part of life's rich tapestry. But I remember with affection how kind, polite, intelligent and well-behaved were the boys at CBS. That I have returned frequently to India and treat it as my second home is a measure of your hospitality. My Namastes and Salaams to you all! Floreat CBS!

John Billington (CBS 1958-1961)"