Tag Archives: Dr.K.Javeed Nayeem

Gunning For ‘Gun House’ Once Again!

Mysuru, KARNATAKA :

GunHouse01MPOs26sept2018

Yesterday evening as I was turning the pages of SOM to scan the headlines, I literally jumped out of my skin in excitement upon stumbling on the news that the Gun House Imperial Restaurant that used to once function from the Palace Gun House was soon going to throw its doors open once again to customers after a gap of thirty long years. I do not know what this bit of news is going to mean to other people but to me it perhaps is the beginning of the coming true of a long cherished dream and the end of a sense of anguish that had been gnawing at my heart strings ever since the hotel suddenly shut its doors without as much as a hint that it was going out of business.

My first memory of this once very beautiful landmark of our city is from the early sixties when I used to go there once a year in the company of Prof. M. Salar Masood, the younger brother of my maternal grandfather Alhaj M. Khaleelur Rahman. He was a Professor of Geography at Manasagangothri and it was he who usually took all the children of the large household on frequent excursions to the Palace, the Jagan Mohan Art Gallery, the Zoo, the Brindavan Gardens and Srirangapatna.

The large household that I am talking about was more of a hostel than a home as at any given time it used to have at least a dozen children of all shapes, sizes and ages! This was the result of my grandfather’s penchant for inviting all his relatives, especially those from the Malnad areas, to leave their children under his care here in Mysuru for their education. That is how I became an inmate of this warm and cozy nest of immeasurable happiness when I joined the Good Shepherd Convent School in the year 1960.

Our visits to the Palace Gun House used to be an annual affair to watch the ceremonial firing of the canons housed there to mark the beginning of the Dasara festivities. It used to be a very exciting moment with all of us expectantly staring with unblinking eyes at the red-turbaned guard on horseback at the Southern Gate of the Palace. Upon a cue from the Durbar Commandant that the Maharaja had arrived, he would raise the red flag which used to be the signal for the head of the battery to shout “Fire” at the top of his voice. That was when the gunners in green tunics and red turbans would start touching the firing holes of their loaded canons with smouldering wicks in a sequence. The almost blinding orange flash would be accompanied by a deafening boom followed by a thick cloud of acrid black smoke that I would find intoxicating!

The batch of seven cannons would be reloaded twice to complete the volley of the twenty-one shots that had to be fired for the occasion. And, this reloading had to be done only after thoroughly rinsing the barrels with cold water and brushing them dry once again. This precaution was most essential to ensure that there were no traces of smouldering gunpowder inside that could prematurely set off the powder charge the moment it was rammed down the barrel!

A team of City Armed Reserve (CAR) Police personnel conducting dry practice of cannon firing at the Mysore Palace
A team of City Armed Reserve (CAR) Police personnel conducting dry practice of cannon firing at the Mysore Palace

Somewhere down the years, for some inexplicable reason, these seven cannons along with their four accompanying ox-drawn powder carriages were shifted to the long verandah of the Palace where they now stand all through the year except when they are taken to the Bannimantap Grounds on Vijayadashami Day for the breathtaking Torchlight Parade that is undoubtedly the pride of our annual Dasara!

Now, it is not just for the annual firing of the cannons that the Palace Gun House had become dear to me. Long after the show had stopped there and well after I had grown up into a man from the school boy that I was, I found myself drawn to it for a completely different reason. Very soon after I joined the Mysore Medical College to do my MD in Medicine the Mysore royal family converted the place into a restaurant. Because of its unique ambience and the excellent food it served, most of our unit get-together and dinners used to take place there. Then, when I got married, soon after passing my MD, it also became the favourite dining-out place for me and my wife, especially on every Saturday evening!

Incidentally, on the days when my practice was unusually good, I would invariably take her to the Metropole Hotel, which was again in a building that was once a royal Guest House. These two places were the ones that served the best chilli chicken and egg fried rice, which accompanied by some chilled Torino and the timelessness of each others’ company  was nothing but pure Nirvana for the two of us!

Gun House also had a live band where Sebastian Deniz, my favourite singer, used to perform with his fellow musicians on weekends. Fondly known to all as ‘Singing Seby,’ he knew all my favourite Jim Reeves and Frank Sinatra numbers so well that without the slightest need to be told he would start singing them the moment he would see us walking in! He had a voice that could make even unwilling hearts melt which was why perhaps we used to see so many boys taking their still undecided lady loves there for dinner!

Along with Seby’s voice the irresistible chilli chicken too perhaps played its part in breaking down any remaining traces of indecision and resistance to the proposals they made! So when the magical Gun House suddenly shut shop, it was sudden heartbreak for my wife and me and ever since then it has always been a bitter-sweet experience to drive past it. Sweetness from the warm recollection of the almost magical time we once had there and bitterness that it was the end of an era that was so dear to us! Hopefully, the clock is now all set to turn back and the good old days of our nostalgia are poised to come back once again!

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> Columns: Over A Cup of Evening Tea  / by Dr.K. Javeed Nayeem MD – email:kjnmysore@rediffmail.com / September 21st, 2018

Anjuman-E-Hadeqathul Adab Hosts : 12th Eid Milan Programme

Mysuru, KARNATAKA :

Viqar Ahmed Sayeed, Asst. Editor, Frontline Magazine, delivering the keynote address at Eid Milan prog. yesterday. Picture right shows a section of audience.
Viqar Ahmed Sayeed, Asst. Editor, Frontline Magazine, delivering the keynote address at Eid Milan prog. yesterday. Picture right shows a section of audience.

Mysuru :

Anjuman-e-Hadeqathul Adab, Mysuru, had organised its 12th Eid Milan programme at Abids Convention Hall in Bannimantap, here yesterday.

The programme started with the recitation of the verses of the Holy Quran by the Anjuman Treasurer M. Noor Ulla Shariff which were translated into English by Ajuman member Muazzam Ahmed Khan Tanveer.

Anjuman member Anees Ghori welcomed the guest and invitees.

Syed Shafi Ahmed, President of the Anjuman, presented a report on the activities and the aims and objectives of Anjuman and paid rich tributes to the founders who established this Anjuman to promote brotherhood and communal harmony in the city of Mysuru. He also lauded the work of the past office-bearers and members.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem, former President of the Anjuman, said that only when we are concerned about our neighbour’s pain and problems and embrace one another forgetting that we are from different religions that we become the true followers of our religion.

He cited the example of how in Chhattisgarh, a Muslim by name Razak Khan perform the last rites of Santosh Singh, his neighbour, according to the traditions and customs of Santosh Singh’s religion and one more instance of how in Colaba during Ganesh Chaturthi festival, on a Friday when Hindus saw their Muslim Brethren performing Juma Prayer in a open space outside the Masjid under the scorching sun, they invited them to offer their Namaz in a pendal erected in front of the Temple.

Anjuman member Dr. Irfan Ahmed Riazi presented some Urdu couplets on the present scenario in society.

Viqar Ahmed Sayeed, Assistant Editor, Frontline Magazine, in his keynote address, stressed on the need for establishing communal harmony in society and fostering good relations between members of different communities.

Hazrath Moulana S.M. Abbas Sajjadi, speaking on the occasion, requested Muslims to spread the message of love, brotherhood and communal harmony not just amongst themselves but also across other communities respecting all other religions.

The Moulana lauded the services of the Anjuman in spreading the message of communal harmony which is need of the hour.

Srihari, a member of the Alert Citizens Trust (ACT), speaking on the occasion, stressed on the need to not only protect communal harmony but also the need to make our environment greener by planting more trees. He urged each family to plant at least five saplings and nurture them.

Zee TV Kannada Comedy Khiladi-2008 winner and International Mimicry Artiste Ramesh Babu entertained the audience with his mimicry and jokes and greeted the members of the Anjuman for their efforts to spread the message of peace, brotherhood and harmony.

Anjuman Vice-President S. Moinuddin Pasha proposed a vote of thanks.

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore / Home> General News / November 28th, 2016

Over a cup of evening tea : A brush with Royalty recollected

Mysuru, KARNATAKA :

Prof M. J. Sadiq with the silver tray. Detailing on the silver tray
Prof M. J. Sadiq with the silver tray. Detailing on the silver tray

by Dr. K. Javeed Nayeem

Mysuru :

Today I’m writing this article about Royal weddings of long ago from a place that seems like it has been caught in a weird time warp. I say this because our Coffee Estate where I am on a holiday right now has been without a working telephone landline for the past three months. The best mobile phones too just become expensive paperweights, unable to serve their intended purpose. Although privileged to be located amid lush sylvan surroundings in the midst of the best that nature has to offer, most estates like ours are tucked in the nooks and crannies of the hills where mobile signals simply fail to trickle through. Electricity too is a commodity that cannot be had for the asking just because you have a meter and a line hooked to an electric pole.

Nobody who is entrusted with the responsibility of keeping these facilities working has been able to summon the will or the sense of commitment to do anything about it despite all the hue and cry raised by subscribers who are cut off from a civilisation that thrives on constant wireless connectivity and only keeps complaining constantly of insufficient speed! After I complete this article I’ll have to drive ten kilometres with my laptop to the nearest village where a sufficiently strong mobile signal becomes available for me to mail it to the SOM office.

This business too is not as simple as it seems. I’ll have to wait patiently in my car and keep a watch on the signal strength before pressing the send button precisely at the right moment. It’s a little like skeet shooting, thankfully a sport at which I happen to be pretty good! Well, going back just a little bit from the time zone where I am now standing I would like to draw your attention to how things were in the forties in Royal Mysore.

Girija Madhavan, a multi-talented lady who sometimes takes readers down the memory lane with her nostalgic writings and paintings, recently talked of the way Royal weddings used to be held (SOM dated 20th June, 2016). She recalled how her late father M. Venkatesh used to attend the Durbars of the Maharaja and she has also sent a picture of the silver salver on which the wedding invitations used to be placed before being handed over to the VIP invitees. My late maternal grandfather Alhaj M. Khaleelur Rahman, then a prosperous merchant on Ashoka Road, was a person who was very close to the Royal family and who used to be invited to Dasara Durbars and all the Royal weddings and other functions that used to take place during his time. His son, Prof. M.J. Sadiq, my maternal uncle, who used to teach Zoology at St. Philomena’s College, still has in his possession the salver on which his father received the invitation to the weddings of the two sisters of the Maharaja held in the year 1941.

Weighing exactly 350gms and made of 97% pure silver by C. Krishnaiah Chetty and Sons of Bangalore, its purity and paternity are stamped on the reverse. It is very similar to the one in possession of Girija Madhavan although slightly different in shape. Incidentally, my uncle, Prof. Sadiq is a very meticulous person who is a sort of chronicler of all events in our family besides being the curator and caretaker of the family heirlooms. If you want to know what the cost of onions or sugar or rice used to be in any given year ever since he started wielding a pen probably in the mid-forties, he will turn the pages of his record books and give you the exact figures in less time than it takes for the Google search engine to do the job!

He has also preserved all the invitation cards of all the weddings that have taken place in the family ever since he was a little boy. Incidentally, he found a mention in Star of Mysore last week for being the first person to suggest in a letter to the editor three and a half decades ago that the Hardinge Circle would be a good place to install the statue of H. H. Sri. Jayachamaraja Wadiyar.

R. Kasturi Raj Chetty, who became the eighth Vice-Chancellor of the Mysore University (1948-50), used to be very close friend of my grandfather and the two would attend most public functions together including the ones at the Palace. The wife of the VC for whom my late grandmother, Zaibunnissa was a favourite friend, would come in a separate chauffeur driven car to pick up my grandmother on her way to attend such events. It appears the two ladies even used to do their shopping for silk saris together. It certainly must have seemed very unusual at that time for a lady from a tradition bound Muslim household to be seen socialising as she did when most of her counterparts led a home-bound existence. ‘Good old Days’ indeed!

e-mail: kjnmysore@rediffmail.com

source: http://www.starofmysore.com / Star of Mysore /  Home> Feature Articles / July 08th, 2016