For the Love of India: The Life and Times of Jamsetji Tata by R M Lala

Author:R M Lala [Lala, R M]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: GAPPAA.ORG
Published: 2015-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

However, two committees to look into the details of the institute were formed in the years to come and the final place selected was Bangalore.

The next step was to get an expert to give a report on the scheme formulated to finalize the site and the financial arrangements required for it.

In consultation with the Royal Society in England Dr William Ramsay (the inventor of neon; he was later knighted and became a Nobel Prize winner) was invited by Jamsetji with his wife to tour India and report. Ramsay was overwhelmed by the hospitality he got.

They were first directed to Bangalore, Madras and Roorkee, the other possible locations. Ramsay preferred Bangalore. It was 3000 ft. above sea level and the climate was equable. Curzon was not keen on it.

Ramsay also visited the Elphinstone, St Xavier’s and Grant Medical Colleges in Bombay, but found the teaching even at B.Sc. level not up to London standards.

Before the Ramsays left Bombay for their India tour the Tatas arranged for them a ‘water picnic’ at Elephanta Caves. Jamsetji, Dorab and Mehri and a couple of friends were in a launch, ‘towing behind it a dhow, or something very piratical looking’, as Mrs Ramsay wrote to a friend, that was ‘full of wild-looking persons, whose duties were however no more alarming than to make ices for us to eat on the voyage, and tea on arrival at the island. Returning to Bombay we drove to old Mr Tata’s house to dress and dine there. It is a gorgeous palace, and deserves a letter to itself. It is more like a Berlin hotel than any other place that I have seen. The dining-room had a horse-shoe table, the servants coming up from below and serving from the middle. The table, as we sat on the outside of the horseshoe, could seat thirty to forty people, and we were only a party of twelve. The food was rather rich; but, I fancy, arranged to meet our tastes. There were no table decorations at all. After dinner we went over the house . . .’ Mrs Ramsay mentions a central winter garden, full of statues and other objects of art.

The Tatas found a good Goan cook for the Ramsays’ journey through India. When Mrs Ramsay was unwell he insisted she ate only the food he cooked and threw out everything else. In accordance with the custom, when guests went to dinner their servant accompanied them. A fellow guest at a dinner where the Ramsays were invited said to Mrs Ramsay: ‘Does this man (the Goan cook) starve you? I notice when you help yourself to anything he takes your plate away!’

In Bangalore Dr Ramsay met Sir Seshadri Iyer and, of course, H.J. Bhabha, who looked after them.

After Agra they visited Roorkee and from there went to meet the lieutenant-governor of Punjab, who was camping in a native state across the Sutlej. Lady Ramsay described the occasion. A railway journey brought them within the limits of a native state which they were visiting, but which no lieutenant-governor had visited for twenty-five years.

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