Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
humiliated in far worse ways when Sir Basil Finch-Cholmondely,
or some such, served as secretary.
I assured Mansoor I didn't mind in the least. With his Indian
reverence for hospitality, he was genuinely upset that I'd been
treated so discourteously. An elegant, sophisticated man in a shabby,
crude city, he was all the more determined to make what he did an
exception to depressing rule and he did a laudable job of it. We agreed
to have breakfast at the Tollygunge Club the next morning, a Sunday.
The Tollygunge was another Calcutta landmark left over from the
Raj. Sir William Cruikshank founded it in 1895, on land that had
once belonged to Tipu Sultan. Less venerable than the Bengal, it is
in far, far better shape today - thanks to another Calcutta institution:
Bob Wright. Like Rajasthan's Colonel Tod, Bob Wright embodies
what little was good about the British presence in India. Born there
in 1924, he left in 1927, to return when his fellow Brits were heading
swiftly the other way - in 1947. He worked for one of the large
British corporations that were determined politics would not get in
the way of mutually advantageous business, and he eventually took
on the task of managing the Tollygunge, which, as he approaches
his seventies, he continues to do with the same flair and efficiency
as ever.
Mansoor and his friend, the head of public relations at the Taj,
were both members of this club, so at least I knew we could get in.
Indeed, the Taj Bengal had a standing arrangement that all its guests
could use the club's extensive sporting facilities.
Calcutta had just opened its first underground railway in 1992, a
source of enormous civic pride, and the line ran as far as Tollygunge,
so it was suggested I take this opportunity to see one of the city's few
recent achievements. The thought of riding
beneath
Calcutta,
though, horrified me. Being aboveground was bad enough, but
plunging through its bowels, even in the newest, cleanest train on
earth, was something I could not contemplate. We drove.
After the crumbling, steamed, and frenzied misery of the city, the
Tollygunge impressed me - a stately mansion, set in lush grounds,
with outbuildings and guest rooms facing a golf course that could
have been transplanted from Surrey. That morning there was to be
