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Sailing back in time

P. Devarajan

IF one has an inclination for a stroll, the best place in Mumbai city is Ballard Estate. On any day, one can walk down its wide pavements without being elbowed by hawkers and watch the large number of rain, flame of the forest and banyan trees with famil ies of squirrels, parrots and warblers keeping company with aged, brown granite office blocs.

The Mumbai Port shuts out a view of the Arabian Sea but that does not act as a disincentive. In contrast, Nariman Point, with its paunchy, suit and tie-front of sea, does not make for a lazy walk as hawkers push one off the pavements onto the roads and s peeding cars dump one back.

In a way, Ballard Estate is a sampler for the rise and the fall of Indian industrialism with the NTC House (North) and NTC (South), Crescent House, and even Neville House taking one back to the days when a news item on the textile industry was a must for the economic newspapers. On par is the sedate Scindia House, opposite Larsen & Toubro House when economic newspapers had a shipping correspondent and shipping was news. Scindia House, with two heavy black anchors on either side of the entrance topped by two brown wheels, was shipping and there are reports of some uncouth Government department buying over the building.

For Mr Balgangadhar Vaikuntrao Nilkund, Scindia House is a heritage building and cannot be sold. ``It's India's maritime History with H in caps,'' he says. May be it could house a maritime museum. The interiors had a style with dark brown period furnitur e beckoning one to use them and now none knows their fate. Scindia House had the legitimate pride of a nationalist having floated the Indian logo on many seas.

Indian shipping history and its various board and sea battles reside in Nilkund who is into the 50th year of serving as the key official of Indian National Shipowners Association (INSA). As old as the Arabian sea at 77, Mr Nilkund cannot down the idea of multinationals running Indian ships. Sipping a glass of rum, the old man quietly said, ``It's not as if I am right and you are wrong. Rather, perspectives have changed. Will multinational shipping companies not pose a security threat? And when the world over shipping is a protected industry, why should India give up even its coastal shipping facilities?''

Nilkund cannot shake Gandhiji out of his library, whom he had met first as a school student in a remote village of north Kanara. ``When that man walked our village everyone -- I mean everyone, the very poor and the very rich -- gave everything, their bes t clothes and women their mangalsutras. It's a wholly different matter the contributions were misused but one cannot blame Gandhiji for that,'' he says with some spirit. He kept quiet and had another sip when Kurup and three of us asked him whether Gandh iji was at all relevant today. It seemed as if Nilkund was deeply hurt. It was at pre-Independence Pune that Nilkund did his masters in Gokhale School of Economics and Law. ``We were poor and when we ran out of cash requested food of our professors. They invited us home and filled our bellies,'' he explained.

Stories of ships, shippers, shipowners and the journalists who typed the news items for their papers came in measured terms. Sesh (B. Seshagiri Rao) of Times of India, Albert of Business Standard, Mulgaonkar of Economic Times and Kurup of Financial Expre ss had one common reference point for any shipping story. It was INSA's Nilkund and this has not changed though new by-lines have replaced the old favourites. Today, Ramki will not object if one says he learnt his shipping from Nilkund and there are othe rs like him. Those days, Nilkund smoked the day drawing hard on his favourite Charminar Gold and then for some reason gave it up two years ago. ``I am afraid to touch a cigarette as then the old habit will surely come back. But the love for an occasional drink has not yet died,'' he says with a wink.

Now it's time for Nilkund to relax. ``I read all sorts of detective novels as I am done with classics. I am now a relic or an antique trying my best to keep the sheen,'' says the man who still regularly takes the train from Andheri to Cuffe Parade.