The Queen of England in Bombay: a glimpse into the Life of Leonora Julia Raymond’

Hootoksi Tyabji, Shah Alam, October 2020

Corona Virus, Masks, Social distancing, Lock Down, New Normal, Pandemic, are words we seldom used before, but now they pop up with great regularity in our all our conversations around the world!

Everyone is affected, some more than others, millions have been infected and thousands have lost their lives…………there has been so much misery, pain and suffering and in the midst of it all, lives my positive, smiling, bubby, happy, 99 year old friend, Nora.

She lives all by herself in an apartment in Mumbai with her indomitable will, her love of life, her positive spirit, and her ability to adapt and make do with whatever life throws at her.

In the early days of the lockdown I called her one day for a chat and expressed my concern about her being all alone and she laughed and said, “honey, I’m never alone – there are three of us, I, me and myself! Besides, I am blessed with so many wonderful friends who take care of my needs, I am so grateful to them all!”

I first met Nora in Mumbai in 1969 when Robert and I were dating. She was always at his house, elegant and regal with her blue tinted hair, speaking the Queens English. She was mum Alice’s best friend and very much a part of the Tyabji family.

I was drawn to her feisty spirit, her indomitable will, and her ability to tell a good story and to make us all laugh. The years rolled by, we moved all over the world, Alice & Amin migrated to Australia, and Nora continued to be a part of our lives and to our children she remains “Joker Aunty” to this day!

Though I have known and loved Nora all these years, I did not know much about her life. On my last visit to Mumbai in February this year, I was privileged to talk at length with her and she willingly shared her story and her experiences with me. Age has not dimmed her memory, she is sharp as a tack and vividly described places, incidents and people drawn from the rich tapestry of her life!

Let me attempt to share some of what she told me.

Leonara Julia Raymond was born on January 10^th, 1921 in Anand, Gujarat, and was the last of five children. Her siblings were George, Herbert, Reginald, Arthur, Alfred, and Phoebe Esther known as Sweet because when she was born her father looked at her and said “she is my sweetie” and so the name stuck and that is what she was called her entire life!

George and Herbert died before Nora was born but she remembers stories told to her by her mother who never recovered from the loss of her sons. There had been a devastating flood in Baroda in which the family lost their home. The two little boys hung on to the legs of an upturned table that served as a raft and were floated out to safety only to die a while later of diphtheria and cholera which they contracted within a month of each other. Nora’s mother mother was very protective of her only surviving son Reg, she didn’t send him to school till he was eight years old because she was afraid he would catch something and die.

Nora’s father George Herbert Raymond (affectionately known as Pops) was born in Surat to a Missionary Family and was baptized in the Church of England. His parents wanted him to become a doctor and much against his will, sent him to the famous Christian Medical College in Vellore. When the practical training began, he could not stand the sight of blood and he was so traumatized by it, he was determined to go home. Without thinking, he jumped on the “Plague train” carrying hundreds of victims of the black plague to Surat, his hometown. Fortunately, he wasn’t infected and soon was able to join the Government’s Utility Services. He was assigned to the Railways and sent to Baroda. George was a gentle and kind man, loved by his subordinates as he always took care of them and was considerate and kind. He rose to the rank of Superintendent and served in different parts of the country. He adored his children and loved playing cricket and other games with them.

Nora’s mother was Esther Fox born to a British Army Pensioner in Mao, a hill station in the easternmost part of India. Most of the trading routes to Manipur pass through Mao.

Esther was strong and capable, she played tennis like a man, grew her own food, knitted, sewed and crotched for all the family. She always made do with whatever was at hand! She was a no-nonsense sort of woman who raised her children to be strong and independent. Though money was scarce she was resourceful and creative in her management of it, and the children were never left wanting. They learned early on in life that “you have to cut your coat to suit your cloth!” The lessons they learned from their mother, stood them in good stead for the rest of their lives!

As a child Reg was weak and sickly, and the doctor suggested he be given cow’s milk every day. This was not affordable but in true Esther fashion she found a solution! She bought a lame cow which was being sold cheaply, and she took such good care of it that it produced all the milk Reg needed and more. She then went on to buy a buffalo who produced even larger quantities of milk. She wanted to share the milk with Father Umbridge, a German Jesuit pastor who ran an orphanage next door; but he had plenty of his own and suggested she sell it to the Polson’s Dairy. At first she was nervous about this, as she had never worked for money before, but never one to be deterred, she soon cultivated the ethics of fair business practices which she carried with her for the rest of her life!

Polson’s was the first dairy farm to produce butter in India in the early 1900s. It was set up in Anand by a Parsi entrepreneur Mr Pestonji Edulji Dalal whose nickname was Polly, hence the Anglified brand name Polsons!

In addition to being a wonderful mother and wife, Esther was empathetic and had a natural ability to council and help both Indian and European women with their problems. They would wait for her at the Club or make an appointment to come and see her to ask for her advice on domestic and personal issues.

With Pops in the railways, the family moved around a fair bit and Nora’s childhood was spent in Anand, Gungapore City (in Rajhisthan) and Ratlam Junction in Central India. The Great Depression of 1930 impacted India and the Railways severely, and in 1936 when Nora was 15 years old, Pops was made redundant and given his Provident Fund and Gratuity, the princely sum of Rs 24,000 for all his years of service! This was all the family had when they moved to Bombay. They rented an apartment in Colaba for Rs 150 per month plus Rs 12 for the garage and Nora lives there to this day!

Nora reminisces about her childhood. . .

“In Gungapore Pops was the railway traffic superintendent and we had our own bungalow. It had a back verandah which we could use as a study and we called it a Jaffrey, with wooden slats. The dining room opened off that and there was a big bedroom and a dressing room for the ‘Sahib” (Sir) because he never dressed in his wife’s room. Then we had another verandah with a storeroom on the side where we kept tins of kerosene, oil and grains on shelves or on the floor. The storeroom had a lock and key which was never removed. In the kitchen we had a Meat Safe, a wooden cupboard with two drawers at the top and some shelves. There was netting on the front and side and the legs sat in four little cups of water to keep the ants away.

We had no flush toilets, just a covered container in a small room that was some distance away from the house. The night soil was removed everyday by a man whose job it was to do that.

There was no electricity in our house, we had beautiful oil lamps with a glass funnel, and we cooked on ‘chulas’ a traditional Indian stove made of cement which was built into the wall of the kitchen. We fed it with coal and during the Great Depression we collected the coal that fell off the steam engines!

We had cook Curzon who hailed from Baroda and worked for Pops from an incredibly young age. He was a part of our family and served us till the day he died!

Water was carried to our house from the Railway station in a ‘Mussack’ a leather water bag made from the whole skin of a goat. It was stored in a cement tank, but we had a bath in a big oval zinc tub with two handles on each side. The bath water was also carried over, and one time I remember jumping in it, displacing much of the water which had to be filled again! It probably took 4-5 Mussacks to fill up the tub and I promised never to jump like that again!

In the summer months we had “Punkha Coolies” whose only job it was to pull the strings on large Punkhas (Fans) suspended from the ceilings. They were made from palm fronds and cane about 10-12 ft in length and rounded at the edges. Our Punkhawallah was called Sagan and he sat all day with his back to the wall and the string from the fan tied to his toe, moving his leg up and down so that the palm fronds gave us a lovely cool breeze!

The bungalow had an exceptionally large compound where my mother grew vegetables and fruits and we had pigs and fowls. We grew potatoes, onions, all sorts of ‘bhaji’ (spinach) carrots, eggplants, chilies, pears, and Mulberries black and green. Oh! They were so delicious I can taste them now!

All of us had jobs to do and it was my job to feed the chickens and I loved to do it. I had my very own pony when I was just a little girl and I called her Diana. I also remember we called our pig Dush Dush and our goat Nanny

Next door to us was Percy, the 12-foot python who lived with Dr Bond mostly under his grand piano in the living room. He was allowed all over and could be seen slithering around the house. He found it as a baby in the jungles surrounding our properties. Eventually the London zoo offered to buy Percy, so BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) flew it over!

We would wake up in the morning and run around in our little “Chuddies” (panties) and vests which were buttoned on with two front buttons and three buttons on the side which you undid if you had to go to the loo. There was no elastic in those days! We hardly wore dresses, but I remember being so excited on my 10^th birthday when my mother made me a dress. It was either cerise or pink and it had a little frill around with petal like things over the bodice and little pom poms which mother made. For my birthday I got a paper bag tied with string and I had to bash it with a stick. When it burst, sweeties fell out and we were so delighted to grab them! On our birthdays we had a special treat, an orange or raspberry drink which gave us a red moustache which made us laugh our heads off!!!

We played cricket and one or two of us who didn’t have a bat, used a stick! We had girls’ and boys’ teams and the boys dressed in girls’ clothes and the girls in boys and it was so much fun! We also played seven tiles. The tiles were bits of broken ‘chatties’ (pieces of clay from flower pots) scattered on the ground which you had to pick up and make into a pile of seven, before a tennis ball hit you! Pops was always on the girls’ team and we won because he would hide a chatty in his pocket and pop it on the pile to make up seven when no one was looking! I loved playing games with Pops!

My mother taught Sweets and me to knit little black booties when I was around 4 years old and she taught us to crochet too! When Sweets was 6, she crotched a bag with checks in yellow and blue, with turquoise beads and a flap and she won a prize at an exhibition in Poona!

When I was five, I learned how to use a sewing machine from watching the Muslim “durzee” (tailor) who sat all day long on our verandah and sewed. One day when he wasn’t looking, I used his machine and my finger got caught under the needle and bled profusely. Nobody had any sympathy for me, mother did what she always did when we were hurt. She tore a piece of cloth from Pop’s shirt, slapped some turmeric or CULUX Ointment on the wound and bound it up! I never shed a tear and continued sewing all my life!

I was sent to Kimins Boarding school in Panchgani when I was 6 for one year and then to Nainital when I was 8 but very soon Sweet and I had to leave school because there was no money to pay for Reg’s college education and being a boy, he had to be properly educated. My parents borrowed money and mother paid back fifty rupees every month to an engine driver who had loaned it to them. Though my formal education was cut short, I was never resentful, that word didn’t exist in our vocabulary! I had the greatest and the best education in the University of Life!

I used to love travelling with my family in our own saloon car on the railways. It had four sleeping berths and a little sit out with a table and chairs for meals. It had a bathroom attached and was just like a compact home, they unbuckled us on a siding, wherever and whenever we wanted to get off the train!

When I was a child, we walked everywhere, or we rode our bikes! There was the Indian Institute Club and the European Institute Club, we frequented both, we walked to church on Sunday and to the store called Hatinboy, where we would buy tins of jam and devour them in one go! My favourite was dark plumb and Sweet loved Lemon and apricot!

If we had to go far, we used the touring cars which were like taxis. They had a metal frame with a canvas hood that folded, and you could sit on it. There was a carrier for your luggage at the back.

I remember being so excited when I first saw a motorcar in Gungapore! It belonged to the Parsi Doctor Pardiwalla. When he saw us children cheering, clapping, and jumping up and down, he took us for a ride! What a thrill it was! I still remember the excitement of my first motor car ride!

The time of the depression was a terrible period for everyone and especially for my family and I saw the compassion that my parents had for people who had less than we did. Nobody around us went hungry, pops would bring workers from the railway to our house and my mother fed them chicken offal and dal on our back verandah. We were always happy with whatever we had, always laughing, and having fun!

I want to tell you a story about my grandfather when he lived with us in Gungapore. Do you know the Babul tree? It has exceptionally long thorns. The branches would be cut and used as a hedge to keep the animals out from coming into our compound and grazing on whatever we had in our garden. Mother didn’t like that hedge and she ordered the mali (gardener) to burn it down which he reluctantly did.

Along with the smoke that rose around 14-18 cobras came slithering out of that hedge and there was quite a commotion about. Grandpa had fought in seven wars around the world and even though he was retired from the army, he always wore his ammunition boots and grey woolen socks because he said they kept the heat off his feet! He went straight up to the cobras and with his boot, he ground 10 to 12 of them and crushed them to death. He wasn’t fearful that they were going to bite, no, no he knew where to get them!

When Electricity first came to Gungapore, it was only wired to the railway station and the European Institute Club. I remember Mr Ward who was an electrical engineer and was called “Bijli” (light) by the locals. We never had electricity in the house when I was a child, my first experience of living with electricity was when we moved to Bombay.

I was 15 years old in 1936 when Mum, Pops Sweet and I moved to Bombay. We found an apartment in Broacha House on Garden Road, where I live to this day! I could write the history of all the people who have come and gone in this apartment building!

When we moved, Reg was at College in London studying civil engineering. Every week on a Friday afternoon, the postman would bring a letter and if mother was in her bath, he would wait for her to finish so that he could hear her read what the “Baba” had to say. We had a tin box especially made to carry 24 bottles (1lb each) of mango chutney which was carried onto the ship and delivered to Reg by some kind Parsi friends who would always offer to carry these for him. Afterall the poor boy was living on English Khanna, (food) how could he stand it?

We settled into life in Bombay and our new home very quickly and Mother immediately began to look for opportunities for us to make some extra money. All three of us were good seamstresses and the first investment she made was in a Singer Sewing Machine, there it stands in my living room and I use it to this day! It still works beautifully!

We met an Austrian lady who owned a shop across from the Taj Hotel where she sold clothes that she brought over from Europe. We were shocked to find that she sold a dress for 45 rupees which was a lot of money in those days! She suggested that we make clothes to sell and we thought that was a great idea! We discovered Happy Bookstore which was opposite the Museum and we bought paper patterns for dresses which we cut out. We then embellished them with smocking and embroidery, and we became so good at it we could make a blouse with the smocking in a day and we had lots of orders “

Though the income from the clothes was good, Esther wanted her girls to have a profession and she thought hairdressing would be a good one for them as they were both highly creative and good with their hands. About a year later, she approached the owner of an incredibly famous hairdressing salon owned and run by a gentleman from New Zealand called Mr Morram. His shop was known as NZ and he agreed to train Nora and Sweet in hairdressing. Soon after their training, Mr Morram had to leave Bombay and sell his shop and this was a wonderful opportunity for Esther to set her girls up with their own business. She secretly sold all her jewelry and with the proceeds she was able to buy over the business for her daughters and the Saloon was proudly called “RAY”. She became the self-appointed receptionist so she could keep an eye on Sweet and Nora. Very soon Ray’s boasted the reputation of being one of the finest salons in Bombay where the who’s who of the city came to be coiffured!

Curls were the fashion of the day and were rolled on a pencil not on rollers! Rays had a new perming machine which had been invented and patented by Mr Morram in Australia. There were special clips heated on an electrical rod and the curls were kept in place using “Gumtragican”

The Salon was open from 8 AM to 8 PM a 12-hour workday. Nora recollects, “We had important ladies coming to us for their hair. All the heads of the film companies, Metro-Goldwyn Mayer, Warner Brothers, the Governor’s wife, and the Military advisor’s wife. We had a particularly good clientele and they valued us because we didn’t gossip!”

Sweet married Anderieesz, a Burger gentleman from Ceylon and she left the Salon soon after around 1948. Through the years thereafter, Nora hired several ladies to help her, but it was always difficult to get and keep good staff.

Nora’s hands were always busy. If she wasn’t doing hair, she was knitting and crocheting. “I could do 33 stiches in a pattern, 24 rows of 36 stiches everyone different, and I could do it in the dark and not look at the pattern, just feel it. I made things to order and there were never enough hours in my day!

We were in Bombay when everybody was busy doing war work and I went to help with the prisoners of war who were released from Japan and the Far East. If you could have seen them! They were in the most pitiable condition, if you touched them your finger went into their skin and made a hole, and it took an hour for it to come up again; it was malnutrition. These men had their spirits broken! I used to take my hairdresser kit and do their hair for them”

When Nora was around 21, her father contracted TB and sadly passed away.

The Saloon began to flourish and for the first time ever, the family had expendable income which Esther used to fulfil her dream! She bought her first racehorse, a London Tan from a young man Paul, who lived downstairs. Nora remembers him saying ‘money is the root of all evil but give me a dish of it!’ he sold his horse cheaply, as he was in a rush to go back home to England.

“Mother boarded the horse at the racecourse stables for around twenty-five rupees a month and that included food and care! We had a young boy jockey called Singh who had been riding her. The trainer wanted an English jockey, but that didn’t work out as the horse had an empathy with Singh who even won a race or two. Though I wasn’t a partner or an owner of a horse, one time they allowed me to lead in the London Tan and I felt so proud doing it! I suppose they thought ‘she’s a pretty young thing, it won’t do any harm!’ My mother had four or five horses, but I can’t remember their names. Red and yellow were her colours! it was quite incredible that the week before she died, she sold every one of them and she also made the shop over to me. It was as if she knew her time had come, and she left everything in perfect order for Reg and me!

She passed when I was around thirty, she had cancer and Reg nursed her lovingly till the very end. After she died, he came to stay with me. On his return from England with a degree in Civil Engineering he had a very difficult time getting a steady job as the country was Indianizing and Reg with his gold medal and his Englishness was viewed with envy and some suspicion; he did manage to get jobs with well-known architects and he went to Bilai to work on the building of a steel factory. But he was too trusting and was cheated by the man he worked with and he eventually came back to Bombay penniless. Reg was a quiet man, a loner but very clever and he lived with me till the day he died in 1985”

Nora first met Alice (Rob’s mum) when she walked into her Saloon to get her hair done. All the years before that, mum went to an Italian hairdresser called Nino. When he suddenly died, a friend of hers, Aunty May, recommended she try Ray’s Saloon. Not only did she find a good hairdresser, she found and made a friend for life.

“Alice was so reliable and so sincere, so honest and we gelled, I think it was the cosmic forces that pulled us so close together. I have had the best of friends all my life and I still am so blessed that my friends children and their children are still here for me; but Alice was uniquely important to my life and I will be forever grateful to her for being there for me. I did a lot for her too and was instrumental in helping them to sell their shares and get their monies out of Pakistan. I also helped with the sale of their apartment in Bombay and their relocation to Australia.”

Nora ran Rays Saloon for 65 years and finally decided to stop the hairdressing business when she was around 80 but she didn’t shut shop! She converted the business into an exhibition gallery for paintings but found the space she had was insufficient and so she switched to selling garments for a while and she gave that up too and finally retired at 85!

Nora never married because she was always so busy, she never had the time! “I had lots of boyfriends and two offers of marriage which were business offers from a Gujarati barrister from Kings Lane who moved to America and a Bengali English educated gentleman who was the director of a European branch of a company.”

I asked Nora to tell me of the Bombay of her youth and this is what she had to say:

“I remember the train coming by the seaside along Backbay past the Wellington Mews where we could see the horses at the racecourse and up to Colaba Railway station. At the end of the bridge, it branched off to the Cuffe Parade which was a Parade ground. There were beautiful benches and ironworks on the side. Grandma would take us to Backbay and we would paddle in the water. We rode in beautiful horse-drawn carriages!”

Sweet’s two daughters, Nora’s nieces and her only family, Christine and Julia live in the UK. They have often urged Nora to move there so that she would be closer to them; but for Nora, leaving India was never an option! “no, no I never wanted to go to England, I had my shop and I love it here. I like to see people on the streets and everywhere around me”

Bombay with all its hustle and bustle, its filth and its bureaucracy is the city Nora has known and loved and her decision to stay put is one that she has never regretted!

Nora is just 3 months short of celebrating her 100^th birthday and I asked her what her secret to keeping so fit and well was. She said, “Honey, there are three things you need to have - Enough sleep, good toiletry habits and a sense of humour!”

Nora has embraced her life fully and has lived every day of her 99 years with joy – her positive spirit is infectious, and she has been a wonderful friend and mentor and has helped many cope with the trials in their lives. She gave of her time freely despite her busy schedule and she is there for whoever needs her to this day!

She always says, “what you can’t cure, you must endure!” “Money buys and money separates” “what goes around, comes around” and “My worship is being Kind”

She is thankful for her maid Anita (Nita) who in the early days of the Pandemic braved the lockdown to come and work for her; she is eternally grateful for her dearest friend Alice, and for all her other good friends and their children who are looking after her now with so much love and care. Afterall when they were growing up, they did think she was the Queen of England!

Gandhiji said, ‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable Will’

No truer words than these to describe our Dearest Nora, Joker Aunty, the Queen of England!

Nora's 100'th Birthday, 10 January 2021 (click to read about this momentous event)