My Parents Alice and Amin Tyabji
Robert Tyabji, Shah Alam, June 2020
The Swiss Community News magazine of November 2006 of the Swiss Club of New South Wales, Australia, encapsulated my mother's story thus:
This time we have interviewed Alice Tyabji-Gimmi who has led a very varied and interesting life. She grew up in Switzerland, then moved to Bombay for nearly 50 years, and finally arrived in Sydney about 20 years ago. She celebrated her 95’th birthday last month and is still very active and takes an active interest in everything that is going on - The Editor
When Alice Gimmi was born in Zurich-Wipkingen on 5 September 1911, the fourth of five children of a Tapezierer (upholsterer), nobody would have imagined that she would live her life on three continents. As a child, she attended primary and secondary schools in Zurich, later learning dressmaking. A frail and pale teenager, Alice's mother found her a job in Arosa after she had completed her apprenticeship. "The mountain air will improve your health" she said. Alice returned to Zurich a year later, to be employed as a dressmaker by the fashion house, Grieder, and in 1933, she started her own dressmaking business. It was the same year that she met her husband. Read the whole article...
My mother Alice Mina Tyabji nee Gimmi was born on 5 September 1911 in Zurich. Her parents, Adolf Gimmi and Hedwig Gimmi (nee Trondle) had four daughters, Hedy (Hedwig), Clarli (Clara), Alice and Bethli (Elizabeth), and a son, Dolf (Adolf). They lived on the third floor of a 5-storey apartment building at 278 Nordstrasse in the Wipkingen district of Zurich.
As a young woman my mother was an expert dressmaker. Later, she moved into embroidery, knitting, cross stitch, crochet and other forms of needlework, skills she retained till she was well into her 102'nd year. She was a staunch Presbyterian and brought my sister and me up as Presbyterians (Church of Scotland).
My father Amin Mohsin Tyabji was born in Bournmouth, England, into a family of lawyers, judges, educationists, social workers, and freedom fighters. His interest in science and chemistry led him to enroll in Zurich University's doctorate programme in organic chemistry under Professor Paul Karrer, a 1937 Nobel Lauriate in the field of organic chemistry, molecular biology and structural biochemistry.
Alice met Amin in 1933 at a University ball as he was completing his doctorate in organic chemistry at Zurich University. Her girl friend wanted Alice to accompany her to the ball as her fiance and my father were batchmates, but Dad had no partner for the occasion. My grandparents reluctantly allowed her to go once a suitable chaperone was arranged, and the rest is history. Alice and Amin got engaged in January 1936 but the marriage had her parents' consent only after the Swiss consul in Bombay assured them that she would be marrying into a well established family of high social and economic standing in India. They married on 18 April 1936, in Zurich. 
With a doctorate in organic chemistry, my father got a job with Guys Hospital in London. Their move to London was difficult especially for my mother because of her inadequate English; and the locals were suspicious of foreigners in those days. They also had problems finding appropriate accommodation near the hospital. My mother would house hunt in the mornings and landladies would accept her but then ask her to leave as soon as my father arrived after work. Overt racism was rife in Britain of the 1930s and 1940s and my parents suffered a liberal dose of it. The fact that my father was British born and a British citizen made no difference - he was a brown foreigner.
My parents were ecstatic when my sister Ursula was born in London on 30 April 1937. Then, as the war was drawing to a close, they decided to move to Bombay. My grandmother Tahira owned a building in Babulnath, off Chowpatty Beach, where they set themselves up, and I was born soon after.
Many years later, well after Hootoksi and I were married, I learned that Hootoksi's grandfather, the well known portrait artist Jehangir Lalkaka, had his studio in the very same building; an astonishing coincidence!
Finding their Babulnath apartment too small for a family of four, Amin and Alice moved to Somerset Cottage, a bungalow my father had inherited, next door to an estate which is now the compound of Sophia College for Women. The properties - the College, our home and a cluster of other bungalows (which are now residential high rises), are on the western slope of Cumballa Hill and the ocean below. At the end of Sophia College Lane is the college gate and to the left of that was the gate and driveway to our Cottage. Opposite was Somerset House, a bungalow which belonged to my uncle Faiz Tyabji.
Somerset Cottage was spacious, with four large bedrooms and baths, a generous drawing and dining room, a separate wing for Granny, two kitchens and a pantry, a wide verandah along the entire length of the building, store rooms with additional storage underneath, generous accommodation for servants, a separate garage with apartments for drivers and cleaners, all surrounded by an acre of garden. The garden sloped down to Sophia College Lane in three levels, with a tennis court at the bottom. A wide gravel driveway led up from the gate.
Sophia College next door had been the private residence of my great grandfather Badruddin Tyabji before it was purchased by two successive maharajas and finally sold to the Society of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sophia College for Women remains a premier institution of higher learning for women.
As Bombay grew exponentially, high rise apartment and office buildings proliferated, land values and taxation on landed properties soared, and my father was compelled to sell Somerset Place to a developer in 1957. For three years after that we camped in temporary accommodations until we could take possession of our new fifth floor apartment in Somerset Place, the 7-storey apartment building which was built, along with another apartment building, on what used to be our land.
Amin carried out research at the Royal Institute of Science (the 'Royal' was later dropped from the name) for some years and then joined Cipla Ltd. Meanwhile, my parents built a community of expatriate friends and many members of the extended Tyabji clan, the Alis, Faizees, Fatehallys (my grandmother was a Fatehally), Lukmanis, Latifs, and others.
Many of these families owned holiday bungalows on Kihim Beach (halfway between Alibag and Mandwa on the mainland south of Bombay) and would gather there in May and June to play beach cricket, race bullock carts, swim and hike in the hills nearby. However, the favourite pastime was to gorge on the Alphonso mangoes and lychees that are native to the area. I remember breaking out in boils due to the 'heating' effect of gorging on them!
My grandfather, grandmother and father were regular visitors to the beaches at Kihim, across the harbour from Bombay. They and other family members gathered there on summer weekends and school holidays and so this was where cherished values and traditions were reinforced, contentious issues resolved, new alliances forged, and marriages were made.
Swimming in summer could be dangerous as the south westerly winds often drove huge waves onto the beach and the rocks. Of course, the families did their best to ensure that children swam only in designated 'safe' areas of the beach, away from the rocks, and that an adult would be present always. Nevertheless, on Saturday the 26th of May 1917, two children were seen floundering in the current and my grandfather, who was a strong swimmer, dived in after them. He managed to pull one child out before his head struck a rock and he passed out.
My grandfather met his end young, when my father was just fifteen. I don't think my father ever returned to Kihim, but my mother occasionally took Ursula and me there to meet the extended family, and I've always had a soft spot for the place. Hootoksi and I spent a few days there just after we got married, during the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war, but that's another story......
My grandfather's brother officers erected a fountain in his memory, on which the following inscription is engraved:
To the memory of Mohsin Badruddin Tyabji I.C.S. District Judge of Surat who lost his life in gallantly saving a young Kinsman from drowning on 26'th of May, 1917
My sister's story is very different from mine. "I must have been seven or so when I got paratyphoid," she told me. "Doctors said I needed change, so I was sent to a boarding school in Panchgani. One of the girls there got polio so we were all sent home. The war had just ended. I was 8 then. The world was in turmoil and there was confusion and uncertainty everywhere. Mum took me on the first convoy to England where we stayed with friends of Dad's. When crossing the Channel to France, all our luggage was lost or perhaps stolen. I remember the huge crowds of refugees in the subway station, waiting for the train that took us to Zurich." She continues, "Uncle Dolf was teaching skiing in Adelboden so I was enrolled in a boarding school there. I don't remember it at all, but that school was closed apparently because the owner's spouse or partner ran off with someone! Then it was decided I go stay with Aunt Hedi in Zurich. I lived there for 5 years but was very unhappy. One day a Swiss friend visited with her daughters and wrote to Mum about my unhappy situation, so she came with you to rescue me and take me back to Bombay. I joined the Walsingham School to finish, then Elphinstone College."
My mother visited Switzerland whenever she could and often took me with her. A couple of these trips were by sea, on Lloyd Tristino's Chusan. We also flew a few times and I remember the noisy four-engined propeller DC8s and the Lockheed Constellations that ferried us from Bombay airport, which was little more than a hangar, to Europe, with one or two stops for refuelling. In hindsight, the service on those flights was sumptious to say the least - wide leather seats, starched tablecloths, 3-course meals with real china and silverware, and super courteous air hostesses.
The sea crossings were always a lot of fun, with games and fancy dress competitions, and ceremonial dinners at the captain's table. We would disembark in Italy and travel by train to Zurich. On one such trip, we spotted a US navy submarine close to our ship in the Mediterranean. I remember well the Suez canal crossings and the extreme summer heat in the Red Sea, and shopping in Aden. I also recall being very seasick on some of the Indian Ocean crossings. On one Switzerland visit, when I was four or five, I remember being placed in a school where I went wild pushing a scooter around until I collapsed with a fever! I also recall going to a farm near Thun and being driven around in a tractor, and relishing the wonderful food the farmer's wife cooked on her massive wood burning stove. Another memory is being with Ursula, my mother and grandmother in the snow, and being terrified when an earthquake struck.
Ursula stayed five years in Switzerland before my mother and I brought her back to Bombay to pursue her school and university education. Being fluent in German, she later worked with Siemens and then the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, a German foundation. She then met and became engaged to Zuhair Zawawi, a son of a prominent Arab trader in Bombay. I spent many enjoyable times with Zuhair and his younger brother Qais, who later became Oman's foreign, and then prime minister. In 1957, Ursula and Zuhair were married and their son Tariq was born in March, 1958. They moved to Kuwait where Zuhair had a job in the auto industry. The marriage lasted a year and a half and Ursula returned to Bombay and her daughter Clara was born in February of 1962.
Ursula, Tariq and Clara moved to Sydney in February of 1975. 10 years later, my parents sold the apartment, packed up and joined her there. My father passed away in the Chatswood Community Nursing Home on 26 March 1994 of a lung infection. He was 92. My mother moved into the Dougherty Apartments Retirement Village a few years later. She was very happy there, with plenty of good company, wholesome food and many activities to promote mental and physical wellness, and occasional outings to other parts of Australia. She remained active and enjoyed her visits to us in Malaysia and to Clara in Oman.
Alice's 100th birthday was a major event that lasted a week. Michel, Farhad and Adil came with Rosa and our grand daughters Cianna and Azura from America; cousin Ronni came from Zurich with Heinz, a family friend; my mother's best friend Nora flew in from Bombay; Khalifa and Kate attended from Oman; and with Ursula, Tariq, and Clara there, my mother was surrounded by her entire family spanning four generations. Her friends, numbering about 60 elderly people, as well as the Dougherty staff and well wishers from her Church of Christ congregation, were there too.
Alice remained healthy and strong till she was well into her 103'rd year. She could still move around Chatswood with her walker for occasional shopping and to attend church services. Then, quite suddenly, her health faltered and she was taken to hospital where she passed away due to a urinary infection. Her ashes are buried next to my father's. 
Click here for details of the funeral service.
Click here for Alice and Amin's marriage certificate
from The Times of India, 1952