nightlifemumbai

- by Deepa Krishnan In the late 1700's and early 1800's, Jews from Iraq began arriving in Calcutta and Mumbai. It was not the first time Arabic speaking Jews had made their presence felt in India. The Great Mughal Akbar had a Jew in his court, and so did some subsequent Mughal emperors. Surat was one of the major ports of the Mughal empire, and Jewish merchants were well-established there, trading with the British East India Company. As Mumbai prospered in the 1800's, Jews from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Yemen began arriving in Mumbai in significant numbers. A lot of them came from Iraq, and so they were called Baghdadi Jews. There was already another Jewish community in Mumbai, the Bene-Israel (Children of Israel). Believed to be one of the "ten lost tribes" of Israel, they had been in India for many centuries. The Bene-Israel were quite different from the Baghdadis - they spoke Marathi, and looked more Indian than Middle-Eastern. After many centuries in Mahara...

- By Deepa Krishnan If you walk into the Bhau Daji Lad Museum at Byculla, you'll see a beautiful marble bust of David Sassoon, Mumbai's most famous Jewish businessman and philanthropist. David Sassoon (1792 to 1864) The Sassoon family history is a little fuzzy. One theory is that they originally came from the mountainous region of Sason in modern-day Turkey. The Sasoon surname is even today found among the Armenian and Kurd population of Sason. It is possible that some Sephardic (Spanish) ancestry existed among the Jews of Sason. In fact, according to Shaul Sapir, author of "Bombay - Exploring the Jewish Urban Heritage", the Sassoons trace their ancestry to Spain, to a family called the Ibn Shoshan (ibn Susan) who lived in the city of Toledo. Perhaps some branch of the Ibn Shoshan clan migrated to Turkey. The city of Toledo, near Madrid, Spain Whatever their history and origins, the earliest member of the Sassoon family to arrive in India was David Sassoon in 1832. He...

- By Deepa Krishnan If you drive past Byculla, you'll spot this handsome building on the main road. I've always wondered what this building is about, especially given the prominent logo in the middle. The logo looked vaguely Christian to me, but could well have been something Jewish or Zoroastrian. Today I did some searching around, and found out: this is Seva Niketan, a Christian Life Community (CLC) centre in Mumbai. The CLC is what is called a Sodality; a group of lay Christian people who get together for their own spiritual upliftment and to do pious acts and charity. The CLC congregations have traditionally been led by Jesuit priests.  In case you didn't know who the Jesuits are, they are a group of trained priests, who on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church, do missionary work. Ignatius of Loyola was the founder of the Jesuit order (the correct name is the Society of Jesus). Loyola is a small village in Spain. It was Ignatius who sent Franci...

- By Deepa Krishnan Sometimes you walk past something without realising just how beautiful it is.  And then you pause.  Here she is, the Goddess Flora, on the top of the fountain. Beautiful, no? She's right in the middle of the busy financial district. Rather incongruous, really, when you think that Flora is the Roman goddess of spring, of flowers and fertility. What on earth is she doing so close to all these banks and the stock market? :) :)  Actually, there's a very simple reason why this fountain has Flora as the theme - it's because the guys who built it were the Agri-Horticultural Society of Western India (AHSWI).  But why would an obscure-sounding society like that build a fountain in a city? Where would they get the money in the first place? I did some digging around, and a s it turns out, the Society was anything but obscure.  Originally founded in 1820 in Calcutta by William Carey, the Agri-Horticultural Society of India was responsible for introducing...