The story behind some books

So I had the good fortune of venturing on a short trip over the last weekend to Chennai and thereabouts. The 'thereabouts' bit of the journey included the requirement of taking a short train journey from the Chennai Central railway station early in the morning. I entered the station and realised that this station looks very much like the VT (CST) station in Mumbai and probably, since the Brits built it, would look like the King's Cross station in London as well.  My sleep-addled brain was wondering whether I should make the dumb old - "Should we check for Platform 9 and three-quarters... He he he.." joke to Nikhila and thankfully, she spotted something else before I made this eyeroll-worthy comment.

She spotted a book-store called Higginbotham's. If you're from South India and travelled a fair bit by train, you might have spotted this book-store at railway stations when you wanted to buy a Tinkle or Archies comic digest for the journey. However, this time, the name of the bookstore piqued my curiosity (the blatant 'British-ness' of it) instead of my usual yearning to read about Archie's latest antics. Therefore, I made a mental note to read about this bookstore and hopefully, blog about it if it had an interesting history.

So did it have an interesting history? Damn right it did!

Before we get to the story, let's get some of its milestones out of the way first :
India's oldest existing bookstore? - Yup. Since 1844.
Largest bookstore in India? - Yup, until the 1990s.
Did the first ever murder in a bookstore happen here? - Nope
So why did I mention the last milestone? - Because I didn't find any more 'milestones' and I wanted to list more than two milestones.

Okay sorry. Let's get to the story.

Higginbotham's was founded by a Brit called Higginbotham. Abel Joshua Higginbotham. Although it would have been fun if his first name was also Higginbotham. Higginbotham Higginbotham. Then the store would have been called Higginbothams' instead of Higginbotham's.

Lol.

Okay okay. Back to the story.

Abel was a librarian by profession and he reached India as a stowaway on a ship sometime in the early 1840s. He was apparently ejected by his ship's captain in the Madras port after he was discovered (He successfully hid all the way from England to Madras. That's some mad hiding skills). In Madras, he found employment as a librarian at a bookstore run by Protestant Missionaries called the Weslyan Book Store. The store only sold religious books and, not surprisingly, suffered heavy financial losses. Our man Abel then told them Protestant monks to chill while he bought the business from them for cheap. First thing he did was some rebranding and changed the name of the store to HIGGIN-FRICKIN-BOTHAM'S.

He also changed the business model of the store and started sourcing all kinds of books, not just religious ones but also the "ungodly" scientific textbooks and novels that were in demand. He slowly built a formidable collection of books and made a name for himself in the city. But his business got a real boost when John Murray, a popular British publisher, described the store as "the premier bookshop in Madras" in his Guidebook to the Presidencies of Madras and Bombay (1859). Another influencer recommendation that Abel could wrangle was from the Governor of Madras, Lord Trevelyan, who wrote to Lord Macaulay (he's the guy who forced English education on Indians and completely upended the existing education system) praising the store -
Among the many elusive and indescribable charms of life in Madras City, is the existence of my favourite book shop 'Higginbotham's' on Mount Road. In this bookshop I can see beautiful editions of the works of Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pindar, Horace, Petrarch, Tasso, Camoyens, Calderon and Racine. I can get the latest editions of Victor Hugo, the great French novelist. Amongst the German writers, I can have Schiller and Goethe. Altogether a delightful place for the casual browser and a serious book lover.
From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higginbotham%27s>

So, all in all, Abel ensured he developed a formidable reputation for his store and the company soon got into selling stationery, publishing and printing its own books. The first book they ever published was a cook-book called 'Sweet Dishes: A Little Treatise on Confectionary', essentially a guidebook for the local Brits to teach their Indian cooks how to make English dishes (The book is available on Amazon).

During his lifetime, his store played host to a lot of celebrities of that age including the Prince of Wales and was the unofficial printing partner for the British Raj in India. Abel was also made the Sherriff of Madras in 1888 and 1889. As he grew older, his son took over the business who expanded the business to Bangalore as well.

Higginbotham's grew from strength to strength in the early 20th century, and at one point, had 400 employees! 400! Imagine a bookstore employing so many people (This should have been part of my milestones list. *facepalm*). In the 1940s, it was taken over by an Indian company called Amalgamations Group but it was continued to be named after this stowaway librarian.

Higginbotham's currently runs around 22 outlets across South India. So next time you spot the store, you know what to do. Read my blog (Please).

Luna urf Mechta

My mission to write one post everyday almost hit a roadblock today because, well, mental block. I guess my day wasn't intriguing enough to inspire my inertia-ridden mind into vomiting thoughts that can dazzle and excite when read by you. But I did want to give it a shot. So I opened up my laptop to stare at my screen, willing topics to walk into my head and form sentences.

When that didn't happen, I flirted with the idea of writing a song. Song titles included "Twenty-twenty joy aplenty", "Get me some new funk" and an untitled 'un-worded' song that goes something like:

Dub Dub Budub Bub
Bub Dudub Budub
Bub Dudub Budub Bub
Bubbidy Dub Budub.

As much potential as this song had, I felt that I should write something less ambitious today. I then remembered those memes on the internet that started correlating the 1920s to the 2020s and wondered what happened a 100 years ago on Jan 2, 1920. So I wikied that shit up and found out that something called the 'Red Scare' was happening in the United States and their Government was rounding up scary communists (suspected) from different parts of the country. Obviously, that topic depressed the shit out of me, so I decided - F*** the year, lets just look at what happened on Jan 2nd, through the ages. And that brings me to Luna!

On 2 January 1959, Luna (or Luna 1) was launched by the Russians and eventually became the first man-made satellite to reach the vicinity of the moon and orbit the Sun. Being an astronomy nut, this little nugget of information caught my eye and a few search tabs later, I discovered a neat little story about this satellite that I can share with you. I will try to not get too technical with this topic because - a) I wouldn't understand it myself and b) It would be take me too long to write and I have a flight to catch in a bit.

So, Luna was a spherical, antenna-ridden gizmo that weighed about 361 kilograms. It had a bunch of sensors to measure cosmic radiation, magnetic fields of the earth & the moon, meteoric particles in space and a bunch of other things I don't really understand. It also had this pocket in it filled with Sodium gas, which was released once she attained escape velocity. This gas formed a trail behind Luna glowing orange in the twilight, so that other astronomers around the world could trace her path.  Luna did not have any thrusters, so she could not control her speed or direction after the last booster detached from it. Hence, NASA guesses (Russia shrouded her mission objectives with an air of mystery like only Russia could) that the eventual fate of Luna was to crash down on the surface of the moon. But fate had other plans for her.

During those days, satellite commands were apparently not pre-programmed but sent via signals from Earth at different intervals. One such command was to stop a rocket booster in time so that Luna could reduce her speed and get into the orbit around the moon. But allegedly, there was a delay in relaying this signal and this gave Luna an extra 175 miles/second that led to her overshooting her orbit around the Moon. She did pass by the moon but at a distance of 5995 kilometres (3725 miles).

While this was undoubtedly a disappointment, it led to a new milestone for man-made spacecrafts. Rather than following a moon-centric orbit, Luna ended up in a helio-centric orbit - that is, an orbit around the Sun - making her the first human-made object to reach a helio-centric orbit. In light of this unexpected achievement, this satellite was given a new name - Mechta - Russian for 'Planet', by a scientific writer from the Soviet called Alexander Kazantsev (Read his complete statement here for a good dose of socialist nationalism). So Mechta was tracked for a couple of more days by the Soviets until her battery ran out and now, I guess Mechta is drifting a lonely path around the solar system.

Here comes the plot twist though - there are a fair few who doubt if this mission was actually successful. One guy even wrote that Luna 1 wasn't a successful mission. Some Western astronauts even claimed that they tried capturing Luna's signals during her mission, but were unable to do so. The Russians however ignored all of this and even issued commemorative stamps in Luna/Mechta's honour. I, for one, truly hope that Luna/Mechta's story is indeed true and one day, some Asimov-esque AI-powered spacebot will find her drifting blissfully in the dark ocean of space.

Oh, and speaking of Isaac Asimov, he was born on January 2, 1920.

The Two Popes (2019) - Movie review

Director: Fernando Meirelles

Screenplay: Anthony McCarten

Primary cast: Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Pryce

Production: Netflix

Runtime: 2 hours, 5 minutes

This movie might've been an odd choice to start off 2020 with. We just cooked lunch and were scrolling through Netflix's bountiful offering of content when Nikhila's eyes fell on this movie. We had watched the trailer earlier and were mildly intrigued, mainly because of Mr. Hopkins - he has a charisma that is magnetic, a voice that is captivating and a demeanour that is mesmerising. So when Nikhila suggested if I wanted to watch this, I said yes before (as it often happens while browsing Netflix) I could change my own mind.

The movie, an adaptation of a play written by Anthony McCarten, mainly dwells on conversations between the conservative Pope Benedict (Hopkins) and the liberal future Pope Francis (Pryce). Inspired by true events, the movie is a documentation of the conversations between these two gentlemen over the years, starting from the brief washroom chat they have before Pope Benedict was elected the Big Daddy of all Catholics back in 2005 to the time Francis gets the Hat in 2013. The movie touches upon the controversies that plagued (plagues) the Catholic church including sexual abuse of minors, corruption in the Vatican Bank and how the Church's conservatism was driving more and more of the 'flock' away.

If you were expecting a movie that takes you through a web of Vatican politics, backstabbing, conspiracies and dramatic confrontations, you will be disappointed. This movie almost seems like it has been sponsored by the Catholic church, justifying its shift from a strict orthodoxy to, well, a slightly palatable unorthodoxy. Don't get me wrong, the scenes between Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce are really fun to watch. The dialogues are engaging and Meirelles ensured both men flexed their brand of acting chops liberally. There are moments of unexpected humour that bring a smile to your face (don't miss the end credits) and successfully ensures that a conversation between two old men does not become dreary and monotonous. A lot of credit lies with both the directors and the actors for this. But the flashback scenes showcasing Pope Francis's Argentinian past somehow did not do a good job of translating the emotional heft that was expected from a story like that and I must confess, I was almost nodding off during this part (although the cause for this could also be the hearty lunch I just had).

All in all, this is exactly the kind of movie you would want to watch on a lazy afternoon. Its beauty lies in its simplicity and in the effortless performances of the primary cast. Watch it for the acting, there is no other message to take home from this movie.