An Indian under the Crown

By Editor on November 8, 2009 7:19 am

Roshan G. Shahani retired as reader and head of the Department of English at Jai Hind College, University of Bombay, where she taught for thirty-nine years. She is the author of Family in Fiction: Three Canadian Voices (Bombay: The Registrar, S.N.D.T. Women’s University, 1993), based on her doctoral dissertation, and Allan: Her Infinite Variety (Mumbai: SPARROW, 2000), a memoir about her mother, as well as of several journal articles. She has also edited numerous publications brought out by the Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women (SPARROW), for which she is also a trustee. Her research interests include contemporary Indian and British literature as well as women’s studies which she taught  at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Roshan was the editor of BEAM, the Bombay English Association Magazine. In this essay, she addresses the work and legacy of Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla. An unfairly neglected figure, Jessawalla has left for posterity a rich legacy of her life and her world, spanning over half a century and three continents, in the form of an autobiography entitled The Story of My Life. Excavating this remarkable personal history from the archives of the Jessawalla family, Roshan G. Shahani illuminates the many dimensions of the text: as autobiography; as a history of the Parsi-British encounter during the Raj; as a fascinating travelogue; and as a recreation of nineteenth-century Bombay.

AT THE FOOT of the busy Byculla flyover in Bombay stands the neglected statue of the “Ubhbha Parsi” [1]. Many Bombayites and perhaps a few Mumbaikars are familiar with that odd name. Fewer still would know the identity of this personage—Seth Cursetjee Maneckjee Shroff, a nineteenth- century philanthropist and father of the founder of the Alexandra Girls’ English Institution, arguably the first of its kind in India. It does not come as a surprise that none at all apart from her immediate descendents would have heard the name of Maneckjee’s granddaughter, Dosebai Cowasjee Jessawalla. Yet, this woman has also made history; she has left for posterity a rich legacy of her life and her world spanning over half a century and three continents, in the form of an autobiography entitled The Story of My Life [2].

What follows in these pages, is not a book review in the strict sense of the term. One cannot review a book published in 1911, a near century ago. Nor is it a text that can be categorized easily; indeed, it is one that could well prove to be a librarian’s nightmare. It is an autobiography; it is a history of the Parsi-British encounter during the Raj; it is a fascinating travelogue; it is a meticulously kept diary; and it is a recreation of nineteenth-century Bombay. Unfortunately, like the statue of yore, this remarkable personal history remains unknown, except to her family.

Questions have often been raised as to the veracity of the personal voice or the authenticity of a diarist as sources of history. A subjective position could misconstrue facts; the memory of a septuagenarian, as in this particular instance, is prone to error; biases, prejudices, factual errors, inevitably seep in. However, contemporary questioning of grand narratives of objectivity and history has created and legitimized archival spaces for personal histories and familial narratives. Sources of knowledge, it has been increasingly argued, need not be only institututionalized records; personal testimonies, diaries, and letters constitute history as well. What is essential are not just facts, but how people remember and construe those facts. Besides, public chronicles and empirical histories have been shown to be as fallible and prone to biases as is any subjective reflection on human experience. Inherently fallible though it might be, the phenomenological experience of a living, breathing individual constitutes a challenge to centrist notions of truth and authenticity.What we see Dosebai doing is particularizing the generalities of the colonial moment. She does not necessarily set out always to contest official history or public discourse. However, she is looking at the same moment from her own, individual perspective. Personal histories, such as hers, offer us, as Urvashi Butalia remarks—in the context of the oral narratives of Partition–a way “of turning the historical lens at a somewhat different angle, thereby enriching history” (15) [3].

Recent postcolonial and feminist scholarship have also disrupted the overdetermined nature of academic and professional histories, offering new possibilities for a poetics of the archive and valid spaces for a text such as Dosebai’s. Paradoxically, such a text will not readily allow for an unnuanced  postcolonial/feminist paradigm. If we, as readers, locate ourselves in a particular moment in history, we need to allow, equally, historical space to the textual narrator, persona, and author. Dosebai’s historical position inevitably defines her ideology. She out-colonizes the colonizer in her imperiousness and her loyalty to the British Crown emerges unabashedly on every page of her 500-page tome. Similarly, her claim, on her mother’s behalf as well as her own, to be pioneers in the field of nineteenth-century women’s education is open to question.

In that sense, one even hesitates to use the term ‘alternate’ history when defining this text. No doubt, it is a personal, subjective record and often it directly and very sharply questions public records of the time, whether newspaper chronicles or historical texts, thereby providing an alternate reading of the period. At the same time, Dosebai’s is not, strictly speaking, a ‘people’s’ history. This particular personal history is created by a prominent personality of the time. The Story of my Life is no act of subterfuge, in contrast to, say Amar Jiban, the autobiography of her Bengali contemporary, Rassundari Devi [4]. In fact, in the manner of a metanarrative, Dosebai’s text constantly alludes to her act of writing and to important personages inquiring of its progress. Both the style and content follow the dictates of a grand narrative. Paradoxically, these very ambiguities in her work and in her personality, and which were the ambiguities at the heart of Empire, enrich our understanding of her account.

Dosebai’s autobiography, as suggested earlier, is hybrid and multifaceted, and I would like to address some of the issues it takes up. A single thread which runs its course, from the first to the last page, is the matter of nineteenth-century education for women and her mother’s role in ‘pioneering’ this ‘movement.’ Inevitably, one’s comments on the text gravitate toward this issue as a starting point.

The Woman Question

Social histories have recorded the reform movement that so radically altered the lives of nineteenth-century Indian women. However, as Lalita and Tharu have posited, despite its attention to ‘the Woman Question,’ and its recording of events in which women were involved, these histories seem incapable of capturing the structural importance of gender in colonial politics [5]. Contemporary feminist scholarship, with the significant inclusion of Women Writing in India, marks a strategic shift in perspective by calling attention to the complex dimensions in which women’s subjectivities were being sculpted and the way in which women negotiated, resisted, or subverted the master narratives through their lived experiences and, in the case of some, through their writing. It might seem pertinent to read Dosebai’s views in a similar vein, even while bearing in mind that she was no subaltern.

In her very individualistic and even personalized manner, Dosebai places her “reverend mother” at the epicenter of change in the cause of education, pushing to the periphery male reformers and educationists, the ’Eminent Victorians’ of India, such as Cursetjee Maneckjee (founder of Alexandra School), Jamshetjee Jejeebhoy, and Sorabjee Bengali. Without quite realizing it, this strong-willed lady is, thereby, radically altering the politics of gender representation.

The raison d’etre of Dosebai’s authorship is to pay tribute to her mother for her contribution to social reform among nineteenth-century Indian women. Interestingly, as she sets about this task, from its very dedication, preface, and invocation, to the last page when she is confronted with the remains of her days, Dosebai shows none of the diffidence or humility traditionally associated with early autobiographies by women. She opens her saga, or rather declares it open, with great fanfare, which, as we read on, we discover is her characteristic style. “Every human life,” she states majestically, “plays its God-assigned part in the unwritten history of the world. But there are some who are destined and privileged to record the annals of history, in which they have participated” (emphases mine.) She is one so destined, for her mother’s “foresight” had made her “the instrument of pioneering the noble cause of higher education among millions and millions of the gentler sex in India” (Preface). Dosebai has donned the Miltonic mantle but with this difference— she invokes the memory of her mother first, even the Almighty is relegated to a secondary position.

Dosebai ‘makes’ history in many ways, often dramatic. “The year 1842 may be cited as the dawn of English education,” she states. Why it is so, is left in abeyance. The remainder of this first of many chapters, then undertakes to trace the ancestral history of her family patriarchs (one of whom was Maneckji of the Ubhbha Parsi fame) since “it has been thought advisable,” possibly by male advisors. Even so, what seeps in, as a subtext, is the story of her infertile step-grandmother’s active role in stepping aside, not just willingly, but purposefully, in order that her husband remarries and begets his progeny. Her parents virtually imprison Barozbai for her initiative. Besides, the Parsi community is in a state of uproar and the Parsi Panchayat, then as now, decides to interfere in the matter. Its disapproval comes in the guise of refusing the loan of the huge pots and pans required for the wedding feast. The question, however, does remain—are these facts? Was it a family myth, perpetuated to honor the philanthropist’s second marriage? Dosebai is often an unreliable narrator but then so are official historians. Facts, half-truths, fiction, these are the family myths that bring the historical past to life, and convey a great deal about the author of this piece of history. In that sense, Dosebai is not only recording history, she is creating history as well, even while we might doubt her claims to the many firsts, which according to her have created a female family history.

In the next three chapters, devoted to her mother, Dosebai gives us the reason for the significance of 1842. It was the year when her mother sent her to an English school and thereby “pioneered” the cause of English education among Indian women. Undoubtedly, hers was a bold and daring act, especially since she had been a young widow and this decision was hers alone. Moreover, she had to face the wrath of her father-in-law, Maneckji. The fact that she was staying independently of the family clan was itself an act of defiance. Dosebai, as family and social historian, as well as the defender of all that her mother stood for, is very vocal in this all-important matter She gives the reader a meticulous record of the consequences of this step and the furor it raised, in the family, community and the press. She reproduces the correspondence between her mother and her father-in-law, which Dosebai claims she had in her possession and which would have been invaluable archival material had it been extant today. However, the translation (from the original Gujarati, one presumes) is couched in the spirited tone of Dosebai and one would want to believe that the fieriness was her matriarchal legacy.

The thrust of Meherbai’s arguments seem to be sharp and pointed. Since her own brother-in-law, Curstjee Maneckjee Cursetjee, had appointed governesses to teach English to his daughters, why then, should the father-in-law raise objections against her effort for her daughter? The reply comes in the form of another argument. Those girls were being educated in the privacy of their homes. Meherbai counters the old man’s argument by pointing out that had Meherbai’s own public initiative not got so much publicity, her brother-in-law would never have thought of educating his children.

The press of that period had thought this act significant enough for it to report it in sensational details—some filled with venom, others (the English press according to Dosebai), full of plaudits.

Dosebai attacks the press for attacking her mother. “These Parsee lordlings,” i.e., the editors of two contemporary Gujarati journals Jame-e-Jamshed and the Chabook had resolved to excommunicate Meherbai and her household. The mother is heard to have lashed back in an unequivocal fashion. Dosebai is equally vocal in setting the record right where another contemporary paper was concerned. This was the English Bombay Courier, which, not surprisingly, praises the “enlightened” family for sending a girl to an English school; ironically, it is the wrong member of the family—Maneckjee Cursetjee, Meherbai’s brother-in-law and target of her attack, who receives praise! Maneckjee receives these and other eulogies, including one from Elphinstone, former governor of Bombay, “quietly.”

Dosebai also chastises the author of the popular A History of the Parsees, Dosabhoy Karaka, because he had failed to mention Meherbai among the galaxy of eminent Parsis. This book, incidentally, is still valorized today, wherein Karaka invests the Parsis of the nineteenth-century with an inherent worth, carried down the ages from their Persian ancestors [6]. Now, Dosebai does not refute the ‘fact’ that hers was the Golden Age of the Parsis; what angers her, is the mother’s exclusion as contributor to that golden age. “The male sex is,” she notes, “always tardy in acknowledging the merits of a female rival.”

Mother and daughter are confronted with the ‘charge’ of defying convention by occupying public spaces, both literally and figuratively. The press has moved the familial into the public sphere. Dosebai’s need to recreate this piece of familial history by way of a spirited retaliation, with the full understanding that it was going to be published, also points in the same direction.

It was certainly no mean achievement for a young widow in 1842 to have made and carried out her own independent decision, in the very controversial matter of a daughter’s education. Equally, the daughter’s attempt to set the record right, and using her educational tools to do so and to write this very piece challenging the patriarchal nature of her world was no small matter.

Having said that, Dosebai’s unqualified claims on her mother’s behalf, as on her own, raise several interesting issues. Some of her statements need reconsidering. “Meherbai’s independent spirit waged war upon the custom of centuries” (32). “This was a time when fathers entertained not the remotest idea of educating their daughters”(29); it was “under the benign rule of her late Majesty, Queen Victoria” that this act of emancipation was made possible,” and by slow degrees others have followed her example” (30?) “The school [Mrs. Ward’s] was situated in that part of the Fort exclusively inhabited by Europeans and known by the name of the English Ward, a quarter, scrupulously avoided by the native ladies” (29-32).

Meherbai’s decision, emancipatory as it might have been, cannot merit the beginnings of English education among the Parsis and other Indian communities. If it was a pioneering act, in the sense that a Parsi girl had received a public school education, it was also an individualistic, isolated act. Dosebai’s mention of male educators who were supposed to have ‘followed’ her mother’s precept emphasizes the chronology but does not see either those contributions or her mother’s as a consequence of, rather than as the cause of, change. The larger movements for reform, the conflicts and controversies regarding the Woman Question, all these are erased from her text. At times, it is not so much what the author says as what she does not that we need to look at. The absences are as relevant to our understanding of Doseabi and her narrative, as are the presences. The “benign” rule of Victoria seems to this anglophile the inspiration behind the ’sweeping’ changes that her mother brought about. As for the entry into the European quarter of the Fort—the family’s privileged class position, it cannot be forgotten—was also instrumental in making entry into its ‘bastions’ permissible. If the quarter had been “scrupulously avoided by native ladies,” more likely than not, it was because of the presence of unwritten but well-defined laws of segregation rather than the absence of courage among the ladies in question. 

Colonial Encounters of the Closest Kind

The textual emphasis, without doubt, is on the Englishness of Dosebai’s English education. Macaulay’s (in)famous Minute finds a living, breathing, articulating representative in Dosebai Jessawalla. Indian in blood, if not so much in colour, Dosebai appears totally English in taste in opinions, in morals and in intellect. Unsurprisingly, the dedication to her mother is immediately followed at the opening of Chapter 1, by an excessively eulogistic tribute to Macaulay, the prototype of “our kind and paternal government” and the true representative of “Victoria the Good.” She quotes at length from Macaulay’s “memorable speech” delivered in the House of Commons in 1833, with its rhetorical evocation of India’s barbarism before the advent of the British.

The impact of Macaulay’s Minute, then and now, is the subject of a history too vast to discuss here. If it is true, as some scholars have argued, that Indian nationalism emerged, partially at least, from just such a class of people as Macaulay had envisioned, it was equally true that the man’s contempt for oriental scholarship, “a single shelf of a good European library [being] worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia,” dealt a fell blow to Indian languages and culture. His devout disciple, William Bentinck, it is believed, had hatched a plan to demolish the Taj Mahal (an emblem of oriental sensuousness?) and to ship its marble to England for sale and reuse (Baron, 216).  On friendly terms with Bentinck, Dosebai had not, however, heard of this near-disastrous venture. Just for once, in fact, her astonished gaze at the “eighth Wonder of the World compels, even this honorary memsahib to compare the Taj favorably to “the large and showy architecture of British rule” (206).

Returning to the point, Dosebai unequivocally endorses the civilizing mission, sees herself civilized by it, and seeks to civilize others by the same principles. One cannot, however, view Dosebai’s predilections in an isolated manner; rather, we need to locate her within the larger framework of the Parsi bourgeoisie under Empire. Formerly from Surat and Navsari, a predominant section of the Parsi community had moved to Bombay by the nineteenth century as commercial partners and collaborators with the British. As trade and commerce grew, so did the social connections between the British and the Parsis in matters of education, culture, taste, and habits. While for some, the learning of the English language was a part of the broader desire for knowledge and learning, for others, especially for the emerging class of seths or merchants, Western education became a matter of expediency. It was a means, not only for easy communication with their colonial masters, but also for stepping up social ladders.

There were, of course, those Parsis like Dadabhai Naoroji, Madame Cama, and Pherozesha Mehta whose absorption of Western mores and non-native intellect had not blinded them to the exploitation by the ruling class; rather, it had sharpened their critical awareness—Dadabahi’s Drain Theory, which Dosebai mentions in passing, points to the economic exploitation of India under empire. One sees in Dadabhai as in some others, Parsi or otherwise, the cutting edge of a liberal education. The scope and vision of such men and women is beyond the ken of Dosebai, although she styles herself a social reformer. The duality of her position was the position of the majority of this Westernized class of people. Parsi women enjoyed greater social and cultural freedom compared to other more secluded women in India. However, liberalism, as advocated by the British ruling class, was wholly myopic about larger sections of Indian society. The beneficiaries of such liberalism, Dosebai being one such example, were equally myopic about their Indian “sisters,” as she was wont to address them. Dosebai was no recluse but this much-travelled woman led, paradoxically, a very sheltered, insulated existence.

Many instances of her insularity come to the fore but her visit to England can be cited as one. It is in 1907-08 that she is in London, and although she is “in the eve of her life” (458), she visits parks, friends, attends public meetings, and functions. One such public meeting is at the Duke of Westminster’s Grosvenor House where she meets “foremost ladies of rank taking keen interest in the cause of women.” No details follow. Another is the Tableau Vivant, held in aid of the Indian Famine Fund. A vivid recreation of the colorful pageant follows but nothing about the raging famine and the course of action. A “gratifying sight” and one, which inspires a spirited comment on the refreshing changes in society, is the fact that a Mrs. Hormusji Vakil had traveled from Bombay to London all alone to visit her son. The author observes with pleasure how these “social movements” are acceptable now unlike at the time when her daughter traveled alone in the 1880s and 90s. “Now none of the Chabooks …would dare to comment on my bold and enterprising sisters.” The credit for all these vast changes goes to “none but my old and revered mother, who had suffered so much at the hands of the bigoted orthodoxy” (457-58).

The key phrase here is “social movement.” An indication of the sweeping changes that had altered the lives of Indian women is centered, in Dosebai’s scheme of things, on the figure of the traveling Indian woman. Travel, especially to the European world, entailed encounters—as near-equals—with the Western world, outside the confines of one’s domestic and native worlds. Dosebai’s interpretation of ‘social’ ‘movement’ is thereby limited to mean geographical movements and interaction with people (preferably) with the ruling classes. The European gaze is upon the Indians and they were becoming increasingly worthy of the gaze. The leitmotif is heard once more and in no subtle undertones—her mother had been responsible for bringing about these social movements.

A lot can be said about the new freedoms that at least a certain section of Indian women had begun to enjoy—the freedom to travel being one of them. Life behind the Purdah was certainly never enjoined upon Dosebai and her ilk. Of course, it is typical of Dosebai that she takes pains to mention this in no uncertain terms and more than may seem necessary, to prove her point. One can perceive, for instance, her patronizing tones when she mentions how life for Parsi women, at one time, had been the way it was for contemporary Muslim women in the zenana.

Dosebai is very vocal, very articulate, and, at times, very verbose. Yet, if there is a lot she says, there is a lot that she does not. These gaps and fissures in her story are crucial in our understanding of the writer’s mindset and ideology. The year of this traveler’s visit is 1907-08. Britain’s insularity is being increasingly threatened. If things are in the process of falling apart, and the center does not hold, it is in great measure owing to the increasing challenges from the colonies. However, while private and public narratives interpenetrate the text, there is a notable absence of anything even remotely pertaining to anti-colonial movements and of the nationalist histories surging around her.

This is the period when personages like Dadabhai Naoroji and Madame Cama, are, in varied and contradictory ways questioning Empire and making their impact on the metropolitan center of London as well as on the home front. Dosebai knows them in her personal capacity and meets them on her visits to London. She does not meet Madame Cama although she repeatedly mentions being with the Cama family. However, she is conspicuously silent about the import of their actions. This is the time when Madame Cama embarks upon a crusading campaign in London, giving speeches at London’s Hyde Park (Dosebai mentions her delight at visiting the same Park.) It is in 1907 when at Stuttgart she unfurls India’s first national flag; Dosebai is in Germany at the time. Dosebai attends the Jamshedi Naroz celebrations in March 1908,taking care to mention that she was seated next to the “distinguished” visitor, the late Governor of Madras and for a time Viceroy of India (454-55). Precisely a year ago, at the same celebrations, Lord Reay had declared amid cheers (from the Parsis) that the “fortunes of Great Britain and India were irrevocably linked together.” Referring to that event, the revolutionary, Shyamji Krishna Varma, had sounded a warning note to Parsis not to be time-servers, that the Parsis were native Indian subjects, that they could not be “enamored of an oppressive foreign yoke” (Mody, 80-81) [8].

Dosebai’s reaction to the revolutionary’s words could be left to conjecture but one’s guess would not seem too far-fetched. She did not look upon colonization as a “foreign yoke” and she was “enamored” enough to desire an audience with royalty. An entire chapter, entitled My Presentation to The King and Queen, speaks for itself. For this loyal colonial subject, an audience with British royalty becomes emblematic of the rarest of honors that Western civilization could possibly confer upon an Indian subject.

Two decades later, when, on a visit to Britain, Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he had famously replied, “I think it would be a good idea.”

Like “Victoria the Good,” Dosebai would not have been amused.

A World of Her Own

If Dosebai does create history, it is not in the guise of social reformer much though she loves and embraces that image. It is as a globetrotter that she maps geographical spaces and marks historical time. There is no purpose behind her travels—travel serves its own purpose. At an earlier juncture in her autobiography, Dosebai tells us that though she had “enjoyed more freedom than [her] Parsee sisters,” she had never been more than a couple of hours drive from Bombay. By the time we reach the end of her narrative, Dosebai has reached the furthest ends of the world. She attends the Delhi Durbar when India comes under the crown. She goes up in a balloon in Paris, accompanied only by a flask of wine. She gets a private audience with the Pope. She is presented to England’s king and queen. She visits Niagara “the Indescribable.” She marvels at San Francisco’s recovery a year after the 1906 earthquake “like a phoenix from its ashes.” Her last voyage to England is undertaken “when the rugged path seems nearly ended.” Finally, it is at this “advanced stage of…life” that she completes her task of writing the text that we are reading. The style of her travelogue is remarkable in its evocative quality.

Much of the narrative, therefore, appears to be written in the tradition of the picaresque. In many ways, in fact, she becomes the picara. Episodic in its mode, the traveler narrates the varied events centering around her travels so that as we learn about her travels, we learn about the traveler as well. We have already observed that her anglophilia limits her exposure to the very vibrant anti-colonial movements of the time. At the same time, her sojourns within India and to the Western world can be seen to unsettle time-honored boundaries. The globe-trotter is aware of the pioneering nature of her journeys and what is remarkable is how much at home she is, whether in her native land or in Western metropolitan centers.

The exigencies of the time would not have allowed the lady solitary sojourning; interestingly, however, Dosebai’s traveling companions are given short shrift. Occasionally she mentions them—an old aunt during the Delhi Durbar trip who is, for this social snob, the source of great hilarity when she mistakes the butlers for “honoured” European guests. As casual are the references to her sons accompanying her on her European travels (although she does acknowledge at the end the help she took of their jottings). Again, though she does not walk the streets unlike the prototypical flaneur, the focus is on herself, whether she rides an elephant in Lucknow, or becomes “a motorist “in London or goes up in the balloon in Paris, or drives in an open carriage back home. The emphasis is always on her and on the daring modes of transport. They often invite jeering comments, from her contemporaries, as often, they inspire awe. Considering the number of times she mentions the mode of her travels, she appears to relish the attention, positive or otherwise, because it is further evidence of her pioneering ventures.

True, there was increasing traffic from the colonies to the imperial center through the mid-nineteenth century onwards, reversing, somewhat, the trend of European flow to Asian regions. Even so, Britain’s insularity till then often made the oriental figure “an object of metropolitan spectacle” (Burton, At the Heart of Empire). It would have been discomfiting to most. For instance, Behram Malabari, the noted social reformer, was not at liberty to wander the streets of London without facing barriers thrown up by the exigencies of Britain’s role as an imperial power and more specifically, by the dictates of the civilizing mission that a variety of Britons believed to be their special gift to colonial peoples (Burton, 2) [9]. Pandita Ramabai, renowned scholar, Cornelia Sorabji, India’s first woman to hold a law degree, and Malabari (all of whom are in England around the time of Dosebai’s first and second visits) come to understand through different experiences how elusive the goal of feeling comfortably “at home” was for colonial subjects in imperial Britain.

Although Dosebai’s travels  were a part of this culture of movement to England, her trajectory through late Victorian-early Edwardian Britain differs from the other colonial subjects mentioned above. For one thing, the otherness experienced not only by Ramabai but even by the anglophiles, Cornelia and Malabari, find expression in the writings they have left behind. Not so, Dosebai. Which of them can be considered representative of the Indian abroad is a moot point. As Burton points out, even if we consider a handful among the thousands who were passing through England to study, trade, or to seek political and social reform they are a motley, heterogeneous crowd. “A Hindu woman converted to Christianity, a Parsi Christian woman training in the law, a Parsi male social reformer—none of them was even predictably “Indian” in Victorian cultural terms…(9). To this hybrid mix, could be added the presence of Dosebai—a staunch Zoroastrian, a faithful anglophile, and an enthusiastic tourist, who, from all accounts or at least from her travelogue, enjoyed being a “metropolitan spectacle” and did not seem to be troubled by imperial patronage as the others had been in various ways. 

Apparently, at least, Dosebai’s travelogue, if it is to be taken at face value, seems untroubled by any mention of racist slurs or arrogance. Of course, unlike the other three, she was not in England to study as Cornelia was, or to interact with Christian missions as Ramabai was, or to seek out a reformist agenda for raising the Age of Consent as Malabari was. Hence, since she was in England as a tourist, she might not have been exposed, as the others were, to the conflicting relationship with empire within the ‘home’ country. Moreover, her rather privileged class positions ensured that she move within the inner circles and not be confronted by ’street’ encounters. Besides, Dosebai seems to enjoy being the focus of attention, because she often mentions being surrounded by crowds of people, who, according to her, wondered whether she was some Indian princess.

We cannot, of course, take Dosebai’s accounts at face value. Her rather strong ego would not have permitted her to admit, in what was going to be a public discourse, that she might have experienced racism, even by default. One such episode that she does mention happens on her travels in her own homeland; however, since British arrogance, seemed to increase in proportion to the distance it traveled from Britain to colony, the example would be even more to the point. On the train to Delhi, two British co-passengers make fun of Dosebai’s appearance, till they realize to their astonishment that she understands English. But once the ‘misunderstanding’ is cleared up, it becomes a great source of “merriment” to Dosebai and she eagerly accepts their help and hospitality. Does Dosebai hide even from herself the offensiveness of what has been termed civilizing philanthropy? Alternatively, does she covet the acknowledgement of the master race to such a degree that she obliterates the rudeness of the remarks from both her mind as well as her narrative? Would she have tolerated the same behavior from a fellow-Indian, especially of a humbler background? Moreover, was she so delighted at the Englishmen’s amazement that she knew English?

It might be a digression but a relevant one, to refer to Dosebai’s maternal grandfather at this point. The pet name of Set Jamsetjee Nanabhoy Guzdar was Sipla or Sapla, which, as she explains herself, meant possessing a “sweet” and “ingratiating” temperament in the Gujarati language. Dosebai appears to possess both the positive and the not-so-positive aspects of that temperament. A digression within a digression—inscribed under the title of this rare copy of the book by her great-grand-daughter, is the inscription,”Sipla Ne Dosi—her pet-name” (Sipla’s Dosi).

Familial Spaces— The House as Archive 

Although Dosebai does not describe her domestic life in as sustained a manner as her travels, the many casual references add up to a vivid picture of her experiences, shared, to a smaller or larger degree, by her class and community and period.

In her appropriately entitled book, Dwelling in the Archive, Antoinette Burton explores a group of late colonial women’s writing, viewing them not only as elite, private narratives of house, home and family, but as the foundations of counter-histories [10].  The house provides the ‘foundational’ archive for the histories that the women have left behind. In turn, these personal, familial histories, themselves constitute invaluable historical archives. One can extend this argument to include Dosebai’s own story. The religious rituals, the domestic routine, articles of furniture, food, and clothing, all assume significance beyond being mere interesting memorabilia. Dosebai’s accounts of domesticity and familial space archive history as a lived experience written at the intersection of the personal and the political, the familial and the social, the private and the public. Historical time is gauged, as it were, by domestic space. The transformation of house and home into durable archives was not just a way of rescuing domesticity from the oblivion of history, but, as Burton argues, was also a means of rescuing history from the triumphalist representations of dominant discourses (Burton, 16).

It has been suggested, that under colonial rule, the nineteenth-century Bengal household generally, and conjugality specifically, came to mean the last independent space left to the colonized Hindu male. The joint family submerged individual rights whereby patriarchal strictures became near absolute [11]. There is no evidence to prove it was otherwise among the traditional poor and middle-class Parsi households, whether rural or urban. However, among the growing bourgeoisie and wealthy Parsi families where exposure to education and the outside world would have been less limited, womenfolk, like Dosebai or even her mother, seemed to enjoy a greater amount of freedom of thought, word, and deed than their other Indian counterparts, both within and without the household.

Dosebai’s dwelling is her domain, even her dominion. She has access to much more than a room of her own; empress-like, she rules over a minuscule empire. The customary practice whereby women ate off a common plate after the men folk’s repast was over, and which practice had earned the contempt of J.S.Mill, appears equally distasteful to this proudly Westernized householder. Even as a newly married daughter-in-law, her “Aunt” as she called her mother-in-law, would affectionately indulge her. She would allot her special crockery, table and chairs, and a special room, even providing her secretly with an extra dish or two, so as not to kindle envy in that large household, which could, at a random guess, have amounted to thirty-odd people. When he was at home, we are told, her husband would join her in her repast, which, she points out, was “unprecedented” in the nineteenth century among the majority of even Parsi households.

These details may appear trivial, but Dosebai is making a point, and the point is well taken. The households, of a particular class of Parsis, were gradually possessed of an infrastructure whereby the need for greater privacy for young couples was being recognized and appreciated. Community living was being replaced by private space; whether this Western influence was for better or for worse would be a moot point. Dosebai rejects what she refers to critically, as the zenana of the Bohras and Mahomedans and enjoys the “luxury of living in a bungalow.” Parsis, as researchers posit appeared to place a premium on privacy, and lived with fewer people per room than others of similar socio-economic standing ( Luhrmann, 111) [12].  

Life in the joint family could have offered a sense of community and security, which the private residence of a nuclear family may not have given. At the same time, one cannot deny that a separate household offered conjugal intimacy and a sense of freedom. Since Dosebai’s action had preceded most others, the young couple was the butt of “ill-natured” remarks but conversely, it added to their enjoyments, “the chief of them being the walks with each other in the garden.” Even to the modern Dosebai, however, venturing as husband and wife together in an open carriage was an impossibility although they were already parents of married children. It would have created a furor in the patriarchal household, and Dosebai emphasizes that her husband was always “obedient to the will of his father and mother” (81).

“Colonial domestication of space,” as a researcher on the Parsis remarks, “indicates a colonial orientation of mind (Luhrmann, 111) We notice this inclination in the various shifting domiciles of Dosebai’s mother. Meherbai’s move to the Malabar Hill-Walkeshwar neighborhood signifies not only her bid for independence but also her desire to approximate the colonial lifestyle, both of which had prompted her desire to give a public English education to her daughter. Once more, it raises a storm of familial and public protest, but, once more, she weathers it. They move in 1848, among the earliest Parsis to do so; the rest were Europeans who were as astonished at their advent “as if we had come from another land” (55). (There is no implied irony in this remark.) Incidental to the narrative, but significant for the post-independence Bombayite, are the ’street’ histories of the location. “Messrs Kemp & Company,” located at a corner, had rented the house, to which Meherbai moves. The busy traffic junction of “Kemp’s Corner” bears the name, although the company has long since gone, the house demolished, the quiet corner morphing into a nightmarish crossroads. 

The antecedents of Walkeshwar recede even further into the realm of myth, although the tank and temple, associated with the myth, remain as the oldest surviving structures of Bombay. Ram was believed to have been on that spot in his search for Sita, and had created a lingam  out of the sands of the seashore. Hence, the name Valuka Ishwara or Lord of the Sand. However, as the locality first made way for the Europeans, and then for the burgeoning merchants, the class to which the Shroffs and Jessawallas belonged, “the focus of activity,” as city historians point out, “shifted from the ancient temples of Walkeshwar to the Governor’s residence at Malabar Hill” (81) [13].  Mountstuart Elphinstone was the first to build the governor’s residence, which remains the official residence of the governor in postcolonial India. The ancient gods had departed long ago, others had taken abode, and when they were vanquished, others, have forever been ready to replace them.

The other neighborhood to which Meherbai moves is the Fort, another European garrison. Once more, the freedom-loving woman makes history, because she successfully petitions the local governing body to demolish the gloomy ramparts that projected over her house. Like the walls of Jericho, the walls came tumbling down, a whole decade before they were removed from the entire Fort area since by then fortification was redundant to the totally secure city of Bombay.

The House becomes a “telling place” in other ways. It is interesting to note the numerous references Dosebai makes to material objects around the household. Dosebai’s style of writing further recreates these inanimate articles to life on the page. Among the many gifts that the doting mother lavishes on her only daughter, are the gifts of a working table and a writing desk. Like the piano, these very European pieces of furniture were familiar features of Parsi women’s households, and remain so as lasting legacies today in some of these homes. Undoubtedly, such items would have served a useful, practical purpose, but they might also have showcased a fashionable lifestyle and evidenced the close proximity of the Parsis to the Raj, and the participatory nature in the ‘civilizing’ process.

At the same time, one would like to imagine that the gift of Meherbai’s writing desk to her daughter as part of her trousseau could have been an acknowledgement of her daughter’s literacy and education. Dosebai admits she had to give up school at thirteen but that her reading continued. Apparently her writing did so as well, at least intermittently, for surely, the minutely recorded facts, figures, events and dates, could not have been all dredged from a septuagenarian’s memory? So one can imagine this woman, seated at her writing desk, in the privacy of her room, recreating house and home, fashioning the story of her life.

If the inanimate writing desk has its own story to tell, so do the varied references to clothes, food, manners, and household work. Dosebai can cook Western food for an entire contingent of friends when on a holiday the Portuguese cook is unavailable. She steps out of the confines of her home to feed the horses, much to the annoyance of the grooms. She shops herself for fabric, silks, and jewellery, which is uncommon and which again means free access to the world outside of domestic confines that this lady enjoys. She enjoys, one feels, the freedom to do so, as much as the actual doing of things. However, what fascinates most is her repeated references to the very traditional, ‘homely’ art of embroidery, which in its very nature is born at the heart of the home and at which Dosebai is skilled.

True, embroidery could have been an individual skill that Dosebai possessed and she was not one to be modest about it. However, one would like to link it with a practiced skill, common amongst nineteenth-century Parsi women. Those of more ordinary means would weave the kusti (the sacred thread which Parsis are supposed to wear) all their lives, for the family and as a means of livelihood. Others, who had more money and time, indulged in exquisite embroidery as a leisurely pastime. Family heirlooms are a visual testimony of an art that unfortunately has died with time. Of course, not all were embroidered at home. Many saris like the gara and tanchois were crafted professionally, after three embroiderers were sent to China by Jamshedji Jeejibhoy to acquire the requisite skills. Of course, although it was traditionally a feminine skill, the craftsmen were all male. It would have been unheard of for women to step beyond geographical boundaries for commercial purposes.

Dosebai, however, emphasizes how she stitched and embroidered her own clothes, showing the greatest of contempt for professional tailors. As for her embroidery, several public occasions are mentioned when she called it upon herself to use her talent. She describes the objects in the most minute of details so that the work of art emerges before our eyes—one masterpiece is a cap, which her son wears for a wedding—it has miniature photographs of the family stitched over it, framed by intricate patterns in silk thread and precious stones. Another piece of embroidery wins a medal at the 1886 Indian and Colonial Exhibition held in London. For Dosebai, of course, the highlight of her embroidery career is when the reigning king and queen of England, Edward VII and Alexandra, accept as gifts, a cap and dress-front, exquisitely embroidered and studded with diamonds and rubies. Where must these treasures have gone? Only the photograph remains, to tell the tale. Characteristically, the occasion for which the embroidery is done is given as much importance as the embroidery itself. In fact, it is difficult to imagine Dosebai seated demurely at her worktable, sewing a fine seam. It is easier to visualize her basking in the attention she inevitably receives.

 A visual record of 19th century Parsi women’s fashionable attire can be gauged from portraits  found in Bombay’s Prince of Wales Museum  as well as  from private collections. Many of these have been reproduced in the exquisitely  created coffee table books like Zoroastrian Tapestry [14] and Portrait of a Community [15].  Dosebai’s bok includes family portraits of women as well, which also indicate changing fashions, with increasingly  modern  influences. Dosebai is pictured wearing the traditional mathubanu (a white scarf) under the sari sorr (head covering formed by the sari). Her mother’s head is tightly covered, so that not a wisp of hair is revealed. Dosebai’s, recedes somewhat; her daughter’s reveals her central parting quite clearly and her daughter is seen to wear no mathubanu, and though her sari does cover her head, it is fashionably only on one side. The four generations of mothers and daughters reveal the crossing of thresholds, real and symbolic, just through their sartorial being.

Curiously enough, apart from some references to her family, we do not get to know much about Dosebai’s numerous children. While entire chapters are devoted to personages outside the domestic household—for instance, the visit of the then Prince of Wales to Bombay, her visit to the Delhi Durbar, the ball hosted by the Viceroy Lord Lytton and Lady Lytton in Calcutta, we do not get to know much about her children. She mentions one son in connection with the famous embroidered cap. But what was her son like as an individual? Which of her sons was he? How did she relate to him? What did he do when he grew up? What were his interests, his tastes?

Dosebai’s husband, Cowasjee Jehqangir Jessawalla, remains in the shadows as well, although she devotes an entire chapter to him. (She does the same to Kesarbai, her only Hindu friend). However, we do get a picture of their married lives together. He does not appear to be the stern nineteenth-century patriarchal figure; he is mild-mannered, benevolent and generous, giving free rein to his wife’s independent spirit, considering that she ventures out of house, home, city, and country, without feeling the need to escort her. The much-talked about ‘companionate wife’ of the late-nineteenth century, undergoes a sea-change in the case of this couple, for he appears to be more the companionate husband, ready to satisfy his wife’s whims and desire to be in the eye of the public and in European company. Or an analogy Dosebai might have preferred—he was her Prince Albert to herself, Queen Victoria.

Understandably, given the exigencies of the time, even the articulate Dosebai would not speak intimately about conjugality. Considering those taboos, the woman allows herself to express the shared intimacy of a young bride. In the chapter entitled, “Insight into Married Life,” (Chapter vi, 67) she thanks the Almighty, for the marital bliss that she enjoys, adding, “It would be out of my power to describe the thrill of ecstasy which the love of my husband excited in my hitherto virgin breast.” (70)

The Almighty finds a place in Dosebai’s home. He is a ‘household’ god, in the sense that religion centers on customs, rituals, and taboos, related to birth, marriage, or death. It is not the spiritual aspect as much as the social aspect of the Zoroastrian faith that concerns this very worldly woman. Religion is the social debt paid for all the material comforts bestowed on the family. If it could be put this way, she is as loyal to the Zoroastrian faith as she is to the British Crown. Neither the philosophical aspect of one, nor the political aspect of the other touches her experiences. Both politics and religion are eschewed and domesticated. Both sustain her, give her a sense of well-being, both arouse within her unquestioning loyalty and remain an intrinsic part of her daily life.

The socio-religious governance of Dosebai’s home was not peculiar to her individual household. On the one hand, the Parsis were anxious to see themselves and be seen by the ruling elite as progressive and their religion as being scientific; therefore, they downplayed some of the existing rituals and customs, which nonetheless existed as an essential aspect of their daily domestic routine, customs that were neither logical nor scientific. Thus, the lived reality was often ritual-ridden. We see these dichotomies at work in households such as Dosebai’s, as well as of others from personal histories, handed down from one generation to another.

Parsi women, we are told, were gradually being allowed to defer marriage till they were in their late teens although child marriages were not totally unheard of. Dosebai marries at sixteen and only after she has approved of the match and after she has rejected an earlier one. The noted Parsi reformer, Behram Malabari had Hindu women in mind when he struggled to raise the Age of Consent from ten to twelve and had met with such fierce opposition from traditionalists like Tilak. Further, Parsi widows, although debarred from participation in festivities, did not suffer the ignominy and persecution as their compatriots did. Even so, Dosebai’s criticism of their seclusion suggests her progressive stance. As evidence, she refers us to her mother’s photograph, included in the text, wherein she is dressed totally in black and sans jewellery. However, the existence of such a photograph (and according to Dosebai, her mother was the first Parsi lady to have her photograph taken), does speak of a more liberal attitude to widowhood, where the mother and daughter were concerned.

Conversely, Dosebai was no exception when it came to the observance of certain rituals, especially those associated with purification. Her English friends find her forty-day ‘confinement’ after childbirth to the customary prison-like room “incredible,” especially since it is observed by one who so loved “English” freedom.  Her reply comes in the guise of a harangue that an All-wise Providence had willed us to respect one’s ancestral religion (125). Likewise, the much-coveted audience with the Pope is in near-jeopardy when she refuses to kiss his toe, not on hygienic grounds but religious ones, since “it would be considered sinful by the Parsees (335). Preoccupations with pollution and purification may well have been ingrained Indian customs, but which, over time had taken on a specific Zoroastrian coloring.

The lived reality was often in conflict with these assumptions about the scientific nature of the religion. Ambiguities prevailed, and we see these reflected in Dosebai’s own rather conflicting views. On the one hand, she is at pains to prove her near-equal status with her English friends and on the other, she adheres to socio-religious rituals, which were neither scientific nor logical. She is caught in those dichotomies as she is at pains to uphold the progressive nature of her household, which is seen as Westernized, and equally anxious to endorse rather rigid customs, which she upholds as sanctioned by Zoroastrianism.

The open reception that Parsis gave to Western thought, definitely and unambiguously stopped short at religion. They refused to imitate their British masters in this regard, insulating themselves against the proselytizing of Christian missionaries. The apparent peace-loving community was known to have resorted to violence if they perceived—what they considered—a threat to their religion. We see an example of this occurrence when hired Parsi mobs stoned Sorabji Kharsedji (Cornelia Sorabji’s father), and more than once his life was in danger after his decision to convert to Christianity. (Gooptu, 14) [16].  

Parsis had begun to be frequent travelers to the Western world, Dosebai, as we see, being one of them. However, they were careful to carry their versions of the ganga jal which Hindu Maharajas were wont to carry on board the ship to England. A nineteenth-century portrait painting of the younger scions of the shipbuilding Wadia families includes an unknown figure. We are told that such a person would be a chaperone lest the Parsi youth be tempted to eat beef and pork and worse still, be converted to the Christian faith while on their stay abroad (Portrait of a Community).

On their part, Christian missionaries could and did subvert the Crown’s Policy of Non-intervention, in subtle and not so subtle ways. A nineteenth-century treatise by John Wilson, entitled The Parsi Religion, speaks of “the glory” of the Christian god, as it does about “the darkness and ignorance” of all other religions, including the Zoroastrian religion [17].

Warning the author to desist, the Parsi editor of Samachar  (Bombay’s oldest Gujarati paper) remarks pithily,  “From striking two stones together, you will elicit nothing but fire.” Not to be outdone, Wilson retorts, “The spark elicited by striking two stones together, may… kindle a flame which may devour the rubbish which has long been accumulated” (30) (Samachar, 8th August, 1831).

Dosebai who has a lot to say on a lot of matters is not far behind in the championing of her faith. Typically, what sparks off these harangues are what she perceives as shortfalls in the modern Parsi lady’s housewifery skills, which make her neglect the rituals for the dead. To Dosebai, this neglect is tantamount to a vice and contempt for the Zoroastrian religion. She warns her fellow-believers never to “lend an ear to the sly whisperings of deceitful tongues which traduce Zoroastrianism as imposture and uphold Christianity as the embodiment of truth” (147).

This is the same Dosebai, who, flattered at being invited to dance at a ball, regrets not having acquired that Western skill. However, religion, at least its ritualistic aspects, went very readily hand in hand with the most fashionable of outdoor pastimes and Dosebai was not one to complain at these incongruities. Actually, it is these very incongruities in her personality, her life, and her times, which make this raconteur’s narrative so fascinating.

Dosebai’s narrative overflows with a fecundity of stories—stories breed more stories and still more stories. Interestingly, when I chanced to talk with friends and acquaintances about the Dosebai ‘discovery’, I discovered even more stories directly or tangentially related to The Story of my Life.

The arguments about the pioneering claim in women’s education seem to be carried on a hundred odd years later. I found that while the descendents of the Jessawalla clan staked a claim for Dossebai’s mother, the Cursetjee family and Alexandra School alumni claimed the founder of the school as the pioneer. The old school anthem kept ringing in one’s ears—”Cursetjee, our Founder, great in memory is enshrined.”

An octogenarian friend claiming to be a descendent of the same Cursetjee knew much about Dosebai without ever laying her hands on the book. “My mother’s stories-oral histories you know…” was her response to my astonished queries. Yet another, talking generally about women’s education, told me how her mother’s school education had been brought to an abrupt halt by her father; he was worried lest she follow the footsteps of Ruttie Petit (a distant relative) who had eloped at that time with Jinnah. Another friend was pleased at my interest in the Parsi community—”that way lies survival,” she seemed to suggest. Conversely, another friend was puzzled at my interest in the dead past. Without sounding too Eliotian, I tried to explain to her and to myself as well, of the livingness of the past and its relevance to us today.

Dosebai’s travels evoked memories of other intrepid travelers, real or fictional, of a bygone age. One particular account, dredged out of almost a collective consciousness, was contained in the travelogue, Mamai Ni Musafari  (Voyages of a Grandmother). Mamai, however, lacks the sophistication of Dosebai. In fact, she resembles Dosebai’s blundering aunt, her numerous faux pas shaping the amusing narrative. Try as I might I could not lay hands on the book although all the Parsis I asked, middle-aged, elderly or old, had heard of the book. Many had read it, others, had it read to them by their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers. One eighty year old even recalled her mother playing mamai’s role in a dramatized version. I remember the book being in tatters—as tattered as our memories of the tales. All we could recall was mamai’s insistence on traveling with her talking parrot aboard the ship, with hilarious consequences.

The search continues—not only for that long-ago book, but for an irretrievable past, for all those mothers, and aunts and grandmothers, and for all the tales they had to tell us, but which, unlike Dosebai’s, never found their way in print.

Dosebai embroiders a sari of white English satin, which has a pattern of flowers and birds of various hues. She uses forty-two shades of silk to highlight the variegated colors. She has embroidered it especially for a family wedding, and is delighted at her sisters-in-law’s envy and the wedding guests’ wonder. Dosebai’s narrative marks her creativity in another, yet similar direction. Her material is, of course, the English language. Many strands go into the weaving of the text, as vibrant and colorful, as the exquisitely embroidered sari.  Sad to say, Dosebai did not live to rejoice in this creation and bask in the public gaze, as she so loved to do. She died on 11^th January 1911, barely two weeks after she had signed her preface, dated New Year’s Day of the same year. The book appeared in public shortly after, also in the same year.

NOTES

[1] Ubhbha  in Gujarati and Khada in Hindi, mean ‘standing upright.’ The term may have originated from the fact, that unlike the seated or equestrian statues that dot Bombay, this one was in a standing position. Even as I write this piece, the Mumbai Mirror (Sept.2, 2009) reports the decision by the Municipal Corporation to refurbish the statue “back to its original glory.”

[2]  Dosebai  Cowasjee Jessawala, The Story of my Life. Bombay: Times of India Press, 1911. I am grateful to Adil Jussawalla for lending me a copy from the family archive.

[3]  Urvashi Butalia. The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India. Delhi: OUP, 1998.

[4]  Rassundari Devi. Amar Jiban (My Life) 1876,1906. Translated by Enakshi Chatterjee. Calcutta, Writers’ Workshop,1989.

[5]  K. Lalita and Susie Tharu (eds). Women Writing in India.New Delhi:OUP,1991.

[6]  Dosabhoy Karaka. A History of the Parsees. London: Macmillan,1884.

[7]  Archie Baron. An Indian Affair. London: Channel 4 Books / Pan Macmillan, 2001.

[8]  Nawaz Mody (ed). The Parsis in Western India: 1818 to 1920. Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1998.

[9]  Antoinette Burton. At the Heart of the Empire. California: University of California Press, 1998.

[10]  Idem, Dwelling in the Archive. New Delhi: OUP, 2006.

[11] Tanika Sarkar. Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation. Delhi: Orient Longman, 2001

[12]   TM Luhrmann. The Good Parsi .Delhi: OUP, 1996.

[13]  Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra. Bombay, the Cities Within. Bombay: Eminence Designs, 1995.

[14]   Pheroza Godrej and Firoza Panthaky-Mistree. A Zoroastrian Tapestry. Ahmedabad: Mapin, 2002.

[15]  Portrait of a Community:An Exhibition of Paintings & Photographs of the Parsees. Exhibition Committee, Khorshed Gandhy and Others. Mumbai: National Gallery of Modern Art, Chemould Publications and Arts, October 2002. The book includes photographs of Dosebai’s extended family and friends.

[16]  Suparna Gooptu. Cornelia Sorabji,India’s Pioneer Woman Lawyer, A Biography. Delhi: OUP,2006.

[17]  John Wilson. The Parsi Religion. Original publication details not known. Reprint, New Delhi: Indigo Books, 2003.

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