Gole Bazaar 1960s - Cycle Theft

============================================================================

Opposite to Bhandari's and a little away is Thackers Bookshop. Thackers is a well known name in Calcutta Book Publishing since 1864:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker%27s_Indian_Directory

The Gole Bazaar outlet confined itself to school books and stationery. Its IIT Branch in the Tech Market was then housed in a vast shed like all other shops there.

There used to be a wrought iron bench in front of the Gole Bazaar Thackers under a neem tree. On this one could find seated the Granpa Thackers...a venerable old man. I have seen and talked to about five generations of Thackers:

Granpa >> Sons >> Grandsons >> Great Granddaughter >> tiny tot (?)

All of them were pleasant to talk to and business-savvy:

http://gpsastry.blogspot.com/2010/04/thackers-and-harrys.html

I noticed a trademark demeanor of Thackers: If you ask for, say, Webster, and if they have it, they would purse their lips and frown in concentration and would retrieve it for you. If they don't have it, they would smile at you almost apologetically. This is unlike the custom of Hyderabadi shopkeepers who would smile and say "hai naa!" triumphantly before fetching it for you if they have it, and frown if they don't, as if you were asking for the very moon.

My friend N told me a story narrated to him by Prof G L Sinha (ME) in the 1960s. Apparently GLS landed up in the market street of Abu Dhabi and wanted to buy a Blackbird fountain pen after he lost his during travel. And asked a shopkeeper: "Blackbird fountain pen?" and the Abu Dhabi shopkeeper smiled pleasantly. But didn't stir from his seat. After a few minutes he repeated his question and he repeated his smile. After a few more attempts, he concluded that the sales guy is a moron and visited the next shop and got a repeat smile. And since GLS was a Humboldt of an earlier generation, he concluded quickly that the Abu Dhabi custom prohibits saying "No" as inauspicious. And he was right...

This reminds me of a peculiar custom in our Andhra households during my childhood. If, say, the rice stored in the default Britannia biscuit tin is exhausted, the housewife would never tell her husband that their rice tin is "empty"...she says: "Darling, the rice tin is FULL"...implying that the rice tin has been fully gobbled up by that bloke...

By the way, Britannia is one of the few fairy tale success stories of Calcutta:

http://www.britannia.co.in/companyoverview_overview.htm

Started in 1892 in a nondescript house in Calcutta, it is now more than a hundred-crore company spreading its tentacles into dairy products among others.

At the end of that Thackers block was (and I think still is) the push bike shop labeled Motilal Vohra manned by a forbidding-looking gent. I guess his was a monopoly then. He used to store two brands of push bikes. One, the Raleigh that became Sen-Raleigh of Asansol...another antique with a history:

http://www.nottinghamshire.gov.uk/home/leisure/archives/exhibitions/wheelsoffortune/raleighglobalpresence.htm

If you were tall and well-off, you wouldn't settle for anything less than a 24" Raleigh bike with a leather-and-spring seat and a foam seat-cover and a full-chain-cover and a spring-loaded rear carrier and full mud guards both back and front. That would cost you a whopping Rs 250.

If you were like me, you would settle for the cheap Avon cycle without frills but with mud guards (you wouldn't like to lecture without mud-guards since the moment you turn to the blackboard, your back would be a delightful sight to watch...another pleasant distraction for the bored students). That cost Rs 150...

If you were a student of PAN Complex, you would buy an n-th hand bike without anything at all but wheels and pedal and handle...and would take two passengers, like that famous American riddle:

Q: How do you carry 4 elephants in a Volkswagen Beetle?

A: 2 in the front, 2 in the back...

Myself and Prof AVKR (now late, sigh!) joined the Phy Dept in May 1965, he as an esteemed Lecturer (400-950) and me as a pathetic Associate Lecturer (375-650). He was ten years older to me and hundred times richer...which is not very rich. We were allowed to stay in the Gokhale Hall which was then reserved for Teacher Trainees, who were a breed apart...like bats they had both animal and bird features...they were attending M Tech Classes and teaching B Techs. Since Gokhale Hall was very near the Main Building, we used to walk down to our 'work-place'. But after six months we were shunted to share a Bachelor Flat (BF-1/12) near the PAN Complex but allowed to eat in the Gokhale Hall.

So, we went to Gole Bazaar's Motilal Vohra's. AVKR bought a fully equipped Raleigh and I an Avon.

The very first night we rode to Gokhale Hall for grub, we parked our cycles in one verandah each, mutually perpendicular. And after eating, I came out and found to my chagrin that my bike was missing. And I went into the Mess and cried that my bike was stolen. He jumped up, and strode out with unwashed hands, and returned to me a few seconds later muffling his grin:

"I am so sorry...but mine is not yet!"

It just so happened that he had equipped his new bike with an elephant chain and a Godrej Navtal lock while I was foolishly depending on my rim-lock.

Once bitten, twice shy...I never bought a first hand cycle then on.

Cycle and other thefts were so rampant in the KGP Campus that one very old retired Chief Engineer re-employed at IIT KGP remarked in the Dining Hall of our Faculty Hostel:

"If you bend, they will steal your balls here!"

He had lost his new bike just that day...

============================================================================