Rites of Passage

14 ★ FTWeekend 26 March/27 March 2016 House Home When FT correspondent James Crabtree and his wife Expat lives | UK to India chose to stay in Mumbai for their son’s birth, they got a new perspective on the city Rites of ew things about living in India are predictable. Even so, I was surprisedtofindmyselfsitting passage cross-legged on the floor one evening back in July 2014, Fflanked by two Hindu holy men, as they conducted a naming ceremony for my newborn son. His name was more A bicycling bread seller in Colaba unexpected still: Alexander Francis ViswanathanCrabtree. Incensecurledaroundmeastheelder priest chanted, scattering marigolds from a silver platter by my feet, and drawing patterns in sand on another plate. Scented oil was poured over my hands as the monsoon rains battered the window panes. A hairy brown coco- nut was perched atop a nearby pot — only later someone told me it repre- sented a Hindu deity. My wife Mary sat on the sofa, holding our baby, while a dozen friends looked on in bemuse- ment. Feeling befuddled myself, I remember trying to recall how a west- ern atheist of good standing like myself hadendedupinsuchaspot? Theideahadsurfacedsixmonthsear- James, his wife Mary and their son Alexander near their home in Colaba, south Mumbai — Photographs: Asmita Parelkar The family at the Taj hotel lier when an Indian neighbour heard we were expecting our first child. We had moved to Mumbai from London in late Foreign babies are rare in Horse-drawn of the colonial-era Breach Candy club, 2011, settling in Colaba, an area in carriages in or splashing about in its giant India- the south of the financial capital filled India outside big cities like Colaba shapedpool. with ramshackle houses and popular Mumbai, so we felt a sense Meanwhile, I began putting Alexan- with expatriates, just a short walk derinababycarrierandgoingforwalks, from the famous seafront Taj hotel. of kindly curiosity ambling over to the Maidan in Church- For the next two years I wrote happily gate, a large open space where teams about Indian business for the FT gather to play cricket, or up to Fort, the while we travelled avidly at weekends, historic heart of the old city of Bombay, from skiing in the Himalayas to tiger where we would pick up his favourite safarisinMadhyaPradesh. snack—afreshlybakedbunwithbutter Then, in autumn 2013, everything —fromYazdani,anoldParsibakery.For changed. Instead of weekend jaunts, we the locals, the sight of a giant red- checked out maternity wards or tried to headed foreigner striding around with a import baby car seats. When the time small red-headed foreigner strapped to came, our neighbour told us, we had to hischestprovidedreliableamusement. have a Hindu naming ceremony, which Foreign babies are rare in India out- she would organise with her family’s India’s excellent medical institutions and exhaustion that hits all new par- side big cities like Mumbai, so we felt a priests, a father-and-son pair. Sure, I and world-class doctors. We eventually ents, albeit with Indian twists. On his similar sense of kindly curiosity as we said.Soundsinteresting.Whynot? picked Breach Candy Hospital, a first trip out of the house, for instance, began travelling again, carting Alexan- It is a cliché of expat life that expect- place favoured by well-to-do locals and we walked by the Gateway of India, der off to literary festivals in Rajasthan ant parents fly back home for the birth, whose maternity wing has sweeping built by the British in 1911, and on to in northern India or to the historic but the idea never really appealed to us. viewsoftheArabianSea. tea at the Taj. When the monsoon French quarter of Pondicherry in the Instead, we sent carefully worded Our early months with Alexander finally ended we spent happy after- south. Walking through an Indian air- James at the Yazdani bakery in Fort emails to our families, with stories of were filled with the same mix of anxiety noonssittingindeckchairsonthelawns port with my son is perhaps the closest I 26 March/27 March 2016 ★ FTWeekend 15 House Home i / INSIDEKNOWLEDGE What you can buy for . $500,000 A small one-bedroom apartment in Breach Candy $1m A two-bedroom apartment near the Taj hotel in Colaba $2m A three-bedroom, art deco flat overlooking the Maidan in Churchgate Crabtree’s verdict . Pros Cosmopolitan and safe English is widely spoken Charming colonial architecture Alexander Francis Viswanathan Crabtree Cons Little to do for children Heavy monsoon rains Bureaucratic visa regime and complex rules for foreigners buying property Favourite places St Thomas Cathedral in Fort Colaba’s Port Trust public gardens Sailing round Mumbai harbour the ceremony about to begin, handed me a booklet filled with cursive scripts and astrological symbols. He looked at memeaningfullyandsaid:“Theletteris V.” Panic set in. Naively, I had thought The family standing in front of a sign reading ‘Mumbai’ in Hindi, next to the Gateway of India Breach Candy Hospital, where Alexander was born we would have days to mull it over. The priest looked impatient; an answer was needed. My mind raced for a suitable Heads turned to the baby, A street in Fort, that India is a land of contrasts, but few Indian name — any Indian name — the historic are more jarring than that between the beginning with V.Vikram? Vijay? Then, and strangers approached, heart of old grimconditionsinwhichmanychildren a flash of inspiration: Viswanathan, embarrassed and smiling, Mumbai liveandtheprofoundlychild-lovingcul- after “Vishy” Anand, the Indian chess tureinthecountryasawhole. champion, who I had come to know and asking for selfies It is the latter that we will remember admireduringourtimeinthecountry. most from our time in India — how And so it was decided: Alexander strangers dote over infants and the Francis Viswanathan Crabtree; an will come to celebrity, as heads turned lengths to which friends would go to immodest mouthful of a name, and an to watch the baby, and strangers mark the arrival of our own — a sense extra-long business card in the making. approached, embarrassed and smiling, embodied most obviously in our nam- Being truthful, that third leg isn’t actu- askingforselfies. ingceremony,aritualthatneatlyencap- ally on his passport, the papers for Back at home, we learnt the benefits sulates the Indian sense that the arrival which we filed quickly in the days after of being parents in India, not least the ofababyshouldbeasocialcelebration. his birth. But even so, I hope Alexander plentiful childcare. There was even the Then there was the name: Viswa- comes to enjoy his secret Indian middle unheard of option of night nurses, nathan, which translates rather grandly name. And even if he does not, I will women who stay through the night to as “lord of the universe”.Indian parents remember fondly how he came to have help look after the baby, allowing par- Not everything was perfect. Mumbai paradises, overflowing with green often delay naming children until long it, and even more so the country that ents to rest. We turned that down, hasfewparks,intensetrafficandstifling spacesandchild-friendlymuseums. afterthebirth,butwepickedAlexander welcomedhimintotheworld. thinking we should learn the hard way, heat. Most streets have no pavements, Therewereothercomplexitiestoo.As within a few days. Still, our neighbour perplexing Indian friends. Others whilethosethatdoarebesetbypotholes we walked round our neighbourhood, told us, the holy men would give us an JamesCrabtreeistheFT’sMumbai seemedconfusedthatweputAlexander and hawkers, making them impassable Alexander and I often passed homeless auspiciousletter,andallweneeddowas bureauchief.Nextmonthhetakesup to bed at the primly European hour of by stroller. By comparison, London, or street children, who would run smiling pickamiddlenamebeginningwithit. asabbaticalpositionasaseniorvisiting 7pm, while many Indian babies head off our new home in Singapore, where we alongside us, holding up thin arms and What happened next was a blur. The fellowattheLeeKuanYewSchool tosleepratherclosertomidnight. move next month, seem like parental asking for small change. It is often said elder priest stood at our door and, with ofPublicPolicyinSingapore.

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