Written by Bharat Sundaresan| Mumbai | Published on:April 29, 2014 3:08 am, In the winter of 1933, the Bombay Gymkhana management were faced with a serious dilemma. For close to 60 years since its inception in 1875, the elite club had remained exclusive to Europeans, with the only Indians allowed being the members’ servants. Suddenly now, there was an urgent need to mend the rules, even if only temporarily. The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), cricket’s governing body at the time, had chosen the Gymkhana as the venue for the first-ever Test to be played on Indian soil. And the club had no option but to open its doors to the locals. Thus CK Nayudu & Co became thefirst Indians to officially venture into Bombay Gymkhana and make use of its facilities with the Test commencing on December 15. Over the next four days, close to 50,000 Indian fans would clamour into any space available, paying anywhere from Rs 50 to 100 for tickets and sofas, in the shamianas and tents erected outside the ground for this historic event. On December 19, Bombay Gymkhana returned to being a ‘whites-only’ zone, which wouldn’t change for another 14 years. What had caught the MCC’s fancy were the Gymkhana’s white colonial architecture and its archaic pavilion, similar to any of those you still find in the English Counties. Eighty years on, Bombay Gymkhana’s iconic country-house style landscape has hardly changed. But that is certainly not the case with regards to the club’s demographics. “It was the Brown Sahibs, as we call them, who took charge after Independence followed by a few elite Parsis. Then, slowly but surely, they brought in sportspersons and corporates,” explains Nandini Sardesai, wife of the late Dilip Sardesai and a long-serving member of the Gymkhana. Till the 1990s, however, the Gymkhana remained more-or-less a gentleman’s club. That is before Sardesai spearheaded a campaign to bring gender parity into the swish premises. “Earlier, only sons of members could be incorporated. But we ensured the constitution was rewritten allowing women to become members and daughters to enjoy similar rights. They still couldn’t vote though and we fought again and then complete parity was achieved by 2004,” she adds. These days, the Bombay Gymkhana is a hive of activity, both sporting and otherwise, including fine dining. But Kishen Narsi, renowned boxing referee and a member of the club since the 1960s, says Gymkhana had a different feel to it in days gone by. “It usedto be strictly a sporting facility, where members would come around 5pm, play a game of squash or badminton, have a pint of beer and leave. There was hardly any social activity, which started much later,” he says. Another curious things here is the gully that separates the club from the wide expanse of the Azad Maidan. “It started off as a short-cut between Churchgate and VT. It wasn’t always teeming with people as it is now. Now, we have millions walking past the Gymkhana every day, with impromptu audiences gathering to catch some live action,” Narsi says. There’s another colonial legacy still intact within the largely-wooden confines of the Gymkhana as it approaches its 140th anniversary. To date, even during peak summers, committee members, including the female ones, are required to wear shoes that covertheir entire feet. A veteran member describes this quirk thus, “The Britishers may have left India, but they have left behind the Bombay Gymkhana, just in case.” bharat.sundaresan@expressindia.com, Source: The Indian Express
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