Farewell to an Ahmedabad landmark: The Times of India, Fadia Chambers

By Sanjay Swati Bhave* 

September 3 was the very last day of The Times of India’s office on Ashram Road. The Times is now moving out of Fadia Chambers and into a part of some very large building in the area behind ISKCON Temple and Mall.

The Ahmedabad office, housed in the four-storeyed Fadia Chambers on Ashram Road, was itself a landmark of the city.

“Times Paper,” “Times Bata,” “Times Deaf and Dumb,” “Times Carmel,” “Times Hanuman,” “Times Reserve Bank,” “Times Sales Tax,” “Sahitya Parishad behind Times,” and, more recently, “Times Riverfront”—there have been so many addresses and landmarks by which Ahmedabadis have identified places in relation to The Times.

For Ahmedabadis of the pre-television, old-school era, one unforgettable memory associated with this building is that of election results. Above the entrance to the Times office was a parapet. During elections, a huge blackboard would be put up there.

Election results would be updated on it as they came in. The late Gautam Mehta, one of The Times’ legendary crime reporters, would stand there with chalk and duster, changing the number of seats as the results were announced. Down below, on the pavement and on the road, there would be a crowd.

I was never a journalist, but this architecturally ordinary, somewhat ungainly yet immensely lovable building is connected with countless memories of mine. So when I heard the other day that The Times was moving, I went to the Times tea stall the next day evening especially to meet my friends one last time.

This was the last of so many evenings over the past twenty-odd years.

My friends there were journalists and reporters from The Times—some from Ahmedabad Mirror, some from NavGujarat Samay. People from other newspapers and television channels came too.

Even the most senior among them was about ten years younger than me. I happened to be the older one; that was merely an accident of age. In every other sense, they were the ones who deserved the stature. They gave me a little more respect than I probably deserved, sometimes with an affection and regard that actually embarrassed me.

At the corner where one turns from Times towards the Riverfront stood “Takht ni Kitli.” Before that, it was known as “Pandit ni Kitli.” Newspaper people who came there would spend hours over tea and cigarettes. I spent my share of those hours too.

There was never anything to eat. If one got hungry, at most there would be a packet of Balaji snacks. I honestly cannot remember ever having to pay for them.

Even at two in the afternoon on a late-April day, when there was barely a patch of shade, one or two people could always be found sitting there.

Hours of conversation—from utter nonsense to genuine intellectual discussion.

There was a firm understanding that almost no conversation could take place without any cuss words. Of course, when women were around, some decorum was maintained. One had to put one’s respectable self aside.

Anything and everything could be subjected to raw irreverence, expressed without the slightest covering. Religion, caste, power, prestige—nothing was exempt. The roles of the person making an outrageous joke and the person having to take it in good humour were constantly reversed.

Many conversations here came with a prerequisite: the listener was expected to already know the background.

“Remember that fellow who has been supplying from that farmhouse for years…”

Who was “that fellow”? Which farmhouse? Supplying what?

You did not ask. That was where the news began.

What journalists write is only a small fraction of everything they know—of what they know, what they can write and what they are actually allowed to write. The general public is rarely aware of this. Some of what remains unwritten gets spoken here.

People who had attended months of hearings before the Nanavati-Shah Commission came here. So did reporters who had broken stories leading to externment orders, reporters who had freely walked through COVID wards in hospitals, and those who had broken the news that Ahmedabad was going to bid to host the Olympics. And many, many others.

Here, one would get to know about hero's villainy, and villain's heroism.

You were sometimes forced to reconsider your own standards and ideals of journalism.

It was at Takht ni Kitli that the tea vendor acquired the name “Don Quixote.”

You could meet people here who had discovered the timelessness of Camus’s The Outsider, who placed Marx and Gandhi face to face, who had performed Safdar Hashmi’s street plays during their college years, and who stayed up all night watching film classics.

There were also reporters who had been numbed by the bloodshed of communal riots, who had seen the police pick up innocent people, and who had been admitted to hospital more than once while covering COVID.

And then there was the journalist who, while talking to young newcomers to the profession, could turn their heads upside down with his experience, learning and insights—the kind of person someone might describe as a Socratic gadfly.

Those who came here usually kept their feet firmly on the ground.

Sometimes you learned such harsh truths about the world that you had to consciously protect yourself from cynicism.

I have many memories of nights spent on the steps of the shops beside The Times office and on the nearby pavement.

For a few years, I would have dinner on Saturday nights—the beloved night of the week for all enthusiasts—and reach Times around nine.

Whatever happened during the day at the tea stall would continue at night on the pavement.

The difference was that by then my journalist friends had finished their work and come downstairs, so there was no hurry. And there were no women journalists around.

If we were lucky, a peanut-and-roasted-gram cart would come by, its little bell ringing as it moved along the road. Sometimes we would get sandwiches from the street vendors—the most expensive “Delight” sandwich among them.

Newspapers get about three days off around Diwali.

For newspaper people, this break can be strangely boring.

On the evening before the holidays began, the next day’s newspapers would be printed and out by around ten at night, while our friends would arrive around seven-thirty. They would bring along boxes of sweets they had received as Diwali gifts.

They would eat some there and generously give some to people like me to take home.

I have seen, time and again, how a simple conversation at the tea stall about a problem could result in a journalist friend making one phone call and getting something done.

A visually impaired student from our college needed a ground-floor hostel room. A promising student’s admission had been inexplicably held up. A female student was being harassed. A road leading to a hostel for visually impaired women could not be built.

These friends helped find ways through all of these problems.

If a tree in our housing society was under threat, if my nephew needed to be admitted to another school in the middle of the academic year, if I faced a personal difficulty at college, if I needed some important information from the Higher Education Officer’s office in Gandhinagar, if my passport was delayed—there were countless occasions when friends from The Times came to my rescue.

Like millions of others, I went through some very difficult days during COVID.

My eighty-year-old mother had been completely bedridden for a month or two. At midnight on April 24, 2020, we had to admit her to hospital.

I informed two or three journalist friends. They began checking with hospitals.

No hospital was willing to take her. Even the V.S. Hospital people came to examine her in the ambulance and turned us away.

Eventually, she was admitted to the newly built 1,200-bed COVID hospital at Civil Hospital.

I was on the verge of falling apart. In desperation, I thought of asking a friend to come to the hospital at around one in the morning.

He did not refuse—even though he himself had diabetes.

Thankfully, some sense returned to me. I called him back and told him not to come; another arrangement had been made.

Another journalist friend came to the tent where I was staying at Civil Hospital, taking the risk of being there, carrying clothes and snacks for me.

One of his friends stayed in touch with the RMO and kept me updated.

Yet another friend kept track of my mother’s test reports.

Finally, on the terrible night of April 27, we performed my mother’s last rites at the V.S. crematorium.

At that time, besides one doctor friend of each of my two brothers, the only other person there was a journalist friend from The Times.

Everyone else was under the strict lockdown.

And that was not the end of it.

In the days that followed, there was a strong possibility that the government might quarantine us. Even then, my friends assured me:

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you placed in the best possible place.”

Fortunately, that was never needed.

Sanjay Swati Bhave

I wrote a column for about five years in NavGujarat Samay, with considerable freedom. I had many friends there too. Even if I had already emailed my article, I would still go in.

Its editor is a veteran and a friend-with-all type of a person, a towering figure. If he had time, we would have long conversations in his chamber.

I would also go downstairs to Mirror and then down another floor to Times for a round.

Eventually, NavGujarat and Mirror disappeared from the building, leaving The Times alone in Fadia Chambers.

The first time I climbed the steps of The Times office was in 1983–84, when I was doing a one-year diploma in journalism at NavGujarat College.

One of our senior journalist-teachers had told us that we should keep visiting newspaper offices.

So I cycled to Times.

After overcoming a few small and predictable obstacles, I managed to meet the editor of the time, P. G. Mahadevan.

He appeared simple, stern and aloof.

We exchanged two sentences.

Then, around 1992–93, I went to submit an article to Midweek Montage, the readers’ page, and met editor Harish Khare.

He was dressed in a suit and tie.

He did not say even a single sentence to me.

He barely looked up and simply said in English, “Leave the article here.”

The article was about the late Gujarati poet Anil Joshi receiving the Sahitya Akademi award in Delhi. The fact that it was published exactly as I had submitted it gave me enormous pleasure.

But the attitude of those two editors—their swag and snobbishness—is still vivid in my memory even after all these years.

There was a useful lesson in it:

Make sure you never behave that way yourself.

There is also a story behind how all these Times and media people became my friends.

At one point, my college-age friends of my own generation gradually moved away—because of careers, practical circumstances, or simply the passage of time.

But I am not someone who can live without friends.

And then, in 1996, I joined Shri H. K. Arts College on Ashram Road.

Those were the years when degree-level journalism education was beginning to expand.

Students from our college started entering the field.

I had some earlier experience with The Indian Express—a brief stint in reporting, some column writing, and many visits to meet friends at its tiny, shabby yet delightful office in Mirzapur. That office has its own set of memories.

Three of my close college friends were already in journalism.

After friends and books, the newspaper world was my deepest interest.

So I gradually developed connections with the generations that followed into journalism.

For about six years, I also taught in the Department of Journalism at Gujarat University.

As a result, students from H. K. College and later from the university kept joining newspapers.

I have always maintained a good connection with the many different kinds of young people who studied at our college—and the newspaper people became part of that circle too.

Especially those from H. K.

Students who studied at our college have done work in journalism that makes the college immensely proud.

Whenever I think of them, my heart fills with joy.

That happiness, that eagerness to meet them, the acceptance I received without having any particular claim to it, those cigarettes and that tea—that tea—kept pulling me towards Times.

To all my journalist friends:

Thank you.

Thank you for all these years in which the tea stall at Times made me feel that I belonged among you.

Goodbye, Times.

Goodbye, Fadia Chambers.

Goodbye, Ashram Road.

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*Writer, teacher, activist