Father and son: Great journalist and famous poet

During my college days in Bombay — now known as Mumbai — in the mid-1950s I was a regular reader of the Times of India, the country’s greatest daily before independence and after. Because I read it everyday I can safely say that I learned from it as much as I did from my four-year degree course perhaps more about Indian and international affairs.
At that time Francis Robert Moraes, better known as Frank Moraes, was the editor in chief and one of the best writers in English in the country. The paper itself had been founded by a British company called Bennett and Coleman and then sold to an Indian company which retained the same name although the leadership shifted to an Indian family controlled company.
I read the paper and, of course, the editorials daily like my college homework and learned a great deal and admired Moraes’ writings and journalism as he was also writing a weekly column called “Men, Matters and Memories” under the name of Ariel. He was then Mumbai’s prominent journalist and I specially liked his courage in his scathing attacks on Britain’s collusion with France and Israel in their tripartite aggression on Egypt in 1956.
Of course, as a student at St. Xavier’s college, like him 30 years earlier, that is 1923, I did not dare request a private meeting but I attended as many functions at which he was a speaker as possible. He was a wonderful speaker with a great command of language having graduated from Oxford University and spent three years to be a barrister at law, thus spending altogether seven years in England before returning to India. Many years later I met his son, the famous poet Dom Moraes, who also graduated from Oxford University.
At one of the functions I approached Frank Moraes and exchanged a few words about our joint alma mater St. Xavier’s College. But the biggest occasion took place in the most unlikely venue right next to my own house in Aden, the famous British colony where I was born, after my graduation from Columbia University in journalism in the early 1960s. Frank was a guest of the Indian high commissioner in Aden, a fine man of Punjabi origin and a Sikh by religion. There, I had a good chance to talk to and interview him. He was on his way to Africa to write a book called “The Importance of Being Black: An Asian Looks at Africa” in l965. The interview was published in my father’s owned English-language newspaper called Aden Chronicle which I edited with my father and other family members.
Frank had by then quit the Times of India and joined the Indian Express (formerly the Morning Standard) owned by Goenkas. It was a good paper which is still doing well but I think Frank’s greatest era in journalism had seen better days and he left for England to retire as a correspondent for the same paper.
During my days in Mumbai, Frank wrote his fine book “Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography” in1956 which I found extremely readable and a fascinating study of the Nehru who was then at the apex of his career and leadership of India and the Third World.
I gathered enough courage to tell him that I had met Nehru even while I was studying for my master’s degree at Columbia University in New York. The interview was published in Aden and picked up by the agencies including United Press International. Many years later I was lucky to meet his son Dom who was accompanied by his very beautiful wife Leela Naidu, who had an Irish mother and Indian father and was starring in some Indian films. In 1954 she became Miss India and all doors were wide open for her to pursue her career further. Both of them were introduced to me by the Indian film director Vijay Kapoor, cousin of the famous actor director Raj Kapoor. The latter is still remembered for his awe-inspiring role in “Awara” and “Boot Polish” in which he starred with Nargis. He also starred with Vyjayanthimala and Nutan.
We got together for nearly five hours near the Oberoi pool before the horrid terrorist attack on the hotel and the nearby Taj Hotel facing the Gateway of India which was built in 1936.
Dom was a quiet man and Leela was glamorous and although very good company they did not live happily together for reasons which are not very pleasant to discuss publicly. Dom was by his own admission in his books a rather heavy drinker. He said that he was a drunkard but not alcoholic although he described his father as one and his mother as mentally sick.
I read two or three of his books including the last one called “the Sixth Man.” His style as unlike his father’s which was excellent journalistic prose. Dom wrote like a poet according to the great author and writer Khushwant Singh, with plenty of metaphors.
Soon after our very long meeting he left the Indian Express since he was getting sick frequently and busy writing his last book. Leela died before him but he also like father left for London where he won the Queen’s prestigious prize for poetry.
Frank and Dom were some of the best writers in the Indian press. Frank had a long career serving as a correspondent and commentator in Burma and China and at one time was based in Sri lanka — then called Ceylon — as editor of the Times Ceylon and the Morning Standard.
But Dom was essentially a writer not a reporter and could have been a notable man in his own right but for his excesses which he mentioned in his writings which eventually damaged his liver and his marriage to Leela.
A few words about the Goans, some of whom were my teachers at Xavier’s and friends of my father in Aden as civil servants. Although Portuguese by nationality they were well beloved by the British who hired them in the empire as civil servants and police officers, they were also famous cooks and singers whom I admired in Aden during the colonial era.
When the British gave back India its freedom in 1947 the Portuguese demurred refusing to give up Goa. Nehru was enraged and after failing to persuade Lisbon to quit Goa ordered the army to march into it.
It is now the smallest state by population but more prosperous than most although most of its best people have gone over to Portugal, the United Kingdom and Canada. Its official language is Konkani. It is a popular beach resort although crime has taken its toll but the government has controlled it. English but not Hindi has now nearly replaced Portuguese which had reigned supreme for nearly 450 years.

n Farouk Luqman is an eminent journalist based in Jeddah.