A Russian Samovar in India, an unusual discovery

Preparing for the launch of my first website (http://henrikeger.com/), I googled the web to see if it was already listed. To my surprise, I found a fragment of my own writing quoted in an article by prolific and popular Indian journalist Behram Contractor [on June 4, 1980], about Samovar, the restaurant at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai, then Bombay (republished on Aug. 8, 2007):

“Ah, Samovar [. . .] where the whole world meets the whole world [. . .] this lovely haunt of the artists and the poets [. . .] where V.S. Naipaul drops in for lunch and where Pearl Padamsee sits at the most prominent table in the place and writes her film reviews [. . .]

​“I have no words to write about Samovar. So I leave it to Henrik Eger, a visitor from Germany, who must have one day wandered into Samovar and left this poem behind:

“A Russian Samovar in India,
A German guest at noon,
A Muslim friend with Hindu eyes,
And I, engulfed by food,
By music and by plants."

Behram Contractor (1930-2001) also known as Busybee: “In the history of Indian journalism, there will never be another humorist like Busybee; he was the Art Buchwald of India, the P.G. Wodehouse of our times and more, a writer with a brilliant sense of timing for satire and humour, but with a soft and sensitive pen. And with a flow of words that could have readers rolling in their living rooms, offices and suburban trains on their way home; or moist-eyed with emotion and sepia-tinged nostalgia. That was Busybee."

Originally published as ​“A Russian Samovar in India, an unusual discovery: Fragments of the past resurfaced,"
Mumbai, India,  HenrikEger.com, August 14, 2007 

If you are interested in publishing or adapting this copyrighted poem by setting it to music, staging or filming it, etc., please contact the author. ​

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