Her mother’s café soon became her new stage. No-one thought she would make a recovery.īut she was tough and undeterred, and far too used to being the centre of attention.

Sadly, her dream was cut short after injuring her spine thrice, swinging from chandeliers. Too briefly, she swung swords, fought lions, ran through fire. No doubt, the persistence, confidence and striking good looks that she had inherited helped her find her way to the film sets of Wadia Movietone Productions, the very company that launched Nadia. Glittering lights, red velvet curtains and the films of the silver screen all captured her heart, none more so than those featuring the swashbuckling stuntwoman, Fearless Nadia. Demanding of life and buoyed by her mother, Ruby grew up ambitious and determined to be in the films. I hear that since she watched Hunterwali as an impressionable 7-year-old, she dressed and styled her hair according to her favourite heroine – even wearing shorts and fashioning herself a mask. Including her wonderful baby girl.īorn the same year as India’s first talkie, ‘Alam Ara’, was released, spirited little Ruby was surely destined for stardom. When her dear father passed, she dreamed again, this time to turn the café into a place where everyone could be everything they imagined and more. She always had a rare and enviable confidence, a self-sufficiency that allowed her to turn things to her to advantage. Looking at her now, I suspect that there is hardly a moment she regrets. Her father, of course, had been shocked by her scandalous behaviour, but he was a good man and he was always there for her. They say that Yasmin rose above the dishonour and tittle-tattle with a remarkable and healthy indifference. Those early years of motherhood for a so-called ‘fallen woman’ in Bombay must have been very tough. But, perhaps inevitably, he left, his regiment posted away from India, leaving a tearful 19-year-old Yasmin with a baby girl (and a whisky habit). Who knows what the natives of Aberdeenshire would have made of her, or indeed what she would have made of them. Hourston-Gordon and their life together at his family home in Ballater. The Lieutenant had been wholly sincere when he reminisced of his childhood in the Cairngorms and they talked of Yasmin’s future as Mrs. The delicious and intense affair was conducted in the rooms of Green’s and Watson’s Hotels over the course of the next year. I’ve also been told that there was little that could have kept them apart that warm night in Colaba. They say he was extremely handsome, if slightly roguish, and that his bright blue eyes made her smile. Calum Hourston-Gordon, Highland Light Infantry. There, she encountered a certain straight-backed Lt. Wilful and rebellious, she drank and smoked and you might say that she found herself where she should not be, at the bar at Green’s Hotel. I look across the room at Yasmin, as she nods at the barman to top up her glass with a chota peg of whisky.įor the young Yasmin, life in the café had been dull and stuffy. I used to idle here over Bun Maska and Chai and read my newspaper while fans stirred the warm air gently. An abiding favourite for patrons of all ages from Fort and beyond, it was a refuge from the street. I remember years ago when this was just a large, sleepy Irani café owned by Yasmin’s father. Cine stars, at home on the page 3 society photos, chatter self-importantly about the latest talkie showing in the new cinema next door. Jazzmen, languid on rattan chairs, unwind to swing and jazz sounds. The obviously wealthy hobnob with the beautiful, the rakish and the occasional ne’er-do-wells. Each performance a hit, attended by all manner of Bombayites and revellers passing through this slightly wild port city.

Yasmin loves these evenings in her café-cum-club like nothing else. They begin to gossip and laugh conspiratorially, as they often do. “Come beti, sit with me,” suggests her mother, Yasmin, at the bar, drink in hand, strikingly beautiful in deep blue chiffon. She glides between tables, past where I am sitting, making her way to the bar.

A gramophone clicks and crackles to life and music starts again.

Garden story