There’s a slender volume that rests permanently on my bookshelf – a book called Bombay Then and Mumbai Now, by Jim Masselos and Naresh Fernandes. The pages open easily at my favourite spreads, where colonial boulevards of Bombay stand shoulder to shoulder with contemporary Mumbai’s chaotic, exuberant streets. It’s more than just a book for me, it’s a living, breathing bridge between eras, proof that ‘Amchi’ Mumbai is not only of the present, but a work in progress.
So when I learnt that Dr James Cosmas “Jim” Masselos, the Australian historian who helped countless Mumbai residents like me see our city anew, passed away last month, in Sydney at age 85, I felt an unexpected pang of personal loss. It’s strange to grieve for someone you never met, yet whose ideas walk beside you each time you wander through Crawford Market or pause under the clock tower at CST.
Jim Masselos arrived in Bombay in 1961 on a Commonwealth Scholarship, a young Australian scholar drawn to the whirlwind of anti-colonial fervour and urban drama. He lodged at Churchgate hostel, conducted fieldwork under Professor William Coelho, and completed a thesis on Bombay and Poona’s nationalist movements by 1964. But somewhere amidst those student days, Bombay also lodged itself in Jim’s heart. He never really left. At least, not in spirit.
His work made history thrilling, relatable and startlingly relevant. In his famous 1991 essay, “Bombay Time/Standard Time,” Jim explored how Bombay refused to set its clocks by Delhi’s time until as late as 1955. For him, this was more than a quirky civic footnote, it was Bombay’s stubborn assertion of identity. His genius lay in revealing how even the ticking of clocks told stories of power, resistance, and community.
Jim didn’t just dwell in dusty archives. He walked the streets with keen eyes and even keener empathy, collecting stories, documents, rare colonial records and art from pavement booksellers. His apartment in Sydney apparently was said to overflow with Mumbai’s memory – from Tyeb Mehta canvases to brittle government reports once languishing on Kalbadevi footpaths.
Through his books and over 50 articles, Jim gave us a Bombay that was intimate yet panoramic. In Bombay Then and Mumbai Now, he paired archival photographs with modern-day counterparts, letting us glimpse what Marine Drive looked like under gaslights, or how Byculla evolved from a genteel suburb into a teeming intersection of lives. Each spread feels like opening a time portal. Without Jim, I might have walked these same streets blind to the sediment of stories beneath my feet.
Those who interacted with him as academics recall Jim dabbled effortlessly between analysis and observation, whether discussing the 1893 Hindu-Muslim riots or the communal horrors of 1992-93, he never reduced Mumbai to statistics. Instead, he laid bare the continuities that made history echo painfully into the present.
He had once quoted: Mumbai was never “merely a white enclave surrounded by an Asiatic universe,” but a complex organism shaped from within by its many communities. What a fascinating perspective! That understanding…that cities breathe, hurt, heal and reinvent themselves through their people, feels urgent even today, as Mumbai strains under new pressures yet again.
His friends and colleagues, sociologist Sujata Patel, historians Prashant Kidambi and Rachel Dwyer, speak of Jim not just as a brilliant mind but a warm, unassuming presence. He wandered from Samovar café at Jehangir Art Gallery to the shaded lanes of Gamdevi, debating politics and art with a relish that made him part chronicler, part flâneur. He built lifelong friendships across continents, mentoring students at the University of Sydney who found in him not just a teacher but a connector to distant worlds.
Though he tried to place his vast personal archive with institutions in Australia, the shifting winds of digital priorities meant it largely stayed with him. Yet perhaps that’s fitting: his legacy isn’t coldly housed in a library basement. It lives on more vibrantly in our homes in the form of books, in footnotes of local histories, in the way we pause to wonder what once stood where a glass tower now gleams.
For me, Jim Masselos’ passing feels like Mumbai losing one of its adopted sons. Someone who looked at this city’s grime and grandeur with an affection and depth many born here never muster. His writings make me walk a little slower, notice a crumbling cornice, imagine a long-vanished tram.
Jim gave us the gift of seeing our city in layers, of treating its past not as relic but as active participant in its present. Perhaps the reason why local guided tour companies took to their social media pages and were the first to pay tribute. May we continue to read him, to argue with him, to see Mumbai through his eyes – eyes that loved Bombay/Mumbai enough to make its history a living, urgent part of who we are.
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