Delhiwale: Dilli's first Joycean
It all started in 1922, with the publication of Ulysses. Joyce's great Dublin novel unfolds within a single day—16 June, today named Bloomsday after the book's hero, and celebrated across the world. That day, Dublin's sea-facing Martello tower becomes a mecca for Joyce fans; it being the site of the novel's opening scene. In 1962, the tower was filled with souvenirs from the writer's life, and thrown open on that year's Bloomsday as James Joyce Museum. Among the first visitors was a woman in sari.
This evening in 2025, ensconced in her living room with her hardbound Ulysses, the 86-year-old Nayana Goradia fondly recalls that afternoon. 'I remember the tower's staircase so clearly—I couldn't believe I was actually there.'
Nayana was a literature student in England when she boarded a Dublin-bound ferry in Liverpool. The young woman expected to meet countless Joyce readers on reaching the Irish capital. But she found no Bloomsday buzz. She didn't even encounter much of a crowd in the museum, except for some Joyce fanatics from America.
Could it be because Joyce, dead for 20 years by then, didn't yet command the esteem he does today among his country people? Many Irish considered the novel to be insulting to their religion and nation. 'Do you not know that Joyce was a traitor?'—Nayana remembers a Dubliner admonishing her in a pub. Whatever, 'I was thrilled to be walking along the streets that Joyce had written about in Ulysses.' Strolling in the Trinity College grounds, she met a young man lying on the grass with Lady Chatterley's Lover. Turned out his father had personally been acquainted with Joyce!
For five days, Nayana walked the Dublin streets in silk saris; her long hair tamed into two neat braids. Today, she is wearing a long kurta over chooridar pajamas; her hair shorter and smart. Walking in careful steps, she escorts her guest to a table laid out with sandwiches, quiches, pakodis, tarts, pastries and chai. She doesn't touch a single snack as she talks about her massive book collection ('neem leaves keep the books safe'). Her chai turns lukewarm, malai forming on the top.
A few months after her literary pilgrimage to Joyceland, while visiting friends in Geneva, Nayana chanced to meet a man of letters whose nana was the Raja of Kapurthala. Stuart Ahluwalia Gilbert is more renowned for being the world's first Joyce scholar. He was also a friend of Joyce. Nayana now gets up from the table to show her copy of Gilbert's influential book—James Joyce's Ulysses: A Study. The paperback bears Gilbert's handwritten inscription for Nayana, testifying to their 'agreeable meeting.'
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