{This is a response to What Pegman Saw. Today we are in Mumbai, India, known as Bombay, long ago. I was interested to learn, in my research for this poem, that Mumbai is full of Art Deco architecture. Mumbai has its own version of Art Deco (known sometimes as Bombay Deco or Indo-Deco) incorporating various Indian motifs, as well as borrowing from the European movement. Sadly, I couldn’t find an image that seemed appropriate, but my links will take you to the images of others so you can get a feel for the style.
I am a fan of Art Deco partially because I am a fan of the Poirot TV series and its more recent edition on Masterpiece, which dramatize many Agatha Christie whodunnits, taking place during the 1930’s and featuring the arch detective, Hercule Poirot. Both series are very beautiful to watch. This will give you an idea of what types of art deco images they contain. This is a list of homes used in the series, with photos. They do a good job of incorporating Art Deco and other period movements whenever they can.
Most of the images used in the poem are those, used in Art Deco buildings in Mumbai. Elevator cages are the vertical structures used to house an elevator. Often, there will be a companion staircase, spiraling around the elevator cage. I borrowed much of the first line from a Twitter post from December 27, 2018 by Art Deco Mumbai, a group that seeks to conserve and call attention to these beautiful buildings. You will find many lovely examples of this style in Mumbai, at their link. I especially love the elevator cage of the Maison Belvedere.
Other puzzling terms below include: the Oval, which is the Oval Maiden, a large green area in Mumbai often used for cricket games; eyebrows, another name for the shelf-like protrusions above windows or balconies, to give shade; Assurance refers to the New India Assurance Building, which features two long maidens, stretched several stories tall, staring down, one on each side of the doorway.
Art deco was partially inspired by the aerodynamic nature of trains, planes and ocean liners, so I included references to these, as well. Finally, there is a beautiful Mumbai Art Deco building with a lot of red and white, the Moti Mahal Building, so: candy-cane-striped. The link is to a CityLab article on Art Deco in Mumbai, which includes this building as its cover photo.
This district of Mumbai, containing Victorian and Art Deco buildings deserving of preservation, was given UNESCO World Heritage Site status in June 2018.
Hope you enjoy. Forgive my inevitable errors. Thanks for the prompt and thank you for reading!}
When elevator cages were an art form,
When ocean liners glided on the sea,
When to the British still belonged old Bombay,
That was when my love was took from me.
When trains and planes exuded inspiration,
When florid ceded to simplicity,
When ziggurats’ and sphinxes’ adoration
Was at its height, my love was took from me.
When frozen fountains of eternal life flowed,
When cinemas first twinkled on the scene,
When futurism beckoned with a bright glow,
That was when my love was took from me.
Between the wars, beneath the Deco eyebrows,
Their disapproval, glaring, stories high,
The Oval’s pitch of cricket witnessed our vows;
Assurance, stern, foretold: the end was nigh.
A candy-cane-striped manor held our first kiss;
Your bronze skin, smooth, and svelte, your curving knee;
How did they learn of our brief maiden voyage,
And sweep me up, and put me out to sea?
Copyright Andrea LeDew 2019
For another one that got away, read Correction.
I enoyed the Art Deco cum love story poem very much!
Thank you Liz. Its one of my favorites! Just the idea of buildings having eyebrows!
I had to look up “ziggurats”, but otherwise your notes at the beginning gave me all the help I needed to understand and enjoy the poem. Never having been to Mumbai, I had no idea there was so much Art Deco there.
Me neither, Nemorino. So glad you came by to have a look! Funny we both referenced the ’30s, so close together!
Love this. So clever, your mixing of imagery and the love affair, making the romance very much a product of its era. Lovely phrasing throughout.
I had no idea you watched Poirot in the States – David Suchet was wonderful, wasn’t he? Those shows are still constantly repeated here on certain channels and they always draw me in. We had a new adaptation of the ABC Murders on the BBC over Christmas with John Malkovich as Poirot. A melancholy version of the great detective, but rather good I thought.
Must look that one up! Yes, Netflix and Amazon Prime can be treasure troves of old British TV. Sometimes I feel like I grew up once, with American TV, and a second time, with British!
That’s so lovely! I know a lot of our TV is slow and quiet compared to that in the States (certainly when these Poirots were made) but they’re still a pleasure to watch. Have you seen any of the BBC’s adaptations of the Miss Marple books? They had several actresses associated with the role, but my favourite was Joan Hickson, the mistress of reserved, watchful Englishness! 🙂
Yes, in fact, my neice often teases me, that as a respite from her hectic young life, she will come over and watch Miss Marple with me.
I prefer the curly-haired Miss Marple, Geraldine McEwan, on Agatha Christie’s Marple. But I have probably only seen a total of six or seven, with all three Marples, including Julia McKenzie (whom I most fondly remember as Mrs. Potts, from Beauty and the Beast.) Compared to the twenty-something Poirot episodes.
Miss Marple is a nice change from Poirot. This Marple is less officious and imperious than Poirot, and more subtle and self-effacing, and yet, she wheedles her way around the dismissive (and often chauvinist) assumptions of bumbling police, to get to the truth of things, however unladylike the truth, or her pursuit of it!
Of course, having not read the books, I do not know, how true to Christie’s dictates she plays the character.
I especially like her flower garden. To me, it is the very definition of English cottage garden.
Like you, I like her slow deliberations, her thoughtfulness. Jane Marple may be quiet and knit a lot but she knows evil when she sees it – an interesting mix
Super cool. I always loved art deco too, especially Raymond Lowey.
Just looked him up. Love this quote:
Loewy lived by his own famous MAYA principle – Most Advanced Yet Acceptable. He believed that, “The adult public’s taste is not necessarily ready to accept the logical solutions to their requirements if the solution implies too vast a departure from what they have been conditioned into accepting as the norm.”
https://www.raymondloewy.com/about/biography/
I also learned from that article that he wrote a book called “Never Leave Well Enough Alone” and chapter 3 is called “sex and locomotives!”
Sounds like he made an outsized impact on industrial design.
Oh, love the way the art deco of an earlier age is woven into a tale of lovers torn apart. Bittersweet and evocative.
Thanks Karen!
I enjoyed the imagery – very evocative. I loved the maiden voyage play on words.
But…
the past participle of ‘take’ in the passive voice is ‘taken’, not ‘took’. How about replacing ‘took’ with ‘snatched’, which is the necessary single syllable and grammatically correct?
Sorry to be a grammar Nazi!
No worries. I know it is incorrect, but I like the sound of it as is, and sometimes grammar must give way to music. Thank you, though, for your vigilance. You have caught me out more than once, and I am grateful!
Brilliant! I spent many years near Miami FL which is somewhat of a deco paradise, or used to be when I was there.. Loved this.
We could’ve been neighbors. I lived in SE Florida for a while, then trekked to NE Florida. I know exactly the buildings you mean, if they’re the big hotels in Miami Beach. Such a splashy style! I need to go back and look for the Art Deco, now my eye is more informed. ????
I thought it was cool the way you added the art deco theme. That added a whole new dimension to the poem!
Thank you Debra. A step beyond the average lover’s lament, I hope.
I especially appreciated all the imagery here, as a fellow fan of the Poirot series and its amazing period costumes and set designs and scenes — and of course, David Suchet! Do I understand correctly about the “maiden voyage” indicating why this particular love was forbidden? I hope so, because that’s damned clever phrasing.
Yes I’m imagining some forbidden liason between a European living in India, with prospects for marriage already charted out by his or her relatives, and an Indian, who captures his or her heart, and when the relatives intercede and pack the European off, the lovers never see one another again.
The heart never does listen to the parents’ wishes, does it?
And as for the use of maiden, I meant it in terms of their first time together, and also in the sense of her losing her virginity but not in the sense of her being below the age of consent. ?Also of course playing on the oceanliner theme. ?
I actually went in a completely different direction, thinking you were implying there were two maidens involved in this love affair.
Well now that could be true as well!
I’ll never think of “maiden voyage” the same way again!