35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

‘I LIKE TOO MUCH THE PHFIT-PHFIT’
they were, too: a Victorian model train with five carriages, wheels
that worked, doors that opened, carved entirely from ivory, every
minute detail accurately and painstakingly included, even the very
seats looking as soft as cushions. A steal at $15,000 – Mr Joo was
virtually giving it away. Ray bought it on the spot – cash, eat the
receipt – and, I learned a decade later, sold it to a New York dealer for
$95,000. A maharaja’s state tikkaghari (horse-drawn carriage) in
miniature, made from forty-three ounces of eighteen-carat gold,
studded with emeralds, rubies, pearls and diamonds, the four horses
pulling it carved from ivory and gilded, its little coachmen made of
ebony and jade, a cloisonné coat of arms set into each door, which
opened to reveal an interior entirely handpainted with hunting
scenes by someone who must have possessed superhuman eyes or
have gone blind completing the work. There were also duelling
pistols inlaid with gems, mother-of-pearl and ivory, smothered in
gold filigree, their stocks carved from ebony, teak, burled walnut, or
rich red mahogany, reclining like lovers on velvet beds in cases
decorated with marquetry in a dozen exotic woods, the veneers
patterned in exquisite complexity. Some Islamic, from the sixteenth
century, most were British or French imports from the heady age of
swaggering imperialism.
A man known only as Sirdarji was another of Ray’s biggest
Bombay fans. He was a banya, a moneylender, and appeared to own
a somewhat sinister and splendidly decayed area of the city, fond of
employing the phrase banya ki raj, which meant something like
‘rule of the moneylender.’ He also owned people: they owed him,
and thus, until they paid up, he owned them and whatever was theirs,
including wives and daughters. Sirdarji was also an art dealer who
specialised in erotica. This was where Ray purchased his miniatures,
and where he made some more arcane acquisitions.
Early one sultry evening, we were sitting in Sirdarji’s ‘office.’
This air-conditioned room was panelled in faded teak and furnished
with expensive reproduction sofas and chairs that might have suited
an emperor’s throne room but here screamed at you in gilded
vulgarity. Walls and shelves were strewn with both original and
fake erotic paintings, sculpture, and objets d’art, all depicting
variations on the sex act that boggled the mind.
181