Portrait of a life

[Text and photo by Mayank Austen Soofi]

Sunder Nursery has gardens, lakes, fountains, monuments, an amphitheatre, and even a restaurant. And then it has something which is barred to grownups. With its unique “charpai” swings and many slides, the Playhouse is wildly popular among children.

This haven for the young-ones was the doing of a very grownup citizen who was lucky enough to have lived to see her ninth decade. The celebrated Bimla Nanda Bissell – Bim to friends – was a grand dame of Delhi society, to say the least. She died on Thursday, aged 93. She is survived by son, William, and daughter, Monsoon.

“Bim helped get the funds to set up Sunder Nursery’s Playhouse,” says Ratish Nanda of Aga Khan Trust for Culture, which manages the garden. Bim, however, is most identified with FabIndia, a company founded in 1960 by her husband, the late John Bissell, an American. Back then, while John was striving to connect craftspeople of India’s villages to the consumers of its big cities (Fabindia today has outlets across India and abroad), she was also building her own career as a social secretary to the US ambassadors in Delhi. (One of her bosses was the illustrious economist John Kenneth Galbraith, President Kennedy’s envoy to India.) She later joined the World Bank’s office in Delhi.

Sakina Mehta, wife of late artist Tyeb Mehta, who used to work with FabIndia in the 1970s, in the company’s then office in Jangpura, describes the young Bim as an extremely striking woman who would be attired in handloom sarees. “She always had lots of silver bangles, she was famous for that.” Bim Bissell continued to be famous for her jewellery. “She once gifted me silver buttons,” gushes Sakina Mehta.

Bim Bissell had lately curtailed her public appearances due to frail health. Two years ago, she was sighted in her beloved Sunder Nursery (right in the photo), with another legendary Delhi woman, craft revivalist Laila Tyabji. That evening, both the ladies simultaneously took off their black Covid-era masks to pose for this joint portrait, sharing a camaraderie that comes to people only when they have known and admire each other for long.

Writing a poignant account of Bim on Facebook, Laila Tyabji’s narration also gives a fleeting glimpse of a disappearing specie of Delhi’s high society. This was a set of resourceful sophisticates who would love to gossip – oh yes! – but who were also profoundly and passionately involved with arts, crafts, literature and social issues. They could discourse in great detail about the latest flashpoint in world affairs, and could as effortlessly share encyclopaedic insights on, say, India’s numerous sari weaves.

Here was a typical day in Bim Bissell’s life, in Laila Tyabji’s telling: Bim arrives for lunch hosted by designer Ritu Kumar. Delhi gossip is traded across the dining table, along with stuff on politics. Next, Bim heads to an appointment with the dentist, after which she attends a lecture at IIC, followed by showing up at a book release. Her day climaxes with a farewell dinner for a diplomat, and only then does she return to her elegant home in Panchsheel Park.

The aforementioned Playhouse that Bim helped create in Sunder Nursery in 2021 had its origins in the Playhouse school that she memorably administered in Tughlaq Road during the 1960s. Mumbai-based filmmaker Vaseem Dehlvi was a little boy when he would go to her school. He has forgotten much of his time there, but vividly remembers the Ramlila that Bim would annually stage with the tiny tots — Vaseem once got to play Ravan!

A year ago, on a cold morning, Sunder Nursery was awakening out of nocturnal life. And there she was on the wheelchair- Bim surrounded by her bunch of friends. There was also her picnic basket crammed with cucumber sandwiches, plus thermos wali chai. Life was beautiful. Bim Bissell had earned it.