Recollections of mineral collecting and dealing in India

But any intoxication in life seems to lead to some sort of hangover. Was mine brought on by the repetitious cycle of teaching semesters, one forever following upon another? Or was it the bleak New England climate, which chilled my tropical blood to gluten for five months of every year, from November to April? Perhaps it was the unmistakable signs I began to see in the mirror each morning that forcibly reminded me of life's fleeting passage. Or perhaps it was an atavistic siren song from deep within my being calling out for once familiar sights and smells and sounds that could be encountered nowhere else but in my native India? Or was it an unquenchable yearning for a more earthy, iconoclastic, exuberant existence than a salaried position in the ivied halls of academe would ever permit me? Whatever the reasons, by 1971 I began to consider ways of creating a fresh life and professional career that could and would encompass both India and America. And by then I had gained a life mate, Toby Marotta, also a Harvard graduate, who was bold enough to throw caution to the winds and embrace a life of high adventure with me (Andrew Tobias, 1998, "Gay Like Me," Harvard Magazine, v. 100 (3), 53-54), if only some means to do so would manifest itself. Soon that happened.

During a brief family visit to India in the winter break of that year I happened to run across a display case of mineral specimens in Bombay's Taj Hotel. With them, a card: "Burjor Mehta, Geological Specimens-India," giving a local address.

Mehta's office was a scene of organized chaos. Bulky specimens, mostly Deccan trap zeolites, crowded open shelves near the ceiling. The perimeter of the room was piled high with stacks of wooden trays overflowing with jumbled mineral specimens, some sitting higher than the trays were designed to accommodate. No labels, no price tags, but lots of dust.

Mehta, his short, wiry body taut with confined energy, sat up straight as a ramrod behind a great wooden desk in the room's center. I judged him to be about 15 years older than I. His penetrating eyes took in every nuance of my expression and body language. Once we had danced our way through fifteen minutes of getting-acquainted conversation, Indian to Indian, he bluntly asked me what was on my mind. He was a man with whom I could talk squarely, I felt.

"I'm wondering whether it might be possible for me to make a business out of acquiring mineral specimens in India and selling them in America. The trouble is, even though I'm pretty good at identifying minerals by sight, I know nothing, absolutely nothing, about the mineral market in the USA, or how minerals are sold or at what prices. I've never even attended a mineral show!"

A sparkle in his eye told me that Mehta approved my candor. He asked me to poke around his stock and pick out any twelve specimens that attracted me. When I was done choosing, he lined up the specimens on his desk and wrote prices for each one on slips of paper. My heart sank. Having myself picked up such pieces, and better, for free at Maharashtra quarries, I considered Mehta's prices to be usuriously high. But I swallowed hard and agreed to pay the amount he wanted. "But I'll need to know the precise localities," I insisted. "Otherwise they're just pretty rocks, not mineral specimens."