Mumbai: For many years, the Sir JJ Faculty of Commerce in Mumbai’s Fort precinct skilled secretaries and stenographers for the workplaces of company corporations within the space. With the latest demolition of the constructing that housed it, the institute, which witnessed the period of typewriters giving method to computer systems, has ended its seven-decade-long existence.
Dhun Constructing on Nanabhoy Lane, which had housed the seven-decade-old institute, has been demolished by its landlords – the Bombay Parsi Punchayet (BPP) – after it was declared harmful by the municipal company.
FPJ
The institute was began in 1952 by the BPP, the apex group belief of Mumbai’s Parsi-Zoroastrian group, as a centre to coach younger girls in workplace administration. “Initially it was just for typing courses. We added different topics later,” mentioned Homi Mehta, former honorary director of the institute, who now lives in Pune. Mehta took over the administration of the institute after the passing away of his spouse Homai who had labored as a secretary with the Tata group.
Earlier than its formal beginnings as a typing faculty, the institute had its beginnings in 1914 when the Sir Jamsetji Jejeebhoy Parsi Benevolent Establishment Business Courses was established. The institute’s benefactors included typewriter producers Godrej and Boyce which donated typewriters and began the Godrej Typing Wing within the Nineteen Seventies. To maintain up with the modifications in expertise, the institute added the S B Bhabha Laptop wing a couple of many years later.
A metropolis resident whose father had labored as a stenographer in a neighborhood agency mentioned that aside from Davar’s Faculty of Commerce, which is positioned close by, Sir JJ Faculty of Commerce was a coveted place to amass abilities as typists, stenographers and workplace assistants.
Noshir Dadrawala, former BPP trustee and a author on Parsi-Zoroastrian group issues, mentioned, “It was began when there have been very restricted alternatives for ladies who wished to work. One choice for ladies was secretarial work and one of many the reason why the institute was arrange was for this,” mentioned Dadrawala.
Nevertheless, after the loss of life of Homai Mehta and the decline within the demand for typewriting and shorthand programs, the institute curtailed the variety of programs it supplied. Dinshaw Mehta, former chairman of BPP, mentioned, “There have been hardly any Parsi college students and the constructing was dilapidated. We had given plans (to the municipal company) for reconstruction however the plans are in limbo.”
