timeout 01, family jewels

The downside of our city’s headlong rush into the future is that we are losing iconic Mumbai charms in the process. From cotton fluffers to flamingos, the jewels in Mumbai’s crown are falling loose. We celebrate our city’s endangered species – and cross our fingers that they will still be around in 50 years.

Chinese shoemakers #

Octogenarian Charlie Bhang refuses to take concessions to nostalgia. “It’s all gone. What’s there to talk about?” he says. Behind him 30 – 40 pairs of fine, hand-stitched designer shoes are neatly stacked in leather cases. These are the last shoes manufactured by Bhang in his tiny factory upstairs. Once they’re sold, the century-old trade of Chinese shoemakers will be extinct, much like the Chinese silk sellers who wandered the streets until the 1950’s.
In the 1940s, a dozen Chinese shoe shops operated in Colaba alone (among them, S Bhang and Co), while there were several others in Byculla. “But many Chinese, including shop owners and labourers, started migrating out of the country after the Indo-China War in 1962,“ says George Bhang, the third generation family member who now manages the store. The introduction of cheaper machine-made shoes had an impact too.
By the beginning of the 1990s, everyone but the Bhangs had shut shop. This family clung on, but made a few concessions to the march of time: part of the shop was converted into a beauty parlour, and three STD booths and curio counters started competing for space with the shoes. After trudging along for so long, the Bhangs recently decided to stop manufacturing shoes altogether. As George Bhang point out, “Why bother? People can easily buy shoes made in China today.” Chetna Mahadik

Cotton fluffers #

While you were testing out the resilience of the springs in your new spine-friendly mattress, the twank-twank of the cotton fluffer’s tango was getting fainter and fainter. The arrival of the foam mattress and later the, rubberised coir mattress, has meant the gradual exit of the cotton fluffer, once a familiar figure on the neighbourhood horizon. “At one time, the public needed us,” says Habeeb Khan Mansuri, a Worli-based cotton fluffer. “Now it’s the other way round: we need them to survive.” Mansuri estimates that only 40-50 of his colleagues remain in Mumbai, their business stifled by the growth of the “sleep comfort products” business.
The fluffers, most of whom are from Rajasthan’s Mansuri community, performed a very important role during the years when almost everyone slept on cotton mattresses: they removed dust from the cotton and smoothed out its inevitable lumps, using their special bows and hammers. Here’s how it works: the bow is hung above the floor from a hook attached to a rubber strap. The mattress is split open and the cotton removed. The fluffer then strikes the tangoos, or bowstring, with a round hammer called a pinjarin, through the cotton. The string vibrates violently, shredding the lumps and shaking them free of dirt. Fluffing and re-stitching an old mattress takes about two-and-a half hours.
Cotton fluffing is a hereditary skill, passed down from father to son – Habeeb Khan uses his father’s bow. He charges Rs 5 per kilo of cotton fluffed. He has been working as a fluffer for 15 years and has seen the number of his fellow fluffers halve in that time. “Most of them have quit and gone on to do something else,” he says. “The rest of us roam around middle-class areas because those are the ones who will still have work for us.” Eklavya Gupte

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Salt pans #

There’s something romantic about Mumbai’s salt pans. Salt is still made on them in the same way – from saline water through solar evaporation – as it has been for thousands of years. It was on the sprawling, glistening salt pans of Wadala, on June 1st, 1930, that 15,000 satyagrahis broke through a police cordon to add their numbers to MK Gandhi’s salt protest against British rule.
But the number of working salt pans, which once spread from Dahisar to Wadala, is now in decline. The Salt Commission says that the city’s 2,167 hectares of salt-pan land produce less than 50,000 tons of salt a year – a tiny fraction of India’s total production of 16 million tons – supporting just 1,000 mostly migrant workers during the salt-making season from November to May. The land is the property of the central government and, in May 2001, the Union Cabinet decided that enough was enough. The land was to be handed over to the state for slum rehabilitation and general housing.
The Bombay Environment Action Group quickly stepped in. “We pointed out that the lands are under Coastal Regulation Zone 1 and therefore building on them would be illegal, “ explains Debi Goenka of the BEAG. The matter was passed back to the Centre and the fate of the salt pans remains in doubt.
Today, these shimmering fields of pink and white remain one of the last bulwarks against a city hell-bent on obliterating itself in a frenzy of new construction. Iain Ball

The nawari #

My mother, who died four years ago, wore a navvari sari till her last day, “ says 50-year old Anuradha Phadke. “I only wear it for festivals. Whereas my daughter has worn the sari only once in her life.”
Which is why it isn’t surprising that the traditional Maharashtrian nine-yard sari, known as the navvari, is being shoved to the back of cupboards and to the bottom of trunks. “Earlier, nearly 50 per cent of the women used to wear navvari sari’s, “ says Gautam Raut, owner of Sareeghar at Dadar, which has been draping Marathi maidens for over five decades. “Now less than 10per cent do.”
Modern Maharashtrian women, it appears find the navvari too cumbersome to wear even on occasions that demand it, like marriages and religious festivals. Draping a navvari and handling oneself with elegance is a tricky double act that requires years of practice to master. The seemingly simple garment is an amalgamation of about 25 pleats with innumerable folds and tucks, and the possibility of a fall from grace is high.
Two years ago, Raut attempted to woo younger lasses with navvaris that have pre-stitched pleats. “The innovation has renewed people’s interest in the navvari,” he claims. But Phadke, who has tried to slip into Raut’s invention, remains sceptical. “One needs to make minute adjustments to feel completely comfortable in the navvari,” she says. “That is not possible in the readymade ones.” CM

Anantashram #

The vegetarians are to blame. That’s when The Times of India said when it reported the Khotachiwadi eatery Anantashram was about to shut its doors forever after serving up traditional Malvani food since 1932. The Times attributed the imminent demise of the city’s last surviving khanaval – a community kitchen largely catering to single men who’ve left their families back in the villages as they work in the big city – to the increasing number of vegetarian Jains and Guajaratis moving into the neighbourhood.
As it turns out, Anantashram doesn’t plan to give up the ghost anytime soon. “I was just joking,” the banyan-clad owner explaining away the neighbourhood.
Though, Anantashram isn’t under imminent treat, the vegetarian fascism at the doorstep isn’t just a figment of reporter imagination. The demands of vegetarian purity have felled dozens of carnivore friendly restaurants in south Mumbai, mainly in the Jain-dominated areas of Bhuleshwar, Nepean Sea Road and Chowpatty. Building societies in these areas do not allow non-vegetarian restaurants to have boycotted old establishments to serve meat.
Among the causalities: The Domino’s pizza outlet at Walkeshwar, which packed out last year, despite having turned vegetarian late in the day in an attempt to curb losses. Shrugged regional manager Rahul Mumbaikar, “We are a community-minded company,” In a bid to avoid that fate, the Pizza Hut outlet that sits opposite Chowpatty is the chain’s only vegetarian outlet in the city.
Then there was the incident four years ago in which the residents of the vegetarian Matru Ashish building marched to Malabar Hill police station to protest against the opening of Roti, a restaurant that served meat dishes. They claimed the restaurant tarnished the sanctity of the Jain temple in their compound.
Legally they didn’t have a mutton trotter to stand on. While the Supreme Court has ruled that housing societies are permitted to deny membership to non-vegetarians, there’s no law stopping non-veg restaurants on opening in vegetarian-dominated buildings.
Undaunted, the residents took more direct solution. They made it impossible for hotelier, Sanjay Narang, to continue doing business there. “They didn’t force him to shut down – that would have been illegal,” said documentary filmmaker Paromita Vora, who interviewed Narang for her 2004 short film Defeat of a Minor Goddess. Instead they began to throw kachra on customers going into the restaurant.” We’re rooting Anantashram continues to hold out. Aarti Vora

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Dev Anand #

Okay, so Dev Anand was born in Gurudaspur in Panjab, way back in 1923, but as the man from Bombay? Mr Dev Anand! How can you put me among 25 gems? I should be at the top!” After his first hit, Ziddi, in 1948, Anand became a Mumbai icon in a string of crime thrillers starting with Baazi, which lifted the lid on the city’s seedy underbelly and established him as the classic urban hero. He then went on to charm us with a series of romantic roles in the mid – ‘50s in films like Paying Guest and Munimji, which cast him as a sophisticated, devil-may-care lover with foppish mannerisms. “Bombay is my city. I love Bombay,” says Devsaab. “I came to Bombay and roamed the streets as a hobo, knowing. Then I got my first big break and I’ve never looked back.”
Anand is Bollywood’s most enduring figure – this is now his 60th year in the industry – but in the recent years he’s suffered a long run of flops. In fact, he hasn’t had a semi-hit since Swami Dada in 1982. How much longer can he keep this up? When will he take a final bow? He answers with a story about his autobiography, which he plans to release later this year. “It has a great ending: it just says go and see Mr. Prime Minister, my latest film. You see? My career has not ended! It will never end as long as my creativity is still on.”
Never mind the box office, we reckon you’ve got to admire that kind of persistence. And as for self-belief, just ask him whether he thinks he owes his success to the city. “No, I owe it to myself,” he says. Now, that’s so Bombay. IB

Pavements #

Feeling the breeze on Marine Drive, strolling through the shady arcades of DN Road, wander down the cool boulevards of Five Gardens: none of these quintessentially Mumbai delights would be possible without broad pavements that line those streets.
As anyone who’s attempted to amble amiable through the city knows, these simple adventures are becoming increasingly rare. Use Mumbai, pavements – when they are not under siege. Those payments when they aren’t been occupied by hawkers are being covered or even obliterated, to allow another passage for vehicular traffic, even though the vast majority of Mumbaikars don’t have one of those pollution-spewing machines. Little wonder then that an estimated 80 percent of victims of fatal traffic accidents in this city are pedestrians, says Kisan Mehta of the Save Bombay Committee. In 1996, he joined the Consumer Guidance Society of India to file a public interest litigation demanding that payments be built where none exist (which means most parts of the suburbs) and that existing pavements be properly maintained. In 1998, the court ordered the municipality to implement the petitioner’s requests. As is evident, not much has come of this. The office of the municipal corporation’s chief engineer of roads was unable to tell this magazine how much of the city’s 1,600-km road network is lined by pavements, but global norms require 30% of a road’s width to be left for pavement’s. Since we’ve long been gabbing up a storm about our desire to become an international city, it’s time to let us walk the talk. Naresh Fernandes

Kirana stores #

Glass jars filled with pulses; red chillis, haldi sticks and spices of all colours of the rainbow lining the shelves; rice and wheat spilling out of gunnysacks. Hello and goodbye to the local baniye ke dukaan, which is being upgraded faster than you can say “corner store”.
Your friendly neighbourhood grocery store, which sold essential provisions and even sent them home if you were sweet enough, is rapidly being replaced by shiny supermarkets that stock global brands, repackaged local brands (ever bought tamarind in a shimmering plastic bag?), help-yourself shelves and surveillance cameras (in case you want to steal the Laughing Cow cheese). Take the Thakur Village complex in Kandivili (E): the number of grocery stores has fallen from eight to just two over the past two years. The villain: a DMart store. “Since stores like DMart buy in much higher quantities, they can offer much higher discounts than us,” says Pawan Jain, who runs the Nagoda Super Bazaar nearby. “Naturally, people prefer to buy from that store. My clientele has fallen by 40-50 per cent since DMart arrived.” The stores that can afford it have wised up, and have refurbished to resemble Big Bazaar.
What do we lose in this seemingly natural evolution? Entrepreneurship at the lowest level, at the lowest level for one. For another, thousands of youngsters who worked for our eagle-eyed baniyas suddenly don’t have jobs anymore. Most of all, the sheer glee of coercing the kirana wallah into adding a Dairy Milk chocolate free to the grocery bag. You can’t haggle at Big Bazaar, can you? CM

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Opera house #

There was magic when the Royal Opera house opened on October 16, 1911. An American conjuror named the Great Raymond astounded Mumbai with his tricks in the grand theatre, even though work on the building remained incomplete.
The foundation for the building – city’s first opera venue – was laid in July 1909, and it was completed in 1915. The architecture is a mix of Edwardian and Victorian, characterised by multi-textured and multi-coloured walls, asymmetrical facades, full-width verandas, short towers, grills, arches and steep, multi-gabled roofs. It’s a vital part of the showbiz heritage of India’s showbiz capital: in 1917, films began to be screened there, and from 1929 to 1932, plays were staged by Madan’s Theatre Company. But the theatre has been shuttered since the 1980’s, growing more decrepit with each monsoon.
Ten years ago, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Heritage Society hired architect Sandhya Sawant to develop a proposal to restore the theatre. But the owner, Vikram Singhji Bhojraj, of the family that used to rule the territory of Gondal, has proven notoriously difficult to get in touch with. Among the people who’ve failed to contact him: the Heritage Society, restoration architects and even a writer who wanted the Opera House to be the subject of a book. Bhojraj has refused to entertain restoration despite Heritage Society incentives allowing him to develop the adjoining land in order to make money to finance the restoration, says Sawant.
The last time the Royal Opera House was renovated was in 1936, when it was bought over by Ideal Pictures Ltd. It’s about time to bring back the enchantment. JV

Funeral bands #

Over the last few years, a particularly Mumbai way of death has been in decline, mirroring the passing of a uniquely Mumbai way of life. Until the 1970’s, funeral bands formed an important part of processions making their way to the cemetery to bury deceased East Indians, as Roman Catholics native to the Mumbai-Vasai belt are known as. In the 1940s, the community valued funeral music enough to keep at least six bands in business. “The bands would play marches by classical composers,” recalled Joe Vessaoker, 52, a trumpet player who leads one of Mumbai’s last funeral bands. “Being lowered into the grave with music playing was considered the dignified way to go.”
According to East Indian custom, a band was specifically at the funerals of men and women who died unmarried. The departed would be dressed in wedding finery and the band would strike up joyous wedding tunes as the coffin left the house.
Vessaoker learnt his art from his father, Sebastian, who founded a ten-piece funeral band in the 1930s. because he’s among the last upholders of the tradition, Joe Vessaoker is kept busy, sometimes playing 20 funerals a month, though he’s most often asked to limit the band to four musicians. He says many of his recent clients have been call-centre workers, who’ve perished in traffic accidents returning home late in the night. The band often plays the dead person’s favourite tune, to celebrate the joy of their life. But changing tastes mean that funeral bands are now considered gauche. Too often, coffins descend into the grave to the accompaniment of cheesy American gospel-pop spewing forth from a tiny two-in-one.
It’s a trend Vessaoker deplores. “A funeral band brings solemnity to the occasion,” he said. “Our music touches the hearts of those who’re left behind and helps them cope.” NF

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Armenians #

They make Mumbai’s most exclusive trio. Three Armenian women, sole survivors of a community that arrived here in the early 18th century, hang onto the last vestiges of their culture – and Mumbai’s vision of itself as a city that’s attractive to immigrants from around the world. Even the tangible sign of their presence – the Armenian Church in Fort – has been handed over to the Indian Orthodox Church, since there aren’t enough Armenians to fill the pews. Young Armenians have migrated en masse to the US and Canada.
The oldest, feisty nonagenarian Nuvart Mehta (nee Parseghian) from Istanbul hit Mumbai in 1952 on a posting to the USIS education department. About to sail, she sniffed news that she was perhaps being sent to another destination. “I said ‘I’m packed for a tropical climate, so I go!” she laughs. She stayed on to marry a Parsi colleague at work.
All three of Zabel Joshi’s daughters (one is actress Tulip Joshi of Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi and now Matrabhoomi) were baptised in the church, and she keeps in touch with His Holiness Karekin II – the community’s world head – and joined the grand celebrations four years ago to mark 1,700 years of Orthodox Armenian practice. Zabel explains why she is fluent in Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati: “The Armenian alphabet has 36 letters, so all sounds can be easily learnt.”
Almost 90, Rosie Nicholas-Eknayan has outlived one son, while another lives in London. “We first touched Surat in India, now we’re partly in Calcutta and three in Bombay,” she says. “More of us lie in our Antop Hill cemetery.” Laughs this die hard Amitabh Bachchan fan, “Who says an old woman can’t love that man?” Mehar Marfatia

Jazzy Joe #

He’s a living treasure. With every honk and sequel of his tenor saxophone, 78-year-old “Jazzy Joe” Pereira reminds us that Mumbai’s jazz roots go back eight decades, all the way to the 1930s, when the musical form was just beginning to shower its petals outside North America.
Though Pereira grew up studying Western classical music, he found his greatest joy playing the improvisatory music that originated in the US Deep South at the dawn of the 20th century. Live jazz came to Mumbai soon after, as bands playing on the cruise ships that docked in the city’s harbour, performed occasional concerts in the Cooperage bandstand and at parties thrown by British administrators.
Mumbai got its first resident jazz band in 1935, when Leon Abbey, a violinist from Minnesota, led an eight-piece outfit at the Taj. Abbey was replaced by the Symphonians, fronted by a cornet player named Cricket Smith. By 1938, the Taj was being rocked by Teddy Weatherford, who had played piano with the great Louis Armstrong himself. Both Smith and Weatherford employed Goan and Anglo-Indian sidemen teaching them to play the cool nuances of the hot music that was taking the world by storm.
To be sure, jazz isn’t anywhere as popular in Mumbai now as it was in the 1960s when almost a dozen establishments down Churchgate Street (now Veer Nariman Road) featured trios and quartets. But Pereira, who has been playing jazz for a living since 1941, is still hard at work. In addition to the regular performances at which he demonstrates how the music of Mumbai’s past can sound spectacularly contemporary, he still gives lessons to anyone who’s willing to learn. If he has his way, Mumbai jazz will be assured of a future. NF

Worli Village #

It’s being called a bridge to the future, but the 5.6km Bandra-Worli Sealink stands in danger of destroying a community with the most ancient history in Mumbai. Worli Sealink stands in danger of destroying a community with the most ancient history in Mumbai. Worli village is home to approximately 500 families who are living from fishing, exactly like their fathers did 450 years ago when the Kolis were the only inhabitants of the seven malaria islands that grew into the city of Mumbai. Already threatened by real-estate sharks lurking over traditional drying grounds and increasing pollution killing marine life, Worli’s Kolis fear that the Sealink will decimate their way of life.
“This is against the traditional and customary rights of the Kolis,” says Amit Jagat another fisherman who lives in Worli. The hamlet is one of the city’s few remaining fishing villages: koliwadas in Mahim, Bandra, Sewri, Sion all but have been wiped out.
Worli fishermen say that reclamation of land and the construction of pillars for the bridge which is expected to be finished by 2007, this has already resulted in the growth of sand silt which have intensified the flow of currents to hurt catches. “Prawns, small fishes and clamps were found in abundance here, now they have all disappeared,” said fisherman P Worli. “This sealink has already adversely affected the entire coast, from Bandra to Worli, “The plight is a disgrace to all Mumbaikars. After all the city that worships net profits has already believed in honourably settling its debts. NF

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Balconies #

Mumbai’s balconies were already fast disappearing when Ayesha Taleyarkan in 2000 began to photograph hundreds of them for a project that would eventually become the scrumptious book Bombay: Balconies and Verandahs, The Space Beyond. “Bombay has so many different kinds of balconies: the vernacular woodern ones in Khotachiwadi and Bandra, art deco ones along the Oval, colonial ones in the old Gothic buildings,” she noted. “They add so much character to the city.”
But, as architect David Cardoz points out, balconies aren’t merely an aesthetic feature: they facilitate a vital social link between the residents of a house and the streetlife outside. “They’re a window on the world,” he said. Added architect PK Das, “Balconies are a transition between the indoors and outdoors. They let us interact with the outside world from the comfort of our homes.”
If Romeo were to court Juliet in contemporary Mumbai, though, he’d be hard-pressed to find a suitable location to make his lovelorn declarations. The pressure of growing families has promoted many Mumbaikars to enclose their balconies to expand their flats by a few more precious square feet, even as the alteration of building regulations in the 1980’s allowed builders to do away with constructing balconies in the first place. The rules gave builders a bonus, allowing them extra space, equivalent to ten per cent of a flat’s area to be used for balconies – for free. But more builders merge the space that should have been used for balconies with room planters using provisions that allow them to enclose balconies if they pay a small fee. (This doesn’t stop them from charging unsuspecting buyers horrendous amounts of money for the merged balconies.)
Mumbai’s the poorer (and sweatier) for this. Our lives have become just a little more insular as we’ve lost the opportunity to yell our requests at passing vendors as we take in the evening breeze. Besides, all the unseemly piles of laundry that used to be dried in balconies now to be dried in balconies now festoon the side of the buildings. NF

Flamingos #

The welcome is going to get frostier for Mumbai’s most awaited and celebrated winter guests.
Every October, more than 15,000 flamingos flap into the city, flying over a distance of approximately 600km from their breeding grounds in the arid Rann of Kutch. For the next eight months, these blush-pink birds envelop the otherwise dull mudflats of Sewri Bay.
But the pretty picture is soon going to get distorted: last year, the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation approved a 22.5 long six-lane trans-harbour link connecting Mumbai to Nhava Sheva.
The link, on which work is scheduled to begin soon, will take off from the mouth of the creek. Environmentalists fear that dredging activity will increase the depth of the water, disturb the tidal movements and bring down the algae levels in the waters – all of which would make the bay inhospitable to the flamingos.
“The Environment Ministry must be made of blind men to have given permission for the building of the bridge,” fumes ecologist Sunjoy Monga.
He, along with other ecologists, is trying to convince the MSRDC to shift the bridge a few kilometres south. Corporation officials have reportedly said that the project has been delayed too long to make any more changes in the plans.
Counters Monga: “They waited 30 years to decide on the project. A few more months shouldn’t make much of a difference.” CM

Mumbai hockey #

In the golden days of Indian hockey, which is to say the first seven decades of the last century, the national team was split pretty evenly between players from Punjab and the boys from Bombay. The roster of Mumbaikars who’ve won Olympic gold medals includes such stars as Leo Pinto, Walter D’Souza, Lawrie Fernandes, Reginald Rodrigues, Maxie Vaz and Merwyn Fernandes.
But since the 1970s, cricket has edged out hockey in the popularity ratings. Nothing reflects this more starkly than match-day crowds at Mahindra Stadium and the Wankhede stadium, which stand adjacent to each other. The fans who turn up for hockey matches at the Mahindra stadium rarely fill a single stand. Wankhade always has to turn people away.
Merwyn Fernandes has a theory. “The decline in city hockey started when the job opportunities started diminishing,” he suggests. “The banks and Mahindras disbanded their teams and players were suddenly rendered jobless.” After school-level tournaments, there’s nowhere to go. Hockey isn’t a sport with “career scope” he says.
So why should Mumbai hockey be saved. Because Viren Rasquinha and Adrian Fernandes are the engines most likely to power India to future victories. And because it’s a city that afforded us the breath-taking delight of watching Dhanraj Pillay weaving through a phalanx of defenders, mullet flying in the wind. Niranjan Noronha

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Bombay duck #

Harpadon nehereus, bumla, bombil, bummelo, or as most restaurant menus call it Bombay duck. A school of theories have attempted to explain how this 35 cm long fish got its name. In one version, poor Anglo-Indians spiced up the fish to taste like the bird they could not afford for Christmas dinner. In another, it came to be called thus because crates of fish transported upcountry in the train would be marked “Bombay dak”. Yet another story suggests that it’s the Anglicisation of the Marathi phrase “Bombay tak” – gave me the bombil.
Whatever you choose to believe, one thing for certain: the fish once constituted half the country’s catch, but over the past 30 years, the annual catch of Bombay duck has declined from approximately 63,000 tonnes a year to around 15,000 tonnes. Bombay duck is popular not only because it’s easily sun-dried, making it a popular meal in the wet months when fishing traditionally comes to a standstill.
The city’s most-loved fish has been steadily overexploited by indiscriminately fishing. Old cotton nets have been replaced by synthetic ones, which can be used much more frequently. The use of motorised trawlers has allowed the fishing season traditionally September to January – to be extended to practically the whole year, and instead of casting the nets for 15-20 days per month, hardly a day goes by that Bombay duck is not harvested. The number of boats has increased, as has the number of nets per boat. If stringent regulations aren’t enforced immediately, the supply of Bombay duck could dry up alarmingly. JV

Biscuitwallahs #

They brought dunking delights to our doorsteps in commodious steel trunks, but the city’s itinerant biscuit trade has now gone soggy. “It was extremely convenient for us,” recalls odd-time Andheri resident Dilip Jain. “Now with strict hawking rules, they have stopped coming to our locality.” Adds a worker at Worli’s City bakery, “There was a time they visited us regularly to fill up their trucks. But we don’t see them anymore.”
What we’re losing: makka khari, jeera khari, masala khari, tomato khari, sugar biscuits and nankatais delivered fresh, right at tea-time.
Ayatullah Khan, owner of Farrokhia bakery in Andheri’s Juhu gully, is amoung the few businessmen who still uses travelling biscuit salesmen. He has 15 men selling his wares. “There are very few of us left now, but it works for us, as we are the last few in the city,” he says. “Each biscuitwallah makes around Rs 300 a day and we have loyal customers who buy biscuits only from us.”
There are many reasons why biscuitwallahs have lost their crunch. For one, few housing societies allow hawkers on their premises. Besides, with more members of each family going out to work, there’s no one home to buy biscuits during the day anyway. In addition, Mumbai’s palate is changing. “Our biscuits are not very popular among kids,” says Khan. “They prefer cream biscuits.” EG

Dadysett atash behram #

The 223-year-old Dadysett Atash Behram in Fanaswadi found itself catapulted to controversy last year, when the industrial giant Shapoorji Pallonji group approached the shrine’s authorites with a proposal to erect – entirely at the firm’s cost – a seven-storey building replacing the already standing two-level structure. The new project would house about 70 lower-income Parsi families in two-bedroom flats, and the earnings would benefit the Atash Behram Trust.
The shrine is revered by city Parsis as the first of their four exalted holy-of-holies Atash Behrams in the city, and the outcry was instantaneous: many meetings were held and press columns written condemning the possible desecration of the site. Among their objections, the dissenters claimed that the “good vibrations” emanating from the sacred fire buring in the sanctum sanctorum would be blocked. Orthodox Parsis urged community members to put into practice the words “Ma merchainish gaethas astavaitish ashahe” from the Kemna Mazda daily prayer, meaning “May the spiritual institutions of the world be safeguarded from attacks.”
Months of heated accusations later, the Shapoorji Pallonji group announced that it was dropping plans “due to the discord generated in the community and also in deterrence to the opinion expressed by the serving high priests of India”. Lord save us from misguided philanthropy. MM

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Asiatic society #

The Asiatic Society is now best known as a spectacular backdrop for Bollywood films and fashion shoots. What a come-down. Established to encourage research in languages, philosophy, history, arts and social sciences, the Society’s 200-year-long history studded with brilliant landmarks: its horary is among the most extensive in the city and its members have written hundreds of books between them. But over the last decade, the Society has been facing a cash crunch. The government grants and donations on which it operates aren’t adequate to meet its expenses. In 2003-2004, the Society notched up a deficit of Rs.5,54.681.
But its problems aren’t merely monetary, writer Arun Tikekar identifies other troubles too: internal politics, strict lending rules, and the fact that “most of the members are very old now so commuting is also a problem”. Besides, he complains that the decline of the Society reflects “a lack of intellectual leadership in the city and the state”.
Though it has the reputation for being a little stiff around the collar, the Society loosened up during its bicentenary celebrations last year, when a few members formed a committee known as Asiatika to lure ordinary people into the building. “We organised programmes, readings, guided tours, discussions and lectures to tell the average citizens about this premier institution,” says committee member Vidya Vencatesan “We gave them a reason to climb those historic steps and claim the knowledge they are entitled to.” EG

Single – screen cinemas #

Bada Bijlee to Starcity, Metro to Metro Adlabs, Bandra Talkies to Suburbia. Single screen cinemas everywhere are metamorphing into multiplexes, the new cinema experience which, giddy real-estate prices and baffling tax regulations have ensured, will be the next big thing in the evolution of movie theatres in Mumbai.
So no one was really surprised when tin boards rose out of the concrete earth and surrounded New Citylight in Mahim a few months ago, shutting out the theatre from sight and, eventually, from memory. A shopping complex will emerge out of the ruins, with a version of the earlier cinema: land-use rules stipulate that if a cinema hall is razed, one-third of the new structure must be used for a cinema. That explains cinemas-cum-lifestyle stores like Globus at Bandra, which emerged in place of New Talkies.
Single-screen owners complain that while the government imposes a 45 per cent entertainment tax on their profits, multi-screen halls are completely exempted from tax for the first three years, and get a 75% tax break for the next two years. Land prices in Mumbai have been steadily rising, making the prospect of smaller screens far more lucrative, the number of single screen theatres in Mumbai has dipped from 130 a decade ago to 110.
With their faux modern decors and desperate glamor, multiplexes are like the school geek trying too hard to be cool. But there’s no reason why single screen cinemas can’t be allowed to exist – and make money – as well. The tax system that clearly favours the closure of one kind of theatre to abet the construction of another be scrapped. We don’t mind the Cinemaxes and Adlabs, but we want our Capitols and Dreamlands too. Nandini Ramnath

Circulating libraries #

They’ve been out-teched into oblivion. Over the last two decades, the circulating libraries ‘that, for a nominal fee, introduced generations of Mumbaikars to Archie and Ayn Rand have been shredded into bits by video, VCD, DVD and other computer games.
L’Amour book library had found a unique way of dealing with the problem. If customers won’t come to the circulating library, the library has decided to circulate to where its readers live. This mobile library housed in a Maruti Van roams around Powai and Andheri with its collection of bestsellers and murder mysteries. Loyal reader Mithila Vaid says that the only time her neighbours actually gather around to talk is the van comes to her apartment complex and sets up stacks of latest books on the payment.
But L’Amour is the exception. Shemaroo at Kemp’s Corner, which began in 1962 with BH Maroo’s personal collection which has 200,000 books and 250 magazine titles. But the main revenue earner is its DVD-VCD business.
It’s a pattern that’s being repeated across the city. Victoria Circulating Library at Mahim was started over 70years ago by Abdullah Jaffar as a side business to a soap shop. Today, it is run by his grand children, who estimate their membership at 1000, and their inventory at between 8000 and 10000. But they do it because “it’s a family business” it’s the profits from their flourishing music store and VCD library that pay the bills.
It seems only a matter of time before the allure of the cathode-ray tube obliterates the joy of browsing selves stacked high with PG Wodehouses and Philip Pullmans. JV

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Girangaon culture #

Is our geographic and cultural heart. A century ago, when Mumbai was still paving together its sense of identity, the metropolitanism in which we now take so much pride in was stitched together in Girangaon – the “Village of Mills” that’s now being devoured by real-estate sharks.
It was syncretism born of the gentle negotiations of communal living. Though the majority of the workers in the cotton textile were from Maharashtra, the industry drew tens of thousands from across the country. Workers from the Konkan found themselves working alongside bhaiyyas from Uttar Pradesh, Padmashali weavers from Andhra Pradesh and migrants from just about every part of the subcontinent.
Their mix-and-match lives in their tiny chawls created a vibrant pan-Indian culture. Ganpati visarjans, bhajan mandals, folk poetry, rangoli competitions, folk dramas, and a robust willingness to protest injustice marked community life in Girangaon.
As mill owners rush to tear down the 52 defunt mills sitting on 600 acres of land, Girangaon’s vibrant, community driven culture is threatened by extinction. “Since, we live in cramped, one-room chawls, our lives revolve outside our buildings, on the streets,” explains 55-year-old Datta Ishwalkar, who worked at the Modern Mills in Mahalaxmi for 30 years before it closed down in 2004.
Dut with hotels, expensive apartment blocks and entertainment zones coming up in their neighbourhood, the original residents of the area find themselves increasingly uncomfortable about venturing out into their own streets. Often people would step out to gossip in groups. But now all open areas are turning into parking spaces, complains Ishwalkar.
The warning is clear. If the city’s heart clogs up, we’ll all have to be wheeled into the ICU. CM

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Mahalaxmi race course #

Redevelopment. That’s how Khurshoo Chunjiboy, chairman of the Royal Western India Turf Club, describes a proposal to cover the Mahalaxmi Racecourse – a 259,000 square meter green lung in the middle of our suffocated city – with a convention centre, a club complex and a golf course. We’re gasping at the creative use of language.
“This racecourse was built 80 years ago, and it’s in serious need of a facelift – that’s the principal reason to redevelop it,” He uses the example of one of the oldest race-courses in the world, Ascot in the UK. It’s currently in the process of a 185 – million pound redevelopment. Other racecourses have casinos, hotels, malls and even train stations within their complexes, in an effort to keep racing alive, he says.
Only, as Time Out reported in an earlier issue, the Turf Club doesn’t actually own the land. It’s merely leased the plot from the municipal corporation, and the terms of the lease expressly forbid the Turf Club from subletting the land without permission of the municipal corporation. Though the lease runs out in 2013, the Turf Club has signed a deal with a firm of developers, Pegasus Clubs & Resorts, that runs for 30 years. “This is illegal,” complained former police commissioner Julio Riberio, who filed the public interest litigation against the project through an organisation called Public Concern for Governance, a trust he formed with other former civil servants. “They got the land to organise races and they’re going through the backdoor to use it for commercial purposes.” JV

Powai lake #

The stories of terrifying crocodiles silently lying around the Powai Lake are all true but may soon disappear into myths of myth. “There are only five or six crocodiles there, “ says Gordon Rodricks, vice-president of the Maharashtra State Angling Association, which has been stridently fighting to protect the lake and its surrounding environment.
This lustrous water body, spread over 60 sq km, was created in 1890 by constructing two stone dams on the Powai culet. The idea was to use the lake for supplying portable water to the city. Early in the game, Powai Lake proved too polluted for human consumption, but not polluted enough for the resilient fish that flourished in the lake, making it a favourite spot for anglers.
However, as towers, housing colonies and the sprawling complex of the Indian Institute of Technology mushroomed around the lake, the pollution only increased, as did the dumping of sewage and plastic into the water. Today, very few fish manage to survive. “Our association introduce over a lakh fish each year for sport. But hardly a few thousand survive,” Rodricks says. Worse, as land prices soared, various builders started pumping out water from parts of the lake in an attempt to create more land on which to build. Through the MSAA’s dedicated campaign has led to Powai Lake being included in the list of 21 lakes all over India that have been declared protected by the National Lake Conservation Programme, Danger still lurks. “The BMC is now using aerated machines to improve oxygen levels in the lake to help fish survive, “ says Rodricks. “But constant vigilance is called for.” CM

& five Mumbai duds _ they’re alive and well in no danger of extinction. What a damn shame #

The moral police #

“What’s wrong with being the moral police?” asks Pratibha Naithani, Mumbai University professor and unofficial sanitiser-in-chief. Well we don’t want to be told by some self-appointed Queen of Morals what to think, feel and do, that’s what’s wrong. The scary thing is that there’s a whole army of thought cops like her who want us to go back to blushing at the sight of a well-turned ankle. Hey Prathi, some of us like sex and violence.

Hoardings #

They clutter the skyline, block pedestrian access, obscure heritage buildings and God help any tree unfortunate enough to grow in front of one. And all so we can get a better view of some pointless politician’s mug or ogle the latest product we don’t really need. Tch

Film award ceremonies #

The Film Awards, the Stardust Awards, the Screen Awards … so many award ceremonies so little talent. Do Bollywood actors really deserve to have all this praise lavished on them? How many decent films really get made? Here’s an idea – why don’t they ditch all the mutual back slapping and spend the money on people who don’t have any. Now, that would deserve an award.

Hafeez Contractor buildings #

Hafeez Contractor, one of Mumbai’s most prolific architects, just keeps on going. But where exactly? Suraj Towers in Breach Candy looks like a giant’s periscope, Vastu at Worli Seaface looks like a neo-classical mobile phone, and as for Mahindra Towers, well it’s just an ugly mess. Why can’t he design something that actually reflects Mumbai’s architectural traditions?

Mahesh Bhatt’s video library membership #

“As far as I’m concerned the human brain is incapable of creating something original,” says Mahesh Bhatt. “We are a recycling bin” We vaguely remember the days when Bhatt made great, original films, but these days all we get from Mr Bhatt, his family members and his cronies are carbon copies of Hollywood movies, plot-for-plot and even shot-for-shot. May be if we revoked his video library membership he’d find the time to think up his own ideas.

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sourced _ July 1 - 14 2005 VOL.1 ISSUE 22 | 25 Mumbai Gems and why we should save them