Bombay, a city retold

Garcia de Orta was a Jew with Portuguese blood and Spanish education. Forcibly converted to Christianity, he ended up in Bombay and built a nice handsome house with a garden in the front. Little did he know that his house was to be the center of one of the largest cities in the world. The old town hall itself was built at the site of this first pucca house in South Bombay. This piece of land which saw grazing, inquisitions, lynching, military parades, garbage dumping, idle loitering and the birth of the oldest stock exchange in Asia was the spot from where I started my Saturday morning walks. In my teens, I used to walk all the way from the Asiatic Library to Churchgate station. This is where the whole history of the city began. All the way from a private house in front of grazing lands for goats, it evolved to the town hall with a parade ground in front and later to the Asiatic Library with the Fort Common laid out in the front. It used to be called Elphinston Circle, named after a former Governor of Bombay. Now it is renamed to Horniman Circle to honor Benjamin Horniman, a newspaper editor who championed India's cause for freedom. (Any rumors that the Horniman circle is named after the horny men who loiter in its premises, of course is pure speculation and wishful thinking.)

The slave auctions in Bombay also happened at the same Parade Grounds. Slaves from Africa were brought down from the ships and auctioned off to wealthy people. These black slaves used to camp outside the city walls near what is Nariman Point today. After they were freed, they joined the native population and interbred. If you look at “East Indians” (Christian fishermen who originate from the Bombay islands as opposed to those who migrated from Goa) even today, you can see African features in some of them.

More recently, Horniman circle also served as the birthplace of Asia's first stock exchange. The trades were carried out under the banyan tree that still stands inside the Horniman circle . Of course BSE moved out from under the tree to multiple dwellings since then, eventually settling into its current posh location on Dalal street. History of love, domesticity, intrigue, conflict, terror, murder, slavery and subterfuge! How can you not love a place like that?

In November, when the heat becomes more bearable, sitting on the steps of Asiatic library with a book was actually very calming. There were always an assortment of humans idling on its steps; young couples who pretended to study by scattering books and journals about them, homeless men and women, retired people with serious and sad faces, people who can't decide whether to go inside the building or not all sat on its steps with equal sense of ownership. But I don't think I ever saw many tourists there; there are no major markers that announced to the world that this was the real focal point of historical Bombay.

If you walk from Horniman Circle towards Churchgate station and if you know where to look, you will see the first church in Bombay which still retains its structure, St. Thomas Church. The station gets its name from the church and even though, it is really far from the station, the Fort Gate demarcating the end of the city at what became Flora Fountain was called the Church Gate. The gate is gone and so is the fort, but the names lives on! Inside the church, you can actually see how the British lived if you care to step in quietly and spend some time reading everything on the walls and the floors. There is never anyone around. I found the church to be one of the last vestiges of calm in South Bombay where silence is much priced because it is in such short supply. On your way, you pass Akbarallys, which used to be an institution in Bombay.

Flora fountain is a handsome structure. Unfortunately, it is completely over shadowed by tasteless and random Indianization that involved renaming, installing a pointless memorial just so it can be renamed Hutatma Chowk, a name that has absolutely no bearing on the history of Bombay. The tilework on the floor of the square is appalling and reminiscent of a pay-for-use toilet. Before beautification, (Beautification: noun, To render a historic building ugly in Maharashtra by use of tasteless painting and tiling) it was a pretty area. Diagonally across from Flora Fountain is the High Court.

Once in a while, in the afternoons when the court was in session and I had free time from school, I used to go to the Court to listen to the arguments in criminal cases. I loved Justice Lentin's court. He was clever, erudite and funny and had a great insight into all things. Unfortunately, I can't say that about all the judges. Some had poor deportment and poorer language skills. If you could walk around freely in the building today, you will see some interesting architectural features and a somewhat confusing sculpture of justice, clearly inspired by Indian humor.

As an aside, the original court was in the Admiralty Building on Apollo street (now called Bombay Samachar Marg) and the building still stands.

Anyway, walking down from Flora Fountain to Churchgate station, one passes the Post and Telegraph building. This was the ONLY public place in all of Bombay from where one could make an ISD call. In the 80's, the lobby was packed at night with tourists cramming into its stuffy portals to call home at half-rate.

Cross the street, and on your right is one of the last two functioning wells in south Bombay. Every other well (including one outside the high court) have been shut. I once traveled from Colaba to Malad, mapping every well in the city with an Iranian Hydrologist for his thesis. Ask me about hunting for stonage implements in the TIFR campus and in Malad, both well-known Neolithic sites. The blogger has very strange interests, but we already know that.

On Saturday mornings, this place would be quiet and devoid of the hustle and bustle of weekdays. You can actually see the statues on the sides of the road. You cross into Churchgate station via the underground crossing and enter its dark and damp lobby. There used to be a newspaper vendor inside the station. This was the only place that sold The Telegraph and The Statesman. I used to buy both, just to make sure. This was when M. J. Akbar used to edit The Telegraph. The station canteen was a sorry affair with places just to stand and eat. But the hot food was good and hygienic since hot vadas literally sold like hot cakesJ

I guess all this is what makes me a Bombayite (and never a Mumbaikar, incidentally.) I know a lot of cities pretty well enough to navigate around them, and I can tell you where the best sushi is in most of them. But with Bombay, I knew the secrets, history, nooks and crannies, and I connected with it. In spite of the nitwits that rule the city trying their ignorant best to erase the history of this glorious city and replace it with a nonsensical fictional historiography of jumbled Maharashtrian names and monuments, a palimpsest of its real story still remains, if you know where to look. In your mind's eye, you can subtract the crowds and all the ugliness beautification has created and see it for what it was and will be, an amazing city of great diversity designed by the British, modified by the rich Parsis and Gujaratis and built with the toil of Indians. Some of the history is really hidden behind the names (Charni Road, Marine Lines, Esplanade, Colaba Causeway and Pydhonie are all names derived thus.) By the way, if you have some pull with the BEST, ask them show you their archives. I have had the great fortune of spending hours in the archives of BEST, Times of India and other places sifting through thousands of historic photographs.

Bombay didn't just happen. It is not just its food (Cannon and Sardar's for Pav Bhaji, Kayani's and Bastani's for Irani cafes for example) and ever changing and ever vibrant life that makes it a special place. It is also its history, the secrets and the stories.

We have a responsibility to tell them and retell them. Otherwise the fake historiography of jingoistic ignorants will erase it from the consciousness of its denizens forever.

So, does anyone know which railway platform was the location of the original Mumbadevi temple that (for no apparent reason) gave the city its new name?