'Mumbai: A Million Islands' by, Sidharth Bhatia - Book review
Mohan Gulrajani
Sidharth Bhatia’s new book looks back to examine how Marine Drive became a coveted address in Mumbai
An excerpt from ‘Mumbai: A Million Yesterday · 08:30 am
Islands’, by Sidharth Bhatia.
Marine Drive at night.
From the window of his sixth-floor apartment, Sevanti Parekh can see the distant horizon of the Arabian Sea. The window looks out on the entire Back Bay, which includes the arc of Marine Drive and beyond, extending towards the grand Raj Bhavan at the tip of Malabar Hill. Pollution often dims the views, but at night, the lights glitter on the curve of Marine Drive, justifying its popular name, Queen’s Necklace, and on the tall buildings in the distance.
It is a view Sevantibhai, as he is locally known, has enjoyed for the last 80 years. At 88, he is probably one of the oldest continuous residents on Marine Drive. His home is on the top floor of Bharatiya Bhavan, one of the buildings on the seafront.
He has lived there almost his entire life. He moved into his flat in 1939, when he was seven. The building, which was then called Jeevan Vihar, was built by his father. Three other partners in his firm did the same next door. (Three partners built on the plots next to Jeevan Vihar.)
The Marine Drive stretch, a little over three kilometres long, makes an arc that connects Nariman Point with Chowpatty and then on to Malabar Hill. On the western side is the sea, on the other, a row of buildings in the Art Deco style, followed by open grounds that are part of clubs, membership-only “gymkhanas” for Parsis, Muslims, Hindus and Christians, who all played in the pentangular cricket tournaments in the 1920s, representing their communities. The last gymkhana is for members of the police force. A few more buildings follow and then it tapers off. Marine Drive is a coveted part of Mumbai, built mainly in the 1940s and ’50s, soon after a massive reclamation project that created land from the sea.
The promenade on the seaside is for walking, jogging, ambling and, for hundreds of young couples, canoodling. The spacious apartments lining Marine Drive may be out of reach, but the rest is a democratic, egalitarian and liberating public space. It is a busy thoroughfare, with traffic moving up and down all day and late into the night. Thousands of people converge here every day to “eat the air”. Little children bring their tricycles, young exercise junkies run with gadgets strapped to their arms, middle-aged ladies walk briskly and retired gents sit and sort out all that is wrong with the world.
The couples sit, facing the sea, in self-absorbed isolation, communing only with themselves and the vast space in front of them – they don’t care about the people behind them, and the crowds too leave them alone. In densely packed Mumbai, a bit of privacy is always welcome – what better place than Marine Drive, where it is possible to be alone in the middle of thousands?
Marine Drive is a place of abandon – the movies have often celebrated this by showing actors riding a motorcycle, their hair blowing in the wind, a song on their lips – whether for a drive or a leisurely walk or a purposeful run or just a few moments alone with a loved one before both part ways to go to their respective homes.
My own memory is as a child, when, along with my family, I used to walk on Sunday evenings from Churchgate to Marine Drive and down towards the end of the promenade where the Oberoi Hotel stands today. The business district of Nariman Point did not then exist. The seafront tapered off into a jagged strip of land where, every Sunday, crowds would gather to watch films projected onto a giant concrete screen. I found out much later that these were newsreels and not of any great entertainment value, with no songs or dances, but they provided an opportunity to congregate in a public place, breathe in the fresh sea air and simply gaze into the distance, with no tall concrete buildings in front to disturb the view.
For a little Bombay kid, this was the highlight of the week. I remember vividly how busy Marine Drive was on Sundays, even then. At the time, the cars that came from Chowpatty did not continue into Nariman Point, an ugly creation of the 1970s with nothing but office buildings designed by architects and commissioned by developers with no regard for the Art Deco legacy or indeed any other style – they are not even fascinatingly brutalist, just indifferently put together concrete blocks laid haphazardly all over the place. None of that hideousness existed at the time. It was only the old buildings, the cars and the sea, Sevantibhai remembers.
Over the years, Sevantibhai has come to realise how much he loves living here – the peaceful mornings, the glorious sunsets, the drama during the rains when huge waves crash on the wall that holds back the sea. He has resisted the temptation to move to a newer, swankier building. “I used to go and see apartments in Malabar Hill, but none of them tempted me – there is no place like Marine Drive. My daughter and son-in-law live right here, and I am happy to see that they and my granddaughters, too, think the same.”
Parekh has seen Marine Drive grow from the very beginning. He remembers open plots where buildings now stand. “After Seksaria Mansion, towards Chowpatty, there was nothing. Just one vast open ground. Our firm had bid for and won every plot, and these were sold piecemeal, one by one.”
After the construction of Jeevan Vihar was finished, Sevantibhai’s father, Jeevanbhai Parekh, invited fellow traders and merchants to rent the apartments. The only condition was, they had to be vegetarians. “We were strict Jains, and this was not negotiable.” This restricted the pool somewhat, but the bigger objection of the traders, most of whom lived in the native towns, was that this new neighbourhood was just too far. “There is nothing here, no life at all, they said. Who will move all the way here?” The memory brings a smile to his face – how misplaced those fears were, since Marine Drive came to be a very convenient location.
The vegetarian condition was not universal – “The buildings on this side (the northern end) were all built by Gujarati and Marwari families, who were wealthy but very, very conservative and traditional.” On the other end (southwards), Sevantibhai says, all the buildings were “cosmopolitan”, i.e., open to every kind of tenant, community, religion and food habits. In the melting pot that Bombay was, “cosmopolitan” was a loaded word, not just implying meat-eating, but also indicating an outlook and lifestyle that included drinking, dancing, partying and all things considered Western and therefore not Indian. The city wore its cosmopolitanism lightly, not surprising with its history of attracting people from all over India and the world, but that did not mean everyone had become Westernised. In time, Marine Drive and its environs would come to be associated most strongly with cosmopolitan life, but early settlers were still rooted in their own traditions.
Many buildings, again on the south end, included guest houses, bed and breakfast places where mostly Europeans lived. Indeed, often landlords preferred Europeans – British and others – who would be temporary inhabitants and pay well.
The Bombay Club – it became Natraj Hotel later and then the Intercontinental – with its Burma teak panelling and modern furniture, became a popular haunt for Europeans, many of whom had flocked to Bombay in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany.
When the tenants came, they were fussy and hard bargainers. “Our building had slightly cheaper rents and even the one-time deposit of Rs 30,000 was much less than the others, because we insisted on vegetarians. Yet, the tenants complained. One family took two flats on the second floor – the rent was Rs 120 a month. Then they discovered the fourth floor had a better view, so they just moved in there. My father asked for a higher rent of Rs 140, but they resisted, and finally it was settled at Rs 130.” Many of them were also discomfited by the fact that the toilets were inside the apartments, even in the bedrooms. In Bombay, toilets were outside the main living structure of even the well-off, because they were considered impure. This innovation went against Indian culture and tradition.
Tenants had other demands too. “I remember the buildings had boards announcing ‘To Let’ prominently displayed. Tenants were hard to come by and were very fussy,” Dhun Lentin, a lifelong Marine Drive resident, had once told me in an interview for a magazine. She was born in Soona Mahal and after her marriage to Bomi Lentin, a young lawyer who would once become a judge, had moved a few buildings up to Chateau Marine. She married young Bomi Lentin, whose family lived five buildings down northwards in Chateau Marine.
He went on to have a distinguished career in Bombay’s judiciary but at the time was just a young lawyer. The building had been constructed by Bomi’s father, and Dhun heard stories of how he was fed up with the constant demands of tenants who often used to rent only for a few months – mainly during the monsoons, to see the rains. “Each new tenant used to have a list of demands, including the colour of the walls, all for those few months.” Lentin sold the building to the then Maharaja of Baroda whose family still owns it. The Lentins became tenants in the building they had constructed.
Across the Lentin flat lived a gawky young girl, Fatima, Bomi’s childhood friend. “She used to use this apartment’s fire escape at the back to sneak back into her home,” says Dhun. Fatima morphed into a young woman who became hugely popular as Nargis, the star of the 1950s. The home belonged to her formidable mother, Jaddan Bai, a one-time singer, who held salons where hopefuls and eager producers congregated.
Manto wrote about these salons and the gossip that was freely exchanged. One particular target was the singing star Suraiya, who was also a neighbour in Krishna Mahal, a few buildings down. In a column in a Pakistani Urdu daily, he recounted Jaddan Bai saying that Suraiya’s voice was bad, “she could not hold a note, she had had no musical training, her teeth were bad and so on. I am sure had someone gone to Suraiya’s home he would have witnessed the same kind of surgery performed on Nargis and Jaddan Bai.”
In the 1940s, Marine Drive was still sparsely populated – those who lived there hurriedly moved out in 1942 after rumours spread that the Japanese would bomb the city, and the sea-facing locations would be the most vulnerable. “People moved to their villages and towns in large numbers – we did too. When we returned, the whole of Marine Drive had ‘To Let’ boards in the balconies,” Sevantibhai laughs. But by 1947, it was almost full up. The locals were joined by Sindhis fleeing from the newly formed Pakistan to India. Many from Karachi came to Bombay, where they already had business or family links and used to visit often. Those who could afford it moved to Churchgate, Colaba and Marine Drive, where the seafront reminded them of the home they had left behind. Marine Drive became a coveted address.
Excerpted with permission from Mumbai: A Million Islands, Sidharth Bhatia, HarperCollins India.
We welcome your comments at let...@scroll.in.
Professor (Dr.) M. L. Gulrajani F.S.D.C. (UK)
Former Professor and Dean (I.R&D), IIT Delhi
601 - B, Hamilton Court, DLF City Phase - IV,
Gurugram, 122009, Haryana
Mo. +919818253979