Take a walk around Fort and be wowed by these 200-year-old British-era beauties
History has a way of catching up in the unlikeliest of places. Just last Saturday, 600-year-old cannons were retrieved from Thane's Kopri creek, indicating that they could be from the Portuguese era. Shift the gaze 35 km south to Kalbadevi where remnants of cannons from the British era are still around, and it seems like the past never faded away — it just got surrounded by the present.
In several places, the cannons are now part of street-side stalls
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On a scorching Friday morning, we meet Priyank Deshmukh on the bustling stretch of Lokmanya Tilak Marg, with Metro cinema to the west and Crawford Market to the east. A history enthusiast and founder of The Legend of Bombay Bards, an experiential heritage storytelling initiative, Deshmukh has been on a year-long search for British-era cannons, which were once deployed at the perimeter of the Fort that demarcated the "white town" from areas to the north were locals lived. Coincidentally, he stitched together a video, which emerged from several recces to Kalbadevi and Masjid Bunder and conversations with the residents, just days before the older counterparts of the cannons were discovered in Thane.
The cannon at the LT Marg police station
"Until 1860, the British used muzzle-loading cannons, which then got replaced by the more sophisticated rifled breech loaders. But discarding the massive artillery required special efforts. Leaving the cannons out in the open was ruled out for the fear of misuse. So, they buried them four feet under the ground, leaving only a portion of the narrow end of the muzzle on the surface," Deshmukh explains, adding that this new avatar would be put to ingenious use depending on which area of the Fort they were in. "While the ones opposite the Gateway of India [which are more conspicuous and better known], were used as mooring posts for ships, the ones here were used more as street markers, or for tying horses. You may have walked past one thinking of it as a fire hydrant," he points out.
Priyank Deshmukh at the cannon temple on Bhandari street. Pics/Sameer Markande
We know what he means when we make our first stop, right next to a wine shop opposite St Xavier's High School. Our treasure has blended in so well with the setting that we almost miss it at first glance. And yet, on a closer look, we know it's unlike anything we have seen. A 100 metres down the road, when Deshmukh shows us the second remnant, it leaves both the photographer and us stumped. For, there stands a two-feet-high muzzle of a 200-year-old cannon inside a cobbler's shop on the footpath, in all its cast iron glory! The prospect of getting our chappal mended in the company of a piece of colonial history continues to sink in as we write this story.
The cannon at the cobbler's shop
At a stone's throw from the cobbler is the LT Marg Police Station, which houses the third cannon on our trail. This one is a more complete piece of artillery, painted in silver to go with the adjacent flag post. No one seems to know how it landed up here. Senior police inspector Santosh Rout makes a few calls and tells us it has been part of the station's premises since it came up in the early '70s.
We find three more cannons en route embedded in the wall of a hotel and inside a paan stall and a wallet and belt shop. "The existence of these cannons is part of local knowledge here," Deshmukh tells us, as shopkeepers regale us with stories, some true, others hearsay, from the Raj era. "There used be another one round the corner but the civic authorities dug up a hole and it went below the earth," cab driver Raju Thakkar, who lives in the vicinity, tells us.
Our final stop is what drew Deshmukh to the search in the first place. A year ago, as news of cannons being found near Bhandari Street of Masjid Bunder area came in, he went there to have a look. "That's when I realised there is a cannon temple here, which people assumed was a Shivling!" he recalls. "What's interesting is even after learning it's not an idol, they continue to worship it. With very little documentation of these relics of the past, this is perhaps one way of preserving our heritage."
People, places, things that stood the test of time
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