Mid-Day Anniversary Special| Author Shabnam Minwalla on how her Colaba home inspired the first book The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street

Shabnam Minwalla, Writer

Every now and then, a gaggle of schoolchildren passing through Colaba will stop and gawk at Batra House amid barely contained whisper-yells: “Look, it’s Cosy Castle!” 

From her apartment upstairs, sometimes author Shabnam Minwalla will hear a stray whisper or catch sight of the students and smile to herself. For the children, it is like a fairy tale come to life, one that enables them to see the place where one of their favourite books, The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street (2013; Hachette India), is set. For Minwalla, it is an always welcome reminder of how, after years of working as a journalist, then mashing baby food and cleaning the nappies of her three children, she finally got her big break as an author.

In a full circle moment, Shabnam Minwalla’s big break as an author came not from Delhi, but from her Colaba home, where she set her very first children’s book, The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street. Pics/Atul Kamble

Minwalla said, “Making the switch from journalistic writing to fiction was not the easiest. The first book I tried to write in 2006, a murder mystery, was a disaster. Everything I wrote sounded dire; like one long news report. I gave up,” she recalled and added, “It took me a few years to figure out that unlike reporting, in fiction, the more rules you break, the more evocative, powerful and interesting your fiction is.”

Then came a couple of incidents that triggered Minwalla’s first children’s book. “My older daughter, Alia, was learning ballet from these two very famous and very strict Parsi teachers. Even the parents were terrified of them. One day, one of the teachers pointed a bony finger at Alia, and called her ballet bun a disgrace. All the little girls were looking at Alia, all their mummies were looking at me. I was so angry, I got in my car thinking, ‘I will take revenge’. The only thing I could do was write, so I made them the villains. Then I thought, okay, I’ll write about children defeating the villains, but what will their challenge be? The answer suddenly came to me. When I was growing up in this building, there were two beautiful Bimbli [starfruit] trees here. Every kid would pluck and eat them as we sat on the branches and chatted all day. When I went to LA to study and found out the trees had been cut, I was heartbroken. My mother said some neighbours had said ‘the trees were attracting rowdy kids’. In real life, there was no happy ending, but it was possible in fiction. So that’s how The Six Spellmakers of Dorabji Street came about,” Minwalla recounted.

Batra House is not the only Mumbai location to appear in the book; the young protagonists navigate the city and go to several familiar locations, such as the Radio Club and Theobroma. In fact, Mumbai is very recognisable in several of Minwalla’s books. In another of her books, What Maya Saw, she sends the characters on a treasure hunt across the city. “And it’s been actually lovely, because I know a whole bunch of children who’ve harassed their parents into taking them to those spots on Sunday mornings,” said the author who is currently working on a non-fiction project commissioned by the Asiatic Society to record their collection of books.

She said, “Mumbai is not just the backdrop for my books, I would say it’s a character in its own right. I used to hear children talking about their holidays abroad and wishing they could just live there. I wanted to tell them, please stop looking at New York and Melbourne; look at the lovely city all around you. There’s so much to see.”

2006
First book attempt