Meher Marfatia: High five for Heritage Mile

The Lawrence amp Mayo Building at DN Road offers a wonderful example of conservation guidelines being followed PicBipin KokateI was lucky To cut my teeth in journalism on the top floor of a building as splendid as the street it graces Pure privilege to proof text gazing from Indo Saracenic arched windows decking the Old Lady of Bori Bunder Even with tight deadlines of a 72page national weekly to edit by Saturday afternoons there was no way to resist Dadabhai Naoroji Road We lunched at Bengal Lodge after issues subbed crisp for press shopped for kurtas at UN Pursram with salaries warm from wooden boxes dispensing them browsed through stationery at Chimanlals in a preNet age when written notes were romantic pleasuresThis genteel address on the Espanade resulted from the Fort ramparts demolished by 1860Exquisitely detailed edifices expanded the stretch known as Hornby Road for William Hornby Governor of 1770s Bombay Their Neo Classical and Gothic Revival facades often crowned with pyramidal roofs were linked by continuous 15 feetbroad pedestrian arcades Unlike European Gothic which shuttered out the cold Bombay buildings were designed to let in our more temperate weatherLooking up from cobbled pavements I have clear preferences How do my five favourites stack up against the spectacular Victoria Terminus and BMC headquarters They whisper riveting tales from elegant if now faintly elegiac interiorsDadabhai Naoroji Picwiki commons national portrait calleryBuildings are like people their faces mirror their experience says culture critic Justin Davidson in a podcast Those on Heritage Mile anchored north by Crawford Market and south by Flora Fountain wear the composed air of witnessing an eventful past The oldest trying valiantly to withstand subway drilling today is 1817erected Eruchshaw Building Consultant physician and sixth generation doctor Avimoy Hakim shares that her greatgrandfather Dr Eruchshaw Hakim acquired the property as a trio of tall structures from as many landlords It made an interesting hodgepodge house to grow up in recalls Avis 92yearold aunt Eruchshaws granddaughter With theatres banks libraries shops like Evans Fraser and Whiteway amp Laidlaw advertised as The First Store in the First City it was a complete world within itselfA lift in a cage without a shaft dramatic rear stairway winding up to a YinYang mosaic and pink garland designs on green wall tiles ensured Eruchshaw Building was the evocative location for movies like Pestonjee and The Guru Its well water helped douse fires in the area including some of its own In the blaze 23 years ago India Book House publishing director Padmini Mirchandani lost original artworks of 1966introduced Amar Chitra Katha collections The damage claimed luminous examples daubed in the typically soft brushstrokes of Ram Waeerkar who illustrated cult titles like Mirabai and Krishna That left Anant Pai devastated says Padmini referring to the creator of this series and Tinkle Comics discovered by her father GL MirchandaniAmong Lawrence and Mayos more famous clients was Mohammed Ali Jinnah who brought in his signature monocle for repair PicGetty ImagesBombay was a beautiful city everyone wanted to take pictures of with their cameras Eruchshaw Hakims nonagenarian granddaughter keeps repeating Across the road from her ancestral seat Kodak House was the ultimate photo mecca of the day Belonging to the Tatas in 1913 when Kodak moved in then sold to Deutsche Bank and presently Cathedral and John Connon School the building offered unique services From the Suez to Singapore it was the only spot developing Kodachrome film sent to the Worli processing unit a fact they were very snooty about says ophthalmic surgeon Burjor Banaji from Navsari Building three gates away I saved pocket money for precious images of my Himalayan treks but their prints back after six long weeks werent always properly doneKodak manager Mehernoz Maloo describes the building in which he began his career in 1988 The darkened basement cold room warehouse shop and lab used over two storeys of selfcontained Kodak office space connected internally with wrought iron spiral steps and an elevator unusually open on three sides On the third floor was the Naval Seamens Club the docks situated near enoughPossibly the oldest functioning lift in the city must be the woodpanelled crankshaftoperated one in red brick Navsari Building It is a been theredone that lift dropping celebs like Sachin Tendulkar and Shah Rukh Khan to Dr Burjor Banajis fourth floor clinic with blithe familiarity This is where his grandfather Burjor and father Phiroz eye surgeons of repute worked from 1924 The Tata head office named for Jamsetjee Tatas native town Navsari Building was built in 1903 the year Bombay got electricity and the Taj The Kotaks bought it from the Tatas in 1928Another threegeneration medico clan the building boasts is that of ENT surgeon Piloo Hakim She her father Dr Rustom Cooper and daughter Dr Arnaz Soonawala specialised in the same field On the second floor with them since 1922 is The Iran League Vispi Dastur its president explains that the organisation used to administer orphanages and dharamshalas in Iran besides sending hundreds of Parsis from India and Pakistan there for employment during the Shahs reign We had close ties says Dastur who remembers a Bombay meeting with Iranian Prime Minister Amir Abbas Hoveyda executed one April midnight just after his countrys bloody 197879 revolutionEruchshaw Building the oldest charismatic structure on the street since 1817 has had its facade restored after a fire in the mid1990sNavsari Buildings iconic shop James amp Co was the Furtados of its time My 93yearold father bought his earliest LP here around 1940 Mozarts Violin Concerto No 5 in A Major played by Jascha Heifetz the mere mention of whose name still visibly lights him upBoth music lover and book buff dad directs me two buildings onward to Macmillan Building or Lawrence amp Mayo building Its top floor home to Harold Macmillans publishing firm was where that first British Prime Minister to visit India put up in the city Shorn of billboards and transformed according to architect Abha Narain Lambahs recommendations this handsome twindomed Renaissancestyle building reveals wooden rafters and sensitively rearranged signage Established in 1877 by two Jewish family friends Lawrence and Mayo this company opticians to the burra sahibs was led here by LH Aliston Isodore Mendonsa selftaught in the optical trade took over from Aliston to be succeeded by son Robert who consolidated the businessAt 85 Robert Mendonsa is chipper and charged as he recalls engaging moments on the job Among famous clients MA Jinnah brought in his signature monocle for repair I want an identical piece Be careful dont make it and break it he drily said The mystery of the missing goldplated spectacles cropped up too After a few disappeared Pereira the foreman stayed back in the workshop one night to investigate At dawn he heard a flutter on the window sill A crow hopped in picked a pair of goldrimmed glasses in his beak and flew to a nest woven at Lloyds Bank building next door A whole cache of shiny clientordered frames was retrieved from the winged thiefThe then Tataowned Navsari Building named after the native town of Jamsetjee Tata was erected in 1903 the year Bombay got electricity and the Taj Mahal Hotel PicBurjor BanajiThen there were the good doctors padding clever paths inside Thomas Cook Building Radiologist Sorab Sidhva has a fund of anecdotes about his jovial father Dr Jimmy Sidhvas initial days in the profession The senior Sidhva who went on to be the only Asian on WHOs World Commission of Neuroradiology in 1960 had a thin practice on first occupying fourth floor rooms of this building of keystone and cornices He and secondfloor neurosurgeon Dara Karanjavala left word with their receptionists to summon them down from the terrace where they played cricket if a patient did finally walk in Before they became the giants they did they hid tea and biscuits beneath a green cloth on a wheeled trolley with small surgical instruments jutting to slyly suggest a tray piled with instruments Sorab laughsThomas Cook Building is the Harley Street hub of Dadabhai Naoroji Road Along with the Sidhvas it houses clinics of the redoubtable Dr Farrokh Udwadia his pulmonologist son Zarir and surgeon brother Tehempton Udwadia Stalwarts with them included neurologist Freny Kohiyar physicians Kekobad Minocher Mody and OP Kapoor Guinness Book nominee for record medical lectures Every few months they trooped out together to dine at The Other Room of Ambassador Hotel on what was called Cooks NightRound the corner Talims bronze statue of the Grand Old Man of India himself fronts the Oriental Building junction Community scholar Marzban Giara points to the pedestal sides The west portrays Dadabhai Naoroji at a House of Commons session addressed by William Gladstone It is the east panel I find exceptional showing the statesman who espoused womens education lead a group of young ladies to Saraswati Mandir Four fine inscribed words read ndash Mothers really build nationsAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay You can reach her at mehermarfatiagmailcom