The Dadiseth lanes of Babulnath hold some enchanting stories under Bombay’s most verdant hill
Ranjit Madhavji and his daughter Ajita, of Hamilton Studios, at their Ranjit Villa home in Dadiseth 2nd Cross Lane
When we grew up playing Robbers and Cops, we really did have robbers and cops with us,” chuckles a wizened resident. Hard, imagining such boisterous goings-on in the trio of quiet gullies brushing Babulnath Temple. Exactly what happened on Dadiseth Road and its pair of secluded cross lanes?
An oasis of calm despite the proximity to Girgaum Chowpatty, this Gamdevi precinct developed by the Bombay Improvement Trust, pleasantly rows buildings embellished with original 1920s design elements on facades and balconies. Each three-storey structure is ringed by a modest five-metre compound.
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View of Dadiseth 1st Lane
Nearby, Zoroastrians were given an open-to-sky dakhma, Tower of Silence, to dispose their deceased in 1672. Across sylvan Doongerwadi, sonorous last rite incantations ring through roofed prayer halls known as bunglis. Banker Dadi Nasarwanji’s forebears built the first. Hibiscus and wild bushes cling to its scantest ruins today. Amassing vast tracts in trust, Dadi Seth maintained the Dadiseth Atash Behram at Kalbadevi and Dadiseth Agiary at Fountain. Around 1783 he purchased the Chowpatty Band Stand acreage from Barretto, a Portuguese merchant.
Twin-arched Babulnath Temple rose in 1780, shaped as a Babul tree, the Arabian Sea lapping its walls. Fishermen from the Koliwada settlement cornering 2nd Lane brought in fresh catch by the boatload. With reclamation sprouted construction, the spot filling with florists and incense sellers patronised by worshipper throngs. Mahashivratri remains the one day every year transforming these lanes to a pedestrian zone.
Typical century-old vernacular architecture of a surviving chawl in the neighbourhood. Pics/Ashish Raje
A century later, some migrants to these lanes soared to become magnates. A Khoja clan of repute graced the city with baronets and municipal luminaries. Arriving from Bhuj at the end of the 1800s, Meherally Chinoy acquired the agency for Shell by 1904. On obtaining the Chevrolet contract in 1916, his sons successfully added several General Motors models to their kitty besides a bunch of petrol pumps.
“During his Mayorship, Meherally’s son, Rahimtoola Chinoy gave Lord Irwin his first welcome speech in 1926,” says Sir Rahimtoola’s grandson Zahir. That was the same year Meher Building—chosen as the joint family home by another of Meherally’s sons, Sir Sultan Chinoy—readied to introduce the automobile giant Bombay Garage. Sprawled across 45,000 square feet, the showroom debuted sleek Pontiacs, Lanchesters, Vauxhalls and Armstrong Siddeleys. An interesting 1939 sepia image from the collection of the Museum of Innovation and Science in Schenectady, USA, showing Zahir’s stiff-suited, bespectacled grandfather, is captioned: “Sir Rahimtoola Chinoy of Bombay, India, intercepting ray of sun for relaying signal for opening of San Francisco’s World Fair”.
Bombay Garage in Meher Building from the late 1920s (fronted by the Band Stand), named after Meherally Chinoy
Facing the Band Stand, a beautiful banyan acted as a roundabout for traffic between Babulnath and Marine Drive. It lies savagely hacked, apparently for clearer visibility of a hoarding, like much foliage fringing the forest beyond, including glorious gulmohars, laburnums, parijat and chanoti. A brimming moat slaked the thirst of horses tired from pulling Victorias along the salty aired promenade.
Excited Chinoy cousins raced up adjacent Siri Road, winding up at Naaz restaurant. Their Bombay Garage was sold in 1967. The next decade saw Haji Mastan, superpower of the illegal gold boom, move into an apartment a floor above. Literally waving away an inconvenient Customs officer, whose transfer he arranged, the smuggler gave the “offending” man a personal send-off at the airport, even climbing the flight ladder for firmest farewell.
Meherally Chinoy
“I’d greet Mastan and his men. They were polite people,” says Ranjit Madhavji. This is Dadiseth Wadi’s grand old man and portraitist extraordinaire who took over Sir Victor Sassoon’s legendary Hamilton Studios at Ballard Estate in 1957, “to escape the clutches of the family textile trade”. Exuding infectious energy in his home, Ranjit Villa—earlier called Tower House, the sole building here crowned by a tower—the nonagenarian recaps his prolific body of work shot with a 16mm Paillard Bolex and shares engaging gully gup. “Rear gates to buildings bring the jungle to our steps. I’ve thrashed 13 knife-wielding thieves with my bare hands. My tactics distracted them in the dark. Slipping, the chors would fall from their hiding place as I raised loud alarms like ‘Shantibhai, sambhaaljo!’”
Madhavji trained at Tehmurasp Sarkari’s Sleater Road gym grooming reed-thin collegians to ripple-muscled confidence. Sarkari refereed international freestyle wrestling bouts involving Tiger Holden and King Kong (the 200-kg Aussie was memorably hoisted by our 130-kg star pehlwan Dara Singh). The gent Madhavji kept out of harm’s way was Shantilal Sonawala, former president of the Bombay Bullion Association. Shantilal’s son Kamlesh, the Hinditron group chairman, is an electronic engineer by profession and poet by passion. “Deer skipped gently past Sonawala Mansion in these isolated lanes,” he recollects. “I miss the ice factory and market, lost landmarks.”
His illustrious sons—Sultan, Rahimtoola, Nurmohamed (standing) and Fazulbhoy—made the automobile enterprise famous
That vegetable, mutton and fish bazar was popular with residents of Khareghat Colony abutting the vicinity when it wasn’t a vegetarian-only preserve. “Ours is a grasshopper zone, impossible to find chicken noodles or chicken soup packets in kanya dukaans anymore,” rues a young Parsi. Skirting the ice factory and market was the Indian National Theatre centre, now Aditya Birla Sangeet Kala Kendra.
With Ajita, Madhavji’s daughter, I walk past properties whose stained-glass trims wink chameleon-coloured in glints of dusk. Police doctor Sheriar Irani in Khurshed Villa beside was their good friend. His sister Gulcheher married Jehangir Chiniwala, previous occupant of the Madhavjis’ flat. A brilliant but eccentric lawyer, Chiniwala wrote editorials for Parsi Avaaz, pheto on head, pen in one hand, whisky glass the other. Before he drove an Austin and then a Rover, he reacted with unfair rage to a natural occurrence. The horse drawing the ghoda-gaadi that dropped him to the Small Causes Court and back, would relieve itself at journey’s end. Thrusting a pail at the poor tangawala, Chiniwala yelled him instructions to mop every drop.
De Sa's Hospital, opened in the 1930s by Dr Herculano De Sa, father of Dr Juliet De Sa Souza, both gynaecologists. Photos/Suresh Karkera & Dr LJ de Souza
We halt at completely crumbled Bar Gymkhana, the hub that once saw legal lights like Jinnah and Justice Chagla ace tennis strokes. Admiring the built-to-last lines of Raghavji Niwas, Radha Niwas and Banoo Manor, we wish more owners restored properties likewise. At well kempt Banoo Manor, Dr Erach Udwadia and his wife Perin, reared four famous sons—physician Farokh, surgeon Tehemton, lawyer Darius, and economist and seismologist Firdaus. Neighbours remember mandolin and violin strains waft from the Udwadia window as Farokh practised on the strings.
If depleting tree cover means cobras and pythons lurk closer, snakes of the human variety bare fiercer fangs. The builder mafiosi threaten hapless householders routinely. But, birdsong still serenades residents. “Located under Malabar Hill, we sight not just crows and pigeons but barbets, parrots, vultures, mynas, owls, wagtails and peacocks too,” says Nikunj Parekh in Preyas, a plot touching 1st and 2nd Dadiseth Road. His wife Jyoti and he were founder members of the Indo Japanese Association’s Bonsai Study Group in 1979.
Dr Juliet De Sa Souza
At Kalewar Mansion, the Divans chime in with charming details. Tearaway kids shouted a nonsense rhyme to their favourite vendor of boiled peanuts and ganderi (peeled sugarcane pieces): “Anderi ganderi tipri ten/Eisen meisen jolly good man!” Dosas and chaat safely sold on those roads hosed clean from water tankers pulled by bullock carts.
Talk turns to watching ceremonial cavalcades on Marine Drive from the vantage point of their junction. Bapsy Divan cheered the Shah of Iran with Queen Soraya, while her neighbour Shailaja Pandit describes crowds gathered for Russian premiers Khruschev and Bulganin. Her father, Vishnu Dattatray Pandit, was physics professor at Wilson College, where a rousing reception awaited Tenzing Norgay visiting Bombay after his 1953 conquest of Everest.
From New Zealand, Lynette Saldanha mails a history of De Sa’s Hospital. Buying the building opposite Bombay Garage, her gynaecologist grandfather, Dr Herculano De Sa, opened this institution as a 1930s maternity facility. He was joined by his daughter, her mother Dr Juliet De Sa Souza—among the first Indian women to be Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. Saldanha’s uncle, Dr Joe De Sa, started the ENT section. Joe’s daughter Sandra is an ENT surgeon, like her son Dillon, and her daughter Natasha an accomplished audiologist and speech therapist.
“I meet hundreds of women round the world telling me ‘Dr Juliet’ delivered their babies or that they were themselves born there,” writes Saldanha. “The community service tradition continued for more than 50 years. My mother shut the obstetrics section before her death in 1986”. Saldanha’s brother, cancer surgeon Dr LJ (Luzito) de Souza, runs a polyclinic and consulting rooms at De Sa’s Hospital. His son Ashwin is a cancer surgeon at Tata Memorial.
The Mehtas are also multi-generation medicos, operating on 2nd Road, led by Dr Chamanlal Mehta, a founder of the Bombay Obstetric and Gynaecological Society, with stalwarts like Dr NA Purandare. Though Chamanlal’s ancestors were accounting clerks in Godhra, he established a maternity hospital in 1920s Khetwadi. Shifting to Babulnath in 1932, the baton has been relayed from Chamanlal to his son Ajit, Ajit to his son Ajay and Ajay to his daughter Nishita.
Dr Ajay Mehta says, “Peaceful yet central, we couldn’t be better connected. With the beach in front, hill at the back plus police and navy orchestras at the Band Stand till recently, our little lanes offer much to enjoy.”
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. Reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.mehermarfatia.com
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