Flowers introduced me to Darabsha Lane. Among the half-dozen gullies sprouting west off Napean Sea Road entered from the St Stephen’s Church junction, this is what used to be known as “the Flamour lane”. In a building then simply called The Corner, the prettiest blooms greeted you at the Allanas’ florist shop, Flamour. 
While Flamour got swallowed by a tower replacement, Bienvenue Silver House soldiers on across it in Rusi House, one of just four breathtakingly beautiful buildings left on this quiet cul-de-sac. Three others remain. Ruby Mansion, Putla Mansion and Sea Shells. Named after shipping and stevedoring pioneer Darabsha Bomanji Dubash, the lane once led straight to a beach strip of sand and rock hugging the Arabian Sea. 

Dappled by gulmohars, barringtonias and badam trees, the lane was rowed with 12 magnificent buildings, now brutally whittled down to this quartet. Elegant without exception, these were erected from the last decades of the 1800s to the 1920s-30s, in design styles classic to hybrid, Renaissance Revivalist to blended Edwardian, Georgian, Victorian and Indo Saracenic.