Speak of symmetry and serendipity. After 26 years of growing up on Hill Road, Bandra, I've spent a ditto span of the next 26 discovering the delights of Warden Road, Breach Candy.

Christened with geographic logic, "Breach" was suggested by a gap in the rocks the land mass formed, linking its Arabian Sea flank to the Mahalaxmi and Byculla flats. "Candy" was the Anglicised way to say "khind", or "pass". Warden Road was a nod to Francis Warden, chief secretary to the Government of Bombay. The current road sign honours Bhulabhai Desai, eminent jurist and philanthropist freedom fighter.

The arch leads to Parsee General Hospital, Warden Road

Marriage brought me to one of the Breach Candy strip's first skyscrapers in the 1960s — 11-storeyed Peacock Palace (the national bird did once roam its grounds — easy to imagine considering the Towers of Silence acres at Kemps Corner yet have strutting peacocks). It was sold to a Sindhi builder by the Mecklai family whose ancestral seat earlier graced this spot opposite the American Consulate. The Aga Khan had himself presided over the 1936 housewarming ceremony of Mecklai Mansion.

I'd often catch sight of my Goan cook engage RK Laxman in neighbourly banter, our kitchen level with the cartoonist's living room window in the next building. Laxman's space journalist son, Srinivas fondly remembers cricket games on the Anand Bhavan lawns diagonally across, with children of the country's foremost nuclear scientists. Facing the Laxmans and us was the Saklatvala bungalow, on a stretch called Top Khana because of canons positioned to beat seaward enemy attacks. Next door, Battery House earned its moniker likewise.    

A majestic gateway was presented by the limestone arch that straddles Bomanjee Petit Lane. Heralding the path that leads to the BD Petit Parsee General Hospital, the arch may have marked the boundary of the hospital opened to counter a plague outbreak. The lovely monument overlooks rockery at Scandal Point, dubbed for a romantic wartime association — it offered secluded niches for soldiers stealing sunset moments with their lady loves, amid the caw-caw of crows readying to nest for the night.