Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." This lovely line is among my favourite public inscriptions. From the Gospel, according to St John, it graces a fountain added later to St Thomas' Cathedral, which opened in Fort on December 25, 1718, dedicated to Christ's apostle Thomas landing on Kerala shores. The cool assurance of this engraving is a striking non-architectural feature at St Thomas'. Design-wise, the cathedral was originally Bombay's sole structure with flying buttresses.

What could a Parsi knight and a Cross-crowned fountain on the grounds of the city's first Anglican Church possibly have in common? Decoding the riddle in his book, Shells from the Sands of Bombay, Dinshaw Wacha reveals Sir Cowasji Jehangir donated the Gothic-style fountain as a personal contribution to the place of worship in whose protective shadow the Readymoney family scion had happily grown up, his ancestral home just yards away. The gesture earned him the sobriquet of Cowasji Cross.