Meher Marfatia: When VT's gargoyle searched for its bustling crowds
Updated On: 12 April, 2020 07:28 AM IST | Mumbai | Meher Marfatia
As the lockdown keeps Mumbai's crowds at home, the city's landmarks use the silence to let themselves be heard
Illustration/ Uday Mohite
Making waves
Who would be the oldest presence here, having seen it all—city history, mystery and chemistry? Hugging the Colaba harbour tip, I'm a wave lapping the Radio Club promontory for as long as water has swirled around Old Woman's Island. In these dark hours of fearmongering, fake news and alarming agenda on social media, let me describe how honest communication was transmitted a century ago. Five years before the Bombay Presidency Radio Club opened, it aired the country's first broadcast from a low-powered station, operating on 387-metre wavelength in June 1923. The only station till All India Radio in 1927 (then called Indian Broadcasting Company), in the decades headed to freedom, its news bulletins stirred listeners, making patriots of people, healing hearts and minds.
Plague protector, forgotten hero
A city beautiful enough to be hailed Urbs Prima in Indis is resigned to being scarred by the pockmarks of ugly street furniture. Mea culpa, I am a railing of thoroughly unimaginative spikes, designed to girdle the Dhobi Talao statue of a forgotten hero. Dr Acacio Gabriel Viegas is the man of the moment. The first Goan elected to the BMC in 1888, he detected Bombay's 1896 bubonic plague with his patient Lukmibai's case. At tremendously grave risk to himself, he inoculated 18,000 against the dreaded disease, while campaigning to clean narrow alleys infested by rats, which he discovered were carriers of the fatal illness. On the nearby street off Kalbadevi Road named for Dr Viegas, 200 parishioners at the little Church of Our Lady of Health pray fervently for universal wellbeing this Easter Sunday.
How do you like the new new mid-day.com experience? Share your feedback and help us improve.
Trending Stories
Latest Photos
Latest Videos
Latest Web Stories
ADVERTISEMENT
Mid-Day Fast
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT