Where mill sirens wailed and clapperboards clicked

I was introduced to Dadasaheb Phalke Road because I had time to killmdashwaiting to watch Deewar at Chitra Cinema Its a hit lets reach early for tickets my mother said promising plump Punjabi samosas in the interval She had to after our circuitously routed BandraDadar No 212 bus ride to fetch my Parsi Colony grandmother for the outingWe walked behind the main Ambedkar Road Mum pointed out Ranjit Studios and the chawl Meena Kumari lived in I barely listened undreaming that what I thought was her prattle would become my passion years onThe studio emblem of a rearing horseman with a sword on the lapiscircled earrings of Chandulal Shahs grandniece PicAshish RajeSniffing hot samosas again on these aromatic acres I pick up more scents on the street Dadasaheb Phalke the Father of Indian Cinema shot Raja Harishchandra in his friends Mathura Bhavan home Revisiting her childhood gullies longtime resident Janhavi Samant remembers a swirl of smellsmdashPhillips Coffee and Kailash Mandir lassi near Dadar Station fragrant tandoor rotis pressed hot on the footpath of Mohamedi Restaurant now Zaiqaa the Gupta Soaps factory in Gokuldas Pasta Lane blowing whiffs of sudsy detergent and Hamam soap and odorous makeup from Ranjit Studios where Manmohan Desai shot every blockbuster for at least a few days believing the space lucky for himAbandoned film studios Ranjit Roop Tara Shree Sound and cloth mills skeletally operational Tata Mills defunct Gold Mohur Mills echo the grit and grind once thrumming full throttle behind their gates Their opening was fuelled by waves of migrants propelled by history across continentsThe 1860sconstructed Suez Canal shrinking England to India miles west coast Bombay became a closer port than eastside Calcutta The American Civil War then created a cotton shortage benefitting Bombay as a primary exporter With those mills came employees to house in chawl accommodationThe shuttered Gold Mohur Mills gutted in a fire 10 years ago echo the strong lastcentury textile mill presence on this road Trains and trams further joined the dots The Great Indian Peninsula and Bombay Baroda and Central India Railway tracks converged at Dadar a major junction To save travel money though mazdoors were restricted to walking distance from mills This logic retained mass housing in the DadarParelByculla beltWe walk to Rangari Chawl and Sankeshwar Bhavan across the deserted Gold Mohur Mill compound glimpsed through chinks in tall walls In an eerily familiar scenario after Datta Samants 1982 strike crippled the textile sector this preIndependence complex was gutted by a 2010 fire rumoured to be no accidentDadasaheb Phalke Road lined with saree shops starts near Hindmata where a bust commemorating the Father of Indian Cinema standsBeyond Hindmata Cloth Market lies a maze of chawls many Pathanowned Admiring their airy architecture Janhavi explains Thats why the Marathi phrase Majha bajula Pathan sarkha ubha hota He stood by my side like a Pathan meaning unshakable as a landlord collecting his duesRowed along cubbyhole saree shops and Kumars Hairdresser the Kamla Mehta School for the Blind was founded in 1900 by American missionary Anna Millard for children losing vision in the 188788 Sholapur famine The facility shelters girls from outside Maharashtra tooSumitra Samant flanked by daughters Janhavi and Tanvi outside Loukik building in the neighbourhood Janhavi describes in a book published earlier this yearDadasaheb Phalke Road was noisy vibrant full of real people who tried and failed but had great stories to tell notes Janhavi in the breezy book Faltugiri and other Flashbacks How I Survived a Childhood in the 80s She was babysat by Istriwala Baban Kaka in Loukik her lacklustre building facing a greenless area which nevertheless boasted a buzzAmong scenes shared with honest humour is one on the excitement around the TV set in their groundlevel home So much so that after a day at his clinic her dentist father Dr Vasant Samant was barred from entering his front door by a gathered crowd hushing him to be patient till a particularly tense mythology serial sequence climaxed to collective reliefSuresh Kumar and his daughter Preeti at Kumarrsquos Hairdresser the first barber shop he opened in the 1970s The family has added three salons for men and women on parallel Ambedkar Road During weekly Ramayan and Mahabharat telecasts the city came to a nailbiting stop as Rama fought enemiesmdasharrow by arrow spark by sparkmdashand Ravindra Jain howled ecstatic devotion in the the background Janhavi writes Cancer patients and their families from villages convalescing at Shree Gadge Maharaj Dharamshala in front of our building congregated in our house Difficult to tell if someone after a gap was good news or bad They returned the favour of watching TV in our house by bringing mithai cobblers pretty mojris an old woman had glass bangles for Aai Back for repeat chemo with sweets they brought hope that they were alive willing to fightSensing clear interdependency and neighbourhood kinship I turn into Shinde Wadi where a Lallubhai Mansion chawl resident suffered a splendourtosqualor trajectory Dancing superstar Bhagwan Dada strappingframed as a bodybuilder lightstepped as Ginger Rogers died in this tenement The ace of comedy who it is said had swag before swag got swag was a mill mazdoors son Acting in 400 films the writerdirector of the first horror flick Bhedi Bangla in 1949 lived in a Juhu villa with seven cars one for each day of the week the Chevrolet and Beetle declared favourites His Albela classics Shola jo bhadke dil mera dhadke and Bholi surat dil ke khote naam bade aur darshan chhote still regale generations At a Churchgate restaurant composer C Ramachandra apparently assured Bhagwan he would score Albelas soundtrack for the love of itA still from the 1951 hit Albela whose dancing superstar Bhagwan Dada ended his days in Lallubhai Mansion chawl at Shinde Wadi here Filmmakers of the 70s80s using Ranjit Roop Tara and Shree Sound studios booked Chitra Cinemas preview theatre to see their movie rushes Voices like the Mangeshkar sisters rehearsed at Shree Sound before appearing in front of a microphone When Raj Kapoor performed the Awara muhurat in 1949 at Roop Tara it was called Rang Mahal He shifted location shooting to Shrikant Studios Chembur close to his dream studio nearing completionRaju Bharatan quotes a composer legend in The Life and Music of Naushad Every MughaleAzam song by Lata Mangeshkar was recorded in no more than a tin shed of Roop Tara Studios We urgently called for woollen blankets from the bazaar to shut off tinny vibration as the skies opened Our technicians second to none the finest recordings were executed by Robin Chatterjee in that daunting setting The musicians 2025 of them huddled in the same shed as my main singer Yet look at the calibre of each rendition cushioned by blanketsI chat with Janhavis Natya Sangeet singer mother Sumitra Samant granddaughter of the uncrowned King of Bombay SK Patil She staged cultural programmes for the BEST where she was Deputy PRO The transport division employed typists and clerks who later enjoyed screen careersmdashThere was Sunil Dutt Hasrat Jaipuri and Johnny Walker were bus conductors We also had Marathi movie stars Prashant Damle and Arun NalawadeThe whirr of cameras glare of klieg lamps and vapours of greasepaint were strongest at Ranjit Movietone Chandulal Shahs 1929established studio spanning a silenttotalkies era with alliterative gems like Prabhu ka Pyara Pardesi Pankhi Sipahi ki Sajni and Baghdad ki Bulbul Almost a township with ration shops on the premises for 700 on its payroll Ranjit groomed Peshawar and Calcutta imports Prithviraj Kapoor Trilok Kapoor and KL SaigalOriginally from Jamnagar Chandulal Shah named his studio mindfully With an emblem of a rearing horse rider with a sword Ranjit Movietone acknowledged cricketer Ranjitsinhji and his nephew Digvijaysinhji Ranjitsinhji Jadeja Maharaja Jam Sahib who monetarily helped Chandulal set up the studio Digvijaysinhji was the wartime hero of 640 Polish women and children refused refuge by the British till he welcomed them to dock in his provinceAn entire universe sprang as showbiz offshootsmdasha thriving Junior Artistes Association City Video Library and Clapwala Enterprises set up by studio carpenter Dayanad Jog rigging up clapboards when harried producers forgot these painted on both sides for lefthanders Chandulal Shah passed on the property to technicians staying steadfast when he went brokeNot everything changes Gully gossip and idle chitchat continue floating into homes People like Mummyji as locals know Somadevi Pandit assiduously track the goingson Relaying crisp khabar from a permanently parked chair on the pavement outside her Shri Krishna Building room she proves a font of trivia how mill sirens sounded to announce the 730 am330 pm shift and the 3301130 pm who had what stitched by Garibi Hatao Gents Tailors why flats around Loukik sold slow word spread about a Tower of Silence there for deceased ParsisAt their little fabrics shop next door Mummyjis daughter Shobha Pandit tells me We moved from the grand Khodadad Circle where my father ran Elphinstone Restaurant in Empress Mahal But from the 1970s were happy this place is homeAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay Reach her at mehermarfatiamiddaycomwwwmehermarfatiacomCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates