The Sunkersett bungalow, nestled in Girgaum, was more than a family home. In its backyard, bejewelled young girls in nauvari sarees, sat for lessons at a time when women were not allowed into schools. In one of the inner rooms, the first ever train ticket was issued by the Great Indian Peninsular Railway (GIPR)—from Bori Bunder to Thane.
By the time the most illustrious of the clan—Jugonnath Sunkersett Murkute (Jagannath Shankershett) aka Nana—helped shape the city, the family had been in Bombay for six generations and were financially comfortable enough to lend money to the British. Gunbow Street, which had the city’s first court, is the anglicization of his grandfather, Ganba Shett, after whom the street was named. The family had arrived from Murbad via Ghorbunder, now a part of Greater Bombay, as had many ‘sethia’ communities on the invitation of the English East India Company (EEIC) to conduct business in this new city they were building.

In 1661, the seven islands of Bombay— Bombay, Mazagaon, Parel, Worli, Mahim, Little Colaba or the Old Woman’s Island, and Colaba—became part of Catherine of Braganza’s (daughter of Portugal’s King John IV) dowry when she married Charles II of England. The swampy islands were a political and financial liability by the Crown, and it leased it to the English East India Company (EEIC) in 1668 for an annual rent of £10 (marking the only time in the city’s history that rents were so low).