The veranda at author and cultural chronicler Shanta Gokhale's home, Lalit Estate, boasts a little bend, which from the outside, looks like an exaggerated curve, giving the 80-year-old Art Deco-inspired structure on Shivaji Park, an edge over the rest. It was just a year old, and Gokhale all of two, when her parents moved into this developing middle-class neighbourhood. Shivaji Park, at the time, was still an experiment—an attempt to decongest the native town, where chawls were in abundance and privacy, scarce. The shift to a block, where "you were not supposed to know what was cooking in your neighbour's kitchen," did meet with some resistance. But gradually, the new way of life prevailed. Gokhale's new book, Shivaji Park, Dadar 28: History, Places, People (Speaking Tiger), is a 150-page sketch on the neighbourhood she calls home.

The spatial biography is not meant to make you nostalgic about old and vanishing urban pockets in the city. Instead, Gokhale trains her journalistic lens to trace the story of the neighbourhood's birth, evolution and contribution to the city's social, political and cultural framework. As a resident,
she only makes this experience more personal.