Sea View, R.I.P.

The most singular quality of a city may be change but that's a little like saying the singular quality of life is that it ends in death. But then, this is an obituary. For a place I really, really loved and was not alone in loving.


The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent
those of the paper.

Sea View was just a little hotel on the beach -- perhaps the oldest one in Juhu. It had a verandah overlooking the sea, and two rows of rooms on either side, which seemed regularly inhabited by odd foreigners and women who looked like smugglers' wives -- orange hair, and oranger gold. The place had an air of genteel shabbiness and somehow could never become remotely hip despite some feeble attempts to install speakers once.

I happened to be there that day - the speakers crackled, the music was tinny; repeated attempts to make it work ended in failure. Everyone looked appalled. The speakers were never heard from again, ever.

I first went to Sea View in 1993 and for the 17 years after that, I kept going back. I never lost the sense that I was entering a secret garden. A shady-looking hotel, tucked into the corner of a bus depot, a quaint but unimpressive entrance, suddenly opening out to a sunny surprise of the sea. It was one of those rare things that kept its promise in a shifty world. Sea View it was called, and a sea view it delivered.

For a long time I thought this was my secret. But as my community in the city grew, I was amazed and amused to discover we all had one thing in common -- we loved Sea View, and had a hard time understanding people who didn't.

The food at Sea View s''ked mostly. The waiting staff greeted regulars with the friendly, non-committal even-handedness of a successfully polyamorous woman. It was the kind of place every city worth its salt should have a dozen replicas of.

Unpretentious and devoted to conversation rather than the creation of a scene (or a franchise). At Sea View you could be yourself and argue endlessly with your companion, or simply waste time and eat too many chips with too much beer, instead of feeling like a rigid toy extra in a strobe lit music video, which in truth is what the overpriced watering holes of this city make us into. Sometimes, change is a bore.

Well no doubt someone somewhere is crying similar tears over Zenzi or another expatparadiso. Even if I'm a little skeptical of that prefab cool scenesterness, I am recently bereaved and respect their pain because we all need a place to go hang out with others like us. I guess what I loved about Sea View was that I could be with others like myself, among others who weren't like me.

I wrote my first scripts at Sea View, sometimes sat there on peacefully solitary Saturday afternoons, occasionally patting Mr Goregaonkar's (the late owner) big dog, ate non-gourmet Sunday brunches with friends while we read our Sunday papers, shot an interview for a film, listened to the unchanging tunes of the flute player on the beach -- and once even bought a flute which of course, I could not play (the full moon misled me).

I did all this surrounded by families with lacy frocked kids, huddled lovers, squealing teenagers, retired couples, random tourists, old world filmi relics, sometimes even an Arab in a dastasha -- and sometimes no one. Yeah, it must have been hard to keep it going; this rather resilient organ in a body with real estate cancer. I will miss it as long as I live. R.I.P.