Mumbai: What were Sufi saints doing in Navy Nagar nine centuries ago?

Children-s writer Shabnam Minwalla turns biographer with a new book that-s a compelling portrait of Colaba, once infested by death and disease, before it became the crown of the city

There is a childlike curiosity in Shabnam Minwalla that makes her the perfect storyteller for children and young adults. Her protagonists, whether Maya Anand, Nivi Mallik or Nimmi Daruwala, see the place and the city they inhabit, through colours that often escape us. It-s this wonderment that Minwalla brings to her new book, Colaba: The Diamond at the Tip of Mumbai Speaking Tiger, second in the series of biographies, which pay homage to the neighbourhoods of Mumbai through its long-time residents. Minwalla-s book follows translator-critic Shanta Gokhale-s Shivaji Park, Dadar 28: History, Places, People that released earlier this year, and stitches a compelling and vivid portrait of the place she calls home, through history, personal memories and journalistic rigour. But, mostly it-s legends and stories, both rich and unheard, which populate her book.

"I love Mumbai, and it upsets me greatly, when people act like there is nothing here. You need the time, space and ability to look beyond the grey and grime to see what there is. But, I never saw myself writing [such a book], because I am more or less comfortable being a children-s writer," she admits.

Shabnam Minwalla

The main exercise of this book, she says, was to "understand what makes Colaba special?" "The real story of Colaba is just 300 to 400 years old. But, so much has happened in that time and, so quickly. Unfortunately, our memories are short and temporary. The fact that I live across from where the old Colaba Station once stood, but had to spend weeks hunting for its original location, startled me. It was from where my grandparents had caught trains, but nobody told me that I could see it from outside my window. We assume that everything we live around is what is, and will always be."

The 180-pager takes us through the neighbourhood-s surreal transformation. From the inhabitable swamplands of Old Woman-s Island and Colaba—two of the seven islands that made up the city—that saw many lives surrendered to disease that stemmed from the marshes, and drowning in the waters during high tide, into a vibrant cultural hub occupied by the city-s crème de la crème. "Old Woman-s Island was a smallish mound—a steppingstone between Bombay and Colaba. It was separated from the island of Bombay by a wide strait, and from Colaba by a narrow inlet that filled with water during the high tide," writes Minwalla in the book. The construction of the causeway in 1838, which connected these two islands, changed the fate of the neighbourhood. "The impact was immediate and the price of land in Colaba shot up by 500 per cent in a single decade."

Anecdotes abound through the book. One is the melancholic story of a young "Mohammedan" girl on her way to visit relatives who lived across the stream in Colaba. Nearly swept by the currents, she was rescued by an Englishman, whom she fell in love with, before becoming a victim of honour killing. The Royal Alfred Sailor-s Home, which opened in 1876—present-day Director General of Police office—was built over the graves of Mendham-s Point, which Minwalla writes was an "insatiable cemetery that had swallowed innumerable British lives before it was razed in 1762".

The book wasn-t an easy one to research, says Minwalla, as there were little or no accounts of the natives who inhabited Colaba, and worse, abysmally scant information on the islands. "I was quite down-hearted in the beginning. But, to an extent the story of Colaba is part of the greater story of Bombay, and so, I continued to read a lot more on the city, and tried to extrapolate it to Colaba."

Minwalla-s Guide To Colaba-s Rare Gems

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Schoen House While the dilapidated structure, "strangulated by roots and court cases," today features on the list of the most haunted houses in Mumbai, its ground floor once used to house the junior school of Fort Convent, where Minwalla studied. The building belonged to a Mr Sethna, who had rented it out to various Englishmen and then to a Jewish dentist who had fled Germany. "The British incarcerated the unfortunate dentist in a camp for enemy nationals during World War II. What happened next is a mystery," she writes in the book. "It is one of the most fascinating structures in Colaba. And I think we have taken it for granted. When I was in school, I remember after assembly, we-d cross the road, and attend class in the building. It was never as crumbling as it is now. But, there was this sadness to the place that I can-t put a finger on. The upper floors were never occupied. Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun in its corridors," she says.

Badhwar Park-s Banyan tree This tree is near Minwalla-s home in Batra House. She was always charmed by it, because it used to be home to the most rarely-sighted birds—Kingfisher, Coppersmith barbet and Rose-ringed parakeet. "Now, I love it even more, because [during research] I realised that it had overseen the change in this part of Colaba—what was then Old Woman-s Island, which later became the residence of one General Waddington [built illegally]." The property, built in the 1700s, passed on to his daughter, Mrs Hough, who had a mango tree, now part of Bombay legend, which used to fruit twice yearly at Christmas, as well as in the season of mangoes, in May. The banyan tree, Minwalla feels, was likely to have been part of Hough-s estate too. Later, the home made way for Colaba station 1896-1930, and Cotton Green, now replaced by Badhwar Park. "I almost wish I could chat with the tree and listen to its stories."

The sufi tombs Minwalla says that Colaba is home to three tombs of Sufi saints, who travelled from Baghdad to the island via sea. One of them is Hazrat Shaykh Hasan Shah Gazali Dargah in Mosque Lane, Navy Nagar. The Gazalis are said to have come to India more than 900 years ago. "That puzzled me. What were Sufi saints doing here many centuries ago, and that too in a pointless stretch?" Minwalla tried to find answers, but was unsatisfied. "I spoke to an academician. His theory is that some of them could have been moneyed landowners. There is no real proof of this. But, there are records of villages being occupied by Muslims."

Sargent House The building, like its better-known neighbours—the Yacht Club, and the Taj Mahal Palace and Towers—sits on land that was once swamp and sea. Built by industrialist Jamsetji Tata, it was intended to be "marketed to the new class of Englishmen streaming into Bombay". Minwalla-s great-grandfather, Nomanbhoy Abdeali, originally from Surat, was one of the early residents of the building. "That-s why it-s very special for me," she says of the place, where she enjoyed many Bohra feasts. But, the building was also home to other distinguished names from the city—actor Leela Naidu, and later writer-poet Dom Moraes, whom she married; cricketer Rusi Modi, stage actor Jalabala Vaidya, and jazz musicians Mickey Correa and Lucila Pacheco, among them. "Even now, my aunt talks about how she-d hear them rehearse from the other side of the wall. It was a place where people from different walks of life, communities and economic status, congregated."

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