The Chembur of secrets

A new Instagram page is opening up the many delights of vernacular architecture around the corners and bylanes of the eastern suburb

In short, Chembur was a setting straight out of Agatha Christie's St Mary's Mead, ...." With that line, writer Uma Balasubramaniam captures the lost and forgotten essence of an eastern suburb that mirrors the restful fictional village to the south of London, where Miss Marple lived, in the book Beyond the Horizon.

Belvedere and The Grotto (below) Are Grade 2-B structures

But history is not always set in stone - as is the case with an ancient port called Chemula in the Kanheri Caves inscriptions, identified with the "Simulla" and "Timulla" mentioned by Greco-Roman astronomer Ptolemy. And the mystery is, whether all these three were indeed Chembur - the buzzing hub of eateries now and the quaint village on Trombay Island then. Even the origin of its name is a matter of doubt. It was probably named after a large crab, or chimboree, as it is called in Marathi. Eventually, all this enigma seemed to have slipped off the surface as the area became synonymous with a "gas chamber", owing to its increasing pollution levels - until last week, when we spotted an Instagram page, Houses of Chembur (HOC), that sheds light on the suburb of secrets.

Shaunak Joshi, 28, maintains a tryst with Chembur, the place he's grown up in, while pursuing his PhD in literature in Paris. Although he launched HOC a week ago, he's been fascinated with the locality for the past 10 years, when he began observing and appreciating, rather than just loitering in the area. So, you'll find around 40 pictures on the account - some posted by him and others sourced from fellow residents. "I always felt that the suburb had a lot of character. And when you live somewhere for so long, you tend to miss out on what's unique about it," Joshi says, adding how the idea of heritage is confined to monuments and South Mumbai.

Juvekar House

"What I like about the houses here is that each is an experiment, and built by the middle-class," Joshi says, while Chembur-based architect Anil Nagrath concurs. "They were built by local architects. In the gaothan area, you can spot homes with Mangalore tiles whereas in the Christian colony, you can spot Goan-style homes. In the 1920s, there was a town-planning scheme where free-hold plots were allotted, and in the '50s and '60s, you see two to three-storeyed homes cropping up. It is only in the '90s that the style gets more decorative."

Ling Mahal are Art Deco-style bungalows

Bungalows like The Grotto and Belvedere, part of the St Anthony Church group, are Grade 2-B heritage structures, and Bombay's beloved Art Deco style is also present in bungalows like Ling Mahal and Juvekar House. With most of the old bungalows wiped out by gated high-rises, Nagrath explains that preservation is still a challenge. "It's difficult for families to maintain it as they aren't public buildings."

As evident in HOC, Joshi is taken in by the low-key cosmopolitanism that Chembur brings. "You can see the religious and linguistic pluralism just by reading an epigraph. There's a Chez Nous or Pierreville... French names that you wouldn't expect to see here," he shares, proceeding to talk about how he plans to take HOC ahead in the future. "I come down every six months. I'd really like to interview some of the families who live in these houses."

LOG ON TO instagram.com/housesofchembur

Kamu Iyer

Architectural significance
According to city architect and chronicler Kamu Iyer, who authored Boombay: From Precincts To Sprawl, Chembur used to have a wonderful character. "In fact, the Floor Space Index (FSI) used to be only 0.5 earlier [the higher the FSI value, the greater the number of floors] because of security reasons - like pollution and its proximity to the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). It was later struck off," he says, adding, "The gaothan there has the same feel like the ones in Bandra and Girgaum, but those are East Indian ones while this is a Hindu gaothan."

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