Supernatural stories or urban legends, Bombay has long kept tryst with spirits benign to belligerent
Illustrations/Uday Mohite
Beware the ides of March, the soothsayer warned the great Roman, indeed stabbed on the Senate steps in 44 BC on March 15. An apt date to recap Bombay’s “beware” episodes, which sceptics of the spirit world too have heard murmured.
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Jackals and antelope still prowled the island’s southern wilds in 1816 as its first European cemetery rose in Colaba. Stretching from the Bombay Natural History Society to Wellington Mews, the graveyard christened Mendham’s Point, as one Mendham was first to be buried. Ten years later, when a mental illness facility skirted the cemetery, distressed cries floated to the ears of visitors to the tombs.
Beleaguered bungalows often prove more creeper-covered than creepy. That dilapidated Schoen House stands Number 13 on Wodehouse Road, fuels further conjecture. A German Jew dentist, subsequently interned by Brits, practised in the now over-a-century-old structure, clad in canines carved on porch pillars and crocodile gargoyles spouting rainwater from jaw-protruding pipes. The property was procured by successive developers, allegedly dogged by misfortune, even unnatural deaths. But, primary schoolers attending class in the Schoen House compound announced nothing untoward.
Nearby looms the Maharashtra Police Headquarters. Designed by FW Stevens as the Royal Alfred Sailors Home, this building then served as the Legislative Assembly and Council Hall, till 1981-82 when the State Police moved in. Post-6 pm, cops guarding the DGP hub complained a jolting unease gripped them trekking to the toilets. They consequently clicked heels to the loo in foursomes with powerful flash torches.
Panic fluttered fresh with a State Intelligence Department officer shivering at the eerie click of typewriter keys on the deserted second floor. Chilly winds whipped rattling windows while rostered security men begged, “Raatri nako (not at night).”
Unsettling nocturnal experiences in another Gothic architectural marvel are described by Justice Bomi Lentin in Rahul Mehrotra and Sharada Dwivedi’s book, The Bombay High Court: 1878-2003. The premises’ patrolling in pairs resulted after a constable on single duty fainted in fright on confronting a weather-beaten, non-human apparition dressed in trailing army coat.
It was the mid-1950s. Justice Lentin returned to his Chamber after dinner to read in preparation for a matter. At 1 o’clock, carpentry banging and dragging of heavy furniture began on the floor above—“I switched on the passage light. Immediately the sounds stopped, as if cut by a knife. Getting into the car I looked up. That floor was in total darkness.” Next afternoon, he enquired if a new courtroom was being readied. None was. “I saw nothing, I was not troubled. All I felt was comfort that I was not alone. I never went to Court again at night.”
Other enigmatic spirits neither help nor hinder earthly realms. Jini Dinshaw, founder trustee of the city’s longest running ensemble, 1962-established Bombay Chamber Orchestra, has a story from Prescott Road, Fort. Rumour made rents dip in Sorab Mansion, scented by mogras and mangoes. “When the Kiefers below us thought they saw a shadowy Parsi couple pray at the building well after sunset, my father brought priests to bless our house,” she says.
Admitting to a sharp perception of all things paranormal, an advertising professional returning from work to his Kalbadevi compound after midnight, sensed “a weird presence”. The atmospheric frisson worth photographing, he focused his OnePlus on the skyscape. “What I captured seemed freaky, I couldn’t sleep,” he says.
“Brightening the wide-angled image with the phone’s Nightscape mode, to upload on Instagram, confirmed my worst suspicions. Two distinct human figures glowed where my camera had picked up just hazy patches.”
The trunk of a flowering Trumpet Tree on the grounds was whittled hollow by gnawing rats. That it probably hosted a long-haired ghost was affirmed by a resident of neighbouring 191 Lane. At a function in the school bordering the same compound, she went pale in the washroom observing the Rapunzel-locked lady beckon attention from the foliage.
Close-hipped lie scarier acres. A trail tailored by Khaki Tours’ Bharat Gothoskar invites: “Join us on the Grisly Girgaon walk to see the dead and the living interact daily”. Why did Girgaon get Colaba’s cemetery? With invaders using gravestones as battle shelters, the English shifted the space to the crowded “Native Town”
expanding from the easterly ports to Back Bay.
Sandy coconut palm groves on Queens Way (Maharshi Karve Road) soon sprouted final resting places of the Portuguese, Bohras, Kutchi Memons, Hindus and Catholics. An originally Anglo Scottish cemetery blooms verdant today—Marine Lines’ Walter de Souza Garden honours that field hockey champion’s team wresting the Gold when India first encountered Britain at this sport in the 1948 Summer Olympics in London.
The mystery mile from Chandan Wadi to Charni Road Station has stirred a slew of supposed hauntings, centred around SK Patil Udyan. The area came to be called Padre Burrow, alluding to the Christian cemetery. Some Thakurdwar paths continue bearing Burrows Cross Lane signboards. Handkerchiefs on eyes, children at games of Blindman’s Buff felt small-boned bodies underfoot (a corner apparently buried babies). Playing kids who fell did report slow-healing injuries and long-lasting fevers. A BMC water supply department engineer lost sections of labour, as contractors supervising tunnel digs stumbled on skeletons.
Flipping away gloom and doom, psychics have also identified kinder avatars. The well near Conwest Jain Hospital in Nikadwari Lane, traditionally a Pathare Prabhu enclave, is said to have harboured seven demi-goddesses, benevolent aqua nymphs protecting the vicinity’s water sources.
A compelling tale related by Gothoskar’s mother is set between Kande Wadi and Khotachi Wadi, where a dhobi family disappeared overnight around a houd (Marathi derivation of the Urdu “hauz”, water tank). Alighting at Bombay Central by dawn, ST bus passengers from the Konkan would pass this spot. A group swore sighting members of the vanished clan. Unaware the visions were—like stars of Night Shyamalan flicks—deceased and washing imaginary clothes, the travellers watched the silhouettes recede in clarifying daybreak.
Girgaon astrologer Sunil Dongre offered several engaging stories. One entailed a soul interrupting the ritual of Kande Pohe (formal meeting of families of a boy and girl intended to wed). On such an occasion, appeared the bride-to-be’s sister who had died in childbirth. Contrarily, the vision insisted her match be fixed before sealing another arrangement.
The old Girgaon fishing village of Mangal Wadi grew alarmed as a schoolgirl suddenly started marching to phrases uttered in a foreign language. Wagging tongues claimed she channelled a buried Dutch soldier separated from his Indian lover.
Not far, a peepal tree was meant to hide a Munja, the benign if boisterous ghost of a boy who went through the sacred thread ceremony but stayed unmarried. That lurking Munjas provoke passersby, generally teasing women, is a popular notion. The phrase “bara pimpla varcha munja”—a restless person—recognises these “youths” flitting tree to tree. The realistic view suggests that because peepal-sized trees emit larger quantities of carbon dioxide, talk of Munjas deters people from sitting under them long.
An actor in Raghav Wadi rewinds to sinister equine surprises beneath French Bridge, textile tycoon and horse racing enthusiast Mathradas Goculdas’ address. News spread as fast as a fire burning his stables. Months on, local lads buying sugarcane from a ganderi wala were stupefied. The vendor’s scooped palm weighing the pieces was a horse hoof instead. Scared witless, the boys bolted screaming to where a Victoria waited. That tangawala’s hand extended to hoist them up was another horrific hoof.
No strangers to hexed home sites, tony Altamont Road residents were stumped by an intriguing phenomenon. A tap gushed spontaneously, with anguished wails of a wandering woman echoing into the stealth of moonlit nights. Word went out that a gardener’s wife shrieked, suffering a violent end here.
Happier narratives hail “good ghosts”. A neurologist living solitarily at Chowpatty was often fatigued studying for higher qualifying exams. Tomes dropping from the dozing doctor’s lap were miraculously replaced, open to the exact page.
Though SoBo spook nooks whisper differently from the suburbs, accounts are rife of ghosts occupying Bandra bhoot banglas, Mahim chawls and Juhu hotels. White-clad wraiths waylay pedestrians on pitch-black streets, wispily robed figures thumb rides from petrified motorists. Brenda Rodrigues retells a personally witnessed Bandra incident. Her sister Lily woke early every Sunday for 5 am mass at St Peter’s on Hill Road. One morning, with not one of the usual few churchgoers seen en route, she was as puzzled to find the church gates shut. Turning back, at the Waroda-Chapel Road-Bazar Road junction she was relieved to have company. A woman tiffin carrier, with cans jangling noisily in both hands.
Getting home, Lily checked the time. Only 2 am on her alarm clock. Enquiring which dabbawali delivered meals at that ungodly hour, she learnt that a woman murdered years ago roamed the crossroads carrying tiffin cans. Rodrigues says, “It’s believed those born with a ‘veil’ (birth with the amniotic sac intact) can see ghosts. Our mum mentioned Lily was.”
Ineffable to inexplicable, rather than plain terrorise, fables of fear and fervour vitally texture Bombay’s ever tensile social fabric.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. Reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.mehermarfatia.com
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