05 December,2021 07:15 AM IST | Mumbai | Meher Marfatia
Shahzad Kalantary outside New Majestic Restaurant at VT, where his grandfather Khodamurad worked a century back
As a kid I couldn't stop smiling to see this monument. More from healthy ego than heritage pride then. George Wittet's enduring edifice happens to have my birth date carved deep in its yellow basalt stone.
After they fulfilled a roster of official engagements, including the special inauguration of the Royal Opera House, the monarch and his queen consort proceeded the following week to the spectacle of the Durbar in Delhi, where they reviewed thousands of troops.
The royal couple left behind countless dramatic allusions to their visit. Many names have altered - the Prince of Wales Museum and Victoria Terminus now acknowledge the state's legendary warrior ruler. But Bombay is still strewn with cafes, theatres, stores and streets sign-boarded Regal, Imperial and Crown, or synonyms and derivatives of these. Here's picking a few of our favourite stories behind the monikers.
While the most common - Royal and Crown - qualify everything from mithai shops, paan stalls and bakeries to chemists, hairstyling salons and driving schools, Victoria, Imperial, Empire and Queen also offer some terrific tales behind the epithets.
Feet away from Congress House near Kennedy Bridge is the nearly 150-year-old Queen Mary School. It was opened in 1875, with a name as improbable as the Bombay Indian Female Normal School, by Harriet Butt of the Zenana Bible Medical Mission in Byculla. Relocating as the Girgaon Girls High School, this was rechristened in 1892 after the Queen Empress laid the foundation for its hall.
To quote from "The Maharani's Locket", an account in the Queen Marian magazine by the school's legendary principal, Betty Shelton: "In Bombay, two English nurses gave maternity care and even occasional lessons to secluded girls longing to be literate. One attended on a Maharani during a complicated childbirth. The nurse was going on home leave. The Maharani handed her a locket, instructing that it be handed over to Queen Victoria. When the nurse tried explaining she could not just see the Queen, the Maharani said her subjects could speak to her, so the nurse had to find some way of meeting the Queen.
"Back in the UK, Trust members helped fulfill her assignment. In that locket was a personal request to Victoria to train women for medical studies, as suffering females were not permitted male doctors. The Maharani's SOS was heeded, women were allowed into UK universities. Of the first six lady doctors, four landed up serving their sisters in India. The Blind School for Women started in Dehradun, orphanages in West India at Manmad and Sholapur. Bombay children began learning in Zenanas and eventually in a central quarter. Lady teachers arrived to run the prototype of our School."
Educational institutions apart, standing tall are usual suspects like Victoria Terminus and social clubs like the PVM (Princess Victoria Mary) Gymkhana. Further north of the Victoria Gardens (Rani Baug, subsequently Maratha-fied to Veermata Jijamata Udyan) on Victoria Road, Byculla, an interesting smaller trio invokes the Dowager Queen.
At Victoria Dry Cleaners and Dyers, on LJ Road in Mahim, Valerian Quadros speaks of how his father Ignatius rose from working for Leach and Weborny to become proprietor of Blue Angel Laundry at Tardeo in 1965. "He took over Victoria in the early 1990s. We may have an old-fashioned name but innovate actively in competitive times, operating German, Italian and American machines," he says of the laundry's spanking-new renovation. Valerian concedes that this establishment got named partly for Empire and most certainly for divinity.
Next door, another old-timer refers in equal measure to Victoria (Our Lady of Victories) Church, famed for an 1885-inscribed cross, attached to Victoria High School. "My grandfather Abdullah Jaffer, who came from Surat, sold his own books along with soaps and detergents," says Arif Merchant in Victoria Music House & Library. His father Noor Ali decided to consolidate those collections in 1950. Perched on a small stool while chatting with him, I am dwarfed by towering piles of publications stacked in glorious variety. Amazingly, with Diamond Comics' Mahabali Shaka and the Disturbed Soul, you can pick classics like Ifor Evans' Short History of English Literature.
Not far from these Victoria-bearers, a quiet gem shone till it became a relatively recent casualty of the metro construction. Crown Bakery's stately wall clock stopped ticking in 2017, after 64 years of feeding the city. Khodaram Khosravi's charming shop, later run by his grandsons, baked hot a range of wood-fired breads, pista biscuits, mawa cakes and creamy-under-golden-crust bread pudding. "A shop that bravely refused to shut at the height of the 1993 riots and stood strong right through the dark days of the Emergency, is gone because of a train," laments one regular.
More-midtown, a symbolic crown representation marks the beautifully embellished Banoo Mansions at Kemp's Corner. Why are its Baroque Revival features, the corner bay and massive rounded column, topped by a magnificent stone crown. Apparently because this 1909 structure rose just ahead of the 1911 regal entry into town.
From the New Majestic Restaurant & Stores, below Capitol Cinema at VT, emerges the extraordinary account of a gritty peasant boy escaping a bleak future in his native Iran. Khodamurad Meherwan realised his village of Mazrekalantary held dim prospects beyond slaving in dry fruit orchards. From Yazd, he travelled 2,500 kilometres the very hardest way (on the backs of camels and mules, finally jumping on a train from Karachi) to reach the city of his dreams in 1929.
In Bombay, the 15-year-old found a mentor in a kind uncle, who got him started on sweeping the floors of Majestic Restaurant for five rupees a day. In the 1860s, Majestic sold toiletries, stationery, cutlery, toys, tobacco and Kodak photographic supplies. Khodamurad's grandson Shahzad Kalantary took over in 1984, returning from London, when customers were wooed with draught beer and a classic bubble-shaped jukebox blaring Bollywood hits.
Sometimes, incongruity makes one wonder about a colonial name. Or the lack of one, as I felt while ferreting another Irani family story. Khodadad Circle in east Dadar takes after travel writer Gustasp Irani's ancestor. The four buildings ringing this roundabout were erected by his grandfather Gustasp and his brother Rustom. The municipal commissioner agreed to name the circle for their father Khodadad. Clockwise, as Tilak Bridge ends, are Empress Mahal, Empire Mahal, Imperial Mahal and Harganga Mahal (formerly Rustom Mahal).
Completed by 1934-35, following Sohrabji Bhedwar's design, why do all but one of these buildings remain colonially christened? Fully curious about this solitary local name, I asked around. To no avail initially. It remained for a watchman at Harganga Mahal to lead me to Ishwar Singh Chowhan, who explained that the property was renamed Harganga, in 1944, once it passed on to his uncle, Harnam Singh and father, Ganga Singh.
Theatre halls such as Regal, Imperial, Edward and Majestic rose as fingerposts to history under the hold of the Raj. Fighting back were cinemas whose proprietors underlined a changed narrative. Liberty at Marine Lines, was introduced in the year of Independence. Leading up to Liberty opening were theatres pronouncing patriotism, particularly in the working-class belt of Parel-Lalbaug-Byculla. When Dorab Jamshedji Pandey's Hindmata started shows in 1930, the theatre served as a venue for Quit India movement protests. Two contemporaries, Bharatmata (screening Marathi movies) and Jai Hind, came to be clubbed together colloquially as Mother India.
Seized by the spirit of nationalism, filmmakers obliquely or obviously fought British-Indian censors. They sought to tame the throne with at least two dozen titles released between 1921 and 1947. Using to advantage the fact that the English inaccurately comprehended Hindi, were rousing 1940s lyrics like "Charkha chalao behno" for Aaj ka Hindustan, "Chal chal re naujawan" for Ek Phool Do Mali and "Door hato aey duniya walo, Hindustan hamara hai" for Kismet. The last mentioned resulted in arrest warrants against Kavi Pradeep and music director Anil Biswas.
Keen to add heft to the heady aftermath of fresh freedom, references to dukes, lords and governors galore were reimagined post-1947. From Willingdon to Wellington, their honorifics have tagged everything from swishy clubs to barber shops.
To sign off with a splendid sample of humbled Britannia⦠Clear about its allegiance, this plum-positioned cafe at a Girgaum corner close to the Portuguese Church, smoothly switched names: from Viceroy of India to Voice of India.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
