Why we need more Mumbai icons

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It was February 2018. Strand Book Stall, located off Sir PM Road was shutting shop on the last day of the month. This columnist recalls the vacuum-like, gutted feeling that took over, because it felt as if it was truly the end of an era. Coming to think of it, that phrase [the end of an era] was first used in 2009, when we learnt that its founder, Padma Shri T Shanbhag had passed. Like most newspapers, we too had run tributes for both the affable bookseller and later, when his labour of love had to down its shutters from its famed address in Dhannur building. On both occasions, sampling the mood in the newsroom, it was evident that only a handful of us journalists had gone into mourning; mostly Bombaywallahs who understood the massive impact that the humble man had made on readers across generations within the city and beyond, and how with its shuttering, it meant readers had lost a home forever.

We spoke about its loss on the literary and cultural landscape for long, at cultural gatherings and over chai addas. It couldn't be replaced - man, or the landmark that he had so lovingly built and nurtured till his last breath. For the rest in the newsroom, he might have possibly fallen into the bracket of ‘iconic bookseller'. The part about his legacy needed some explaining. I remember a colleague going through great lengths to share her thoughts with a newbie journalist, who was in her third year in the city, about the unimaginable reach that his bookstore had, and the care with which he personally treated every curious mind who walked into the tiny bookshop - across age groups and social strata. I am not sure how much that chat affected the young reporter, though. But the fact that we had lost an important voice in the city left an uncomfortable feeling, one of numbness, for a long time.

It was the same void-like feeling that overtook our sensibilities when adman and theatrewallah Alyque Padamsee had passed away in November 2018. What Alyque did for Bombay was an idea that was packed with so much vibrancy on stage and in the ad world, packed with his showmanship and pizzazz. We needed more than just full page obits or special centre-spreads to come anywhere close to doing justice to his body of work.

And when the pandemic arrived, we lost a few more, like senior journalist and writer Anil Dharker in March 2021. He was the torchbearer of all things literature in the city; giving it a deserving place in the Bombay sun, especially when few dared to imagine that a literature festival could survive here, let alone thrive. He dared to tell others that people in the city were readers, even serious readers.

More recently, we had to bid adieu to theatre and ad genius, activist, actor and poet, Gerson daCunha. He strode all these worlds like a colossus. His knowledge and opinions mattered to the city. When Gerson spoke, Bombay listened. The last time we had witnessed his sweeping impact over an audience was before the pandemic had turned our worlds upside down. It was at the 2020 edition of the Kalaghoda festival, at the charming lawns of the David Sassoon Library where the cream of the city's literary and cultural circles had come to attend the book release of Sunday Mid-day columnist Meher Marfatia's city chronicle inspired by her column in the newspaper, Once Upon a City. The admiration and respect he commanded among Bombaywallahs who were present there left us in awe. No neta or godman worth their salt would have been able to garner that kind of genuine love from fellow city folk. In the audience were two other stalwarts from theatre that we lost in 2021 and 2022, Ruby and Burjor Patel who took English, Gujarati and Parsi theatre to great heights with their collaborations and immeasurable support for the theatre community in the city as a whole.

These individuals were not just ‘city icons'. They added their own voice, words and views towards shaping the cultural and cosmopolitan fabric of the city. Generations have benefited from their contributions and thought processes, offering layer after another of direction, vision and what one can safely term as the ‘spirit of Bombay'. They will never be another like each of these great minds. These men and women [forgive me for not mentioning countless others in this column] gave us plenty to be hopeful for, to celebrate about and cherish in the city. From literature to culture, the performing arts and social empowerment, they gave us the belief that spunk and resilience can get you far; these are qualities we Bombaywallahs like to boast about. Sadly, this is where we will be poorer.

It's up to the next generations to uphold and keep alive their legacies. How it is preserved leaves the door open to many possibilities. But it needs to be done because it will, at least in small measure, remind us of the core idea on which this city was built, and what remains a deep rooted sentiment for so many of us.

mid-day's Features Editor Fiona Fernandez relishes the city's sights, sounds, smells and stones...wherever the ink and the inclination takes her. She tweets @bombayana

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