Chance meetings and goodbye greetings

The years render everything relative We live daily disconcerted dwarfed by dizzying tower heights Hard to think an 11floor ldquohighriserdquo was Breach Candyrsquos tallest skyscraper around 1960At first a bungalow Mecklai Mansion opposite the seahugging American Consulate at the time in Lincoln House was bought by a Sindhi builder two decades after the Aga Khan had presided over its 1936 housewarming ceremony The result was this building I live in Peacock Palace on Warden Road officially named Bhulabhai Desai Road to honour the patriotphilanthropist who as well lent his name to a most vibrant cultural hub on the street the Bhulabhai Desai Institute considered the forerunner of the National Centre for Performing Arts While thatrsquos a fairly known fact I was eager to find out more about the Warden who gave the street its former name At least more than the threeline descriptor in Samuel T Sheppardrsquos handy compendium Bombay PlaceNames and StreetNames Voila Serendipity stepped in softly to work the magic it so often does It happened a few years ago Walking with me in the garden across our road my friend Khorshed Nayak suddenly shared a remarkable experience She and her husband Prakash had returned from visiting their daughter in England Out on a stroll there theyrsquod taken a wrong turn along remote paths of the small wool town of Lavenham in Suffolk Crisscrossing in confusion they realised they were properly lost never dreaming a memorable encounter lay literally round the corner Dr Ernest Borges Pic CourtesyThe director Tata Memorial HospitalExploring that quaint Tudor village mdash with timberframed twocolour tiled cottages dripping medieval heritage mdash the couple spotted with some relief an elderly gentleman raking fallen leaves in his rambling gardenKhorshed recounted ldquoHe saw us poring over our map lsquoWhere are you fromrsquo he asked Visibly excited when we said India he added lsquoWhich cityrsquo The moment we said lsquoMumbairsquo he said lsquoOh a Mumbai street is named after my ancestor Warden Roadrsquo In unison we burst out saying lsquoWhat thatrsquos our roadrsquordquoThe astonished gent was Neil Warden Grabbing them inside the house to introduce his wife Lindsay he quickly brought off the wall some portraits of Captain Richard George Warden a ldquodirect ascendantrdquo of Francis Warden who christened the Breach Candy strip the Nayaks and I call homeChief Secretary of Bombay Presidency in the 19th century and an East India Company director Francis Warden has been the subject of research by Neilrsquos sons the chartered accountant Nicholas Warden and actor Richard Warden think Band of Brothers Dunkirk and Rome with help from the family history forum RootsChatNick and Rick mdash as they signed a series of mails to me mdash have followed their forefatherrsquos career in the civil administration from 1795 the year he returned from England after his education Nick expressed his intention of exploring Warden Road somedaySir Homi Mody Pic CourtesyMody FamilyRick wrote ldquoWe deduced that Francis Warden mdash a highranking civil servant in Bombay and beyond mdash was a cousin of our greatgreatgreatgrandfather Richard George Warden dying on January 6 1853 The riddle isnrsquot made any easier by all of the generations above calling themselves George or indeed Francis or Richard I visited a Putney cemetery on Nickrsquos recommendation To my amazement I found this grave aged because it has been walked on over a 150 years If you look carefully you can make out lsquoFrancis Wardenrsquo and his death date suggested aboverdquoElsewhere it emerges that Francis was a fearless senior administrator who took on the high and mighty on behalf of Indians including spirited educational debates with Mountstuart Elphinstone the Governor of BombayldquoWhat were the odds It was fantastic the power of coincidencerdquo Prakash Nayak marvelled ldquoThirty seconds more and we may never have enjoyed this chance meeting Neil was about to disappear inside He had finished sweeping to spruce his house for a touristsrsquo viewing the next dayrdquo Khorshed added ldquoA good thing that we were as curious as Neilrdquo Now for chuckleworthy episodes probably familiar to a few When the name of the lane on which Bombay House stands changed in 1973 from Bruce Street after a member of the Bombay Municipality around 18901900 to Homi Mody Street after the noted industrialist associated with the Tatas a delightful anecdote circulated It is said that Russi Mody the baronetbankerrsquos son was pulled up by a policeman while parking his car on the narrow road Admonished with the standard Bambaiya dare mdash ldquoTumhara baap ka rasta hain kyardquo mdash the young scion pointed to the road sign imprinted with his distinguished fatherrsquos nameThe eminent histopathologist Dr Anita Borges has another incident to narrate Once as she pulled out of the compound of the Tata Memorial Hospital at Parel a rash motorist almost hit her car Belligerently he posed that identical question in the same lingo translating to Was this her fatherrsquos road Under the signboard dangling where they stood announcing ldquoDr Ernest Borges Margrdquo she retorted ldquoOf courserdquo Leaving behind a puzzled but steaming individualNext up is not strictly a single street but the lovely maze of leafy lanes that make up Bombayrsquos sole unwalled baug supposed to be the worldrsquos largest ungated Zoroastrian enclave inhabited by every fourth member of the community The Dadar Parsi Colonyrsquos other name mdash Mancherji Joshi Colony mdash commemorates an ancestor from my maternal family Down the quiet cool of two arterial roads is the memorial bust of philanthropist Mancherji Edulji Joshi my motherrsquos granduncle Both my parents grew up here and cousins continue to live in centuryold apartments around Mancherjirsquos statueZareen Engineer and her sister Sooni Davar relate the story of their grandfatherrsquos exceptional vision in raising the colony A Karachiborn civil engineer with the Bombay Improvement Trust Mancherji focused on accommodating middleclass Parsis on marshland the British developed under the 18991900 DadarMatungaWadalaSion Scheme ldquoBhejoo khasee gayooch ke have you lost your headrdquo exploded the first women in Gujarati to the husbands who brought them to these then soggy inhospitable acresThere was no option Mancherji explained persuading the British authorities to reserve over 100 plots to rehouse Parsis from cramped plagueaffected areas in South Bombay The visionary planner that he was Mancherji designed this colony with such exceptional attention to details that matter it still reigns as one of the cityrsquos greenest cleanest airiest neighbourhoodsWhy do I wander to different corners of the city every other week Because Bombay holds soulsoothing hidden gems simply waiting to be discovered Itrsquos about seeing beyond the squalor The adventure lies in finding outAs Kannada fiction writer Yashwant Chittal says ldquoI donrsquot write what I know I write to knowrdquo And filmmaker Danny Boyle precisely observed ldquoItrsquos not so much what you learn about Mumbai itrsquos what you learn about yourselfrdquoEvery person one meets has precious stories to offer Chronicling the past makes better sense of the present and holds hope for the futureSo Irsquom a believer Believing in the logic of lineage in the beauty of bonds in the likelihood of probabilities possibilities and the polevault of ldquoperhapsrdquo Initially it does seem like embarking on a quest of the unknown But you finally have engrossing oral historyPreserve the pieces Save the scraps Join the dots Cast around Our neighbourhoods thrive with an inspiring autumnal generation whose unique veteran experiences we cannot begin to imagine Their recollections are our rewardsLocate Listen Lengthen Roots before wings the generations after us absolutely deserve to know Dig out that story Tell it with passion Tell it with pride Just tell itI have on these pages for years too many to count But Irsquom moving on next month From print to blog wwwmehermarfatiacomblog itrsquos an onward march to a digital platform which is an independent Bombay history archive of my ownToying with this decision for a longish while pretty hard after 41 years of newspaper bylines for someone who cut her teeth on journalism in the 1980s before even a ldquoboxrdquo computer screen flashed forth I look forward to switching tracks The same columns at the same frequency Every alternate Sunday as usual PromiseThis is not an absolute goodbye to print altogether Not when the sight smell and feel of it remain enchanting This is about relevance The crazily changing contours of our city split wide by relentless redevelopment demand to be documented with moving images Still photos cannot adequately capture these constant changes which are fast leaving us bereft Now more than ever itrsquos imperative to view the fragile Bombay fabric through a multimedia microscope with kaleidoscopic glassYes itrsquos a lonelier path to tread Having freelanced for this paper itself since 1990 with different columns I shall miss the interaction with the best page editors any writer can land Courteous in correcting how gently each has smoothed the occasional stammer of grammar in my textAdmittedly I am overwhelmed Fortune may favour the brave sure But the bravest can crumble without the warm sustenance of loyalists Thank you dear reader for keeping the faith Stay with me As they say see you on the other side Authorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore BombayThis is her last column on these pages She will continue chronicling the city from next month on wwwmehermarfatiacomblog