Ms Bhesania was our French professor. Fragrant with her generation's 4711 cologne, given to absentmindedly leaving laundry tags on pastel-print skirts and announcing she lived at Gamadia Colony. She may have been directly related to the Tardeo address, I now find from a pair of legends about The Ship at that colony entrance.

A story explaining this motif, alongside the lettering of Shireen Mansion, is told by 83-year-old Gool Mistry. Her parents were early tenants in the 1938-erected building. Their landlord Burjorji Bhesania's trade involved transporting grass bales between Bombay's seven islands in boats — so the nautical image. The theme was part of the prevailing Art Deco trend as well. Pre-independence Bombay architects toyed with non-colonial design. Ships, trains and planes, symbolising travel, speed and the surge to hit horizons beyond the Arabian Sea, embellished new exteriors.