“Once there were green fields kissed by the sun”

I could be excused for believing Sherly Rajan Road is named for a person That as a sixyearold was my notion of this slice of Salsette Island Growing up on Hill Road the East Indian villages familiar to us were Ranwar and Boran in our backyardAwareness of the Sherly Rajan and Malla bastions seeped in a little later in life Today I enjoy a studio apartment in one of the earliest buildings on Sherly Rajan Road from the 1960sRodney DrsquoMello and Dion DrsquoMello at the gate of Green Fields on Sherly Rajan Road PicAnurag AhireWhen Bombay was ceded to the British Crown in 1661 the Portuguese retained possession of Salsette of which a prosperous portion was the agriculturally rich Bandra soil Around the 1500s it was divided into 24 villagesmdashcomprising farmers toddy tappers potters and fisherfolk selling oneanna pomfrets that were eagerly dried fried or pickled The locals converting to Christianity were called East Indians identified distinctly from Catholic migrants to the city from Goa and MangaloreOn Bassein Vasai falling in 1739 Salsette was transferred to the Marathas Crushed at Panipat in 1761 by the Afghans the Maratha defeat paved the way for the British to subsequently occupy SalsetteYvette Gonsalves on the porch of House No 26 in Malla PicAnurag AhireldquoOnce there were green fields kissed by the sunrdquo extolled Fr Larry Pereira in his essay titled Bandrarsquos Beginnings in the Bombay Local History Society magazine Explorer The SherlyRajanMalla trio of hamlets fringing St Annersquos Church built in 1858 on the west slope of Pali Hill derive their names from words meaning ldquocultivatorsrdquo Xelalim Rajana and MallemRodney DrsquoMello and his nephew Dion belong to one of the first families of Sherly now living in aptly christened threestoreyed Green Fields it being once surrounded by sundrenched tracts of paddy paalak bhindi tomato and coconut An intrinsic part of the community fabric their landowner ancestors included Dom DrsquoMello Rodneyrsquos father and Domrsquos son Melville DrsquoMello who was Dionrsquos father Dom worked with Bennett auctioneers and played the mandolin He was the trumpeter in Chic Chocolatersquos orchestra A refrigeration and airconditioning engineer Melville was an accomplished violinist and soloist for traditional Latin Requiem MassClare DrsquoMello and Anne Gonsalves with their brother Connell in their Sherly village apartment PicSameer MarkandeldquoWe probably had the first fridge in the localityrdquo Rodney recollects ldquoIrsquod win carrom contests held under the village lamppost We climbed trees and threw stones knocking down mangoes and love apples Dragging my bed to the balcony I slept in the cool night air with my dog Tinkerrdquo Walking needlenarrow paths Dion shows me the few surviving original structures in the areamdashlowlying with typically solid loadbearing masonry holding up clay tile roofs Louvres on twinshuttered windows adjust to cut glare and encourage inward breezes After No 19 Sherly now Dom Lucia building combining Dom and his school teacher wife Lucyrsquos names we stop at Mellowrsquos Home inscribed with the date May 1 1951 where the DrsquoMellos lived for a number of yearsThe Christmas party held at the Lawrence family home in whose garden survives the sole tamarind tree of MallaOur next halt the Grotto of Our Lady reveals an extraordinarily pretty replica of the Lourdes shrine Commemorating Rev JI DrsquoSilva it is inscribed with another May Day date May 1 1914 Nearby was the house of ldquoMaster Wencyrdquo Wenceslaus Fernandes who offered commendable assistance to the St Francis Xavier School and St Annersquos Choir which he directed from 1938Amid the tempting aroma of justbaked gutli and ovenhot soft pao wafting with the scents of spicy prawn curry bubbling on stoves Dion politely calls out ldquoEmritardquo through the porch trellis jaali of a Sherly cottage we peer into Emrita DrsquoSilva kindly loans a wonderful commemorative volume published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of St Annersquos Church in 2008 ldquoWhen we moved to Green Fields in the early 1970s Sherly was a small sleepy localityrdquo remembers Gillian Castellino daughter of journalist and historian Olga Valladares ldquoDuring Lent close to midnight the lsquoPapiasrsquo penitents went from grotto to grotto reciting an ad hoc mix of the Marathi version of the Rosary the Portuguese litany and the Krista Purana Announcing their presence with a rattle making a very particular sound they were hooded concealing their identity Not supposed to see them upon hearing the rattle we were expected to be quiet to respect their faith and courage to publicly repent sinsrdquoAt No 14 Sherly sisters Anne Gonsalves and Clare DrsquoMello discuss the manifold significance of crosses dotting the suburb Flagging spots in a maze of kachcha mud paths these served as boundary locators Of the vicinityrsquos main quartet one near the additional police commissionerrsquos office off Carter Road marks the entry into Malla the second indicates the entrance to Sherly the third to Rajan and the fourth confirms the end of Rajanmdashand Bandra itselfmdashbefore Khar starts ldquoThis last one was constructed by our father Noel Gonsalves along with Fr Anthony Charanghat editor of The Examinerrdquo says Clare As she describes Pali residents fleeing over the hill to Rajan and Sherly to shelter from the deadly 1896 plague Clare speaks of the protective ldquoplague crossesrdquo erected to ward off the scourge or in gratitude for saved lives Parishioners still hold annual thanksgiving masses to St Roque to whom a statue is dedicated at StAnnersquos ChurchWith his roots in the East Indian coastal town of Uttan north of the city Joseph DrsquoSouza from Felicia building says ldquoWhat Irsquove enjoyed for 35 years my kids will neverrdquo He refers to the terraced tenroomed home avatar of Felicia designed by his architect grandfather JF DrsquoSouza who personally carried shoreskirting rubble to fill the 1940 plot he bought and named after his wife Until builders like Rizvi dominated the neighbourhood from the mid1980s the rural profile of this precinct punctuated everyday routines Pigs and ducks were common fixtures and tinier creatures like rabbits were stuffed into the pockets of excited children for ldquoshowandtellrdquo sessions at schoolldquoIrsquove played in every single field catching frogs for the soup we loved making from their legsrdquo says interior designer Arden DrsquoSouza in Rajan village Dwarfed by inexorable redevelopment the compound of his villa No 33 used to share space with the familyrsquos flour mill His grandfather Mathew DrsquoSouza an Uttan tiller also built boatsmdasha skill Ardenrsquos father Barnabus inherited their joint craftsmanship fashioned the wooden furniture in the living room we sit in So Kolis delivering fresh fish baskets to the home were no unusual sight ldquoChildren bought fivepaise lollies at Cheenarsquos ice cream factory and covered blackandwhite television screens with colourful cellophane paper to get lsquocolour TVrsquordquo laughs ArdenThe presence of our women at the Olympics owes a great deal to a village dance Mary DrsquoSouza from Rajan became Indiarsquos first lady Olympian and Double International track and field and field hockey selected for the 1952 Helsinki Games Though she lacked coaching and financemdashthe government only extended airfaremdashthe villagers organised a fundraising dance St Josephrsquos her school had no grounds for her to practise at ldquoAt night I jumped over the wall landing in St Andrewrsquos when girls werenrsquot allowed to train with boysrdquo Mary is known to have saidThe roadside shrine of Our Lady of Vailankanni installed at 3A Rajan sees devotees of varied faiths recite fervent Novena prayers The Knox family of nine kids lived behind this grotto One of them Patricia Nathmdasha founding member of the Celebrate Bandra festivalmdashhas tales to tell of their pair of pet panthers and remembers each village had a kind of headman who worked for its welfare Onward to verdant Mallarsquos tracts of swaying palms and whispering tamarind trees ldquoTaken over by the BMC in recent years the Malla Garden was a hillock with shrubs banana trees and bullrushes Our picnic spot as kids where we caught King George butterflies and dragonfliesrdquo says Yvette Gonsalves in No 26 a bungalow fascinating on two scores The different dates on the cast irongrilled verandah above its facade and the fact that its rear entrance has turned into the front dictated by the route rickshaws take behind the Bagel ShopYvette was born in and continues to live in this villa that her father from Mangalore came to in 1939 This was the home philanthropist Manoel Gonsalves constructed in 1866 as the plaque in the picturesque portico reads In 1909 he raised the first floor and moved upstairs with his third wife ldquoMost houses had floors layered with cow dung collected from animals grazing freely Our lane had red mud and later two feet of tar with the mud on the sidesrdquo Yvette says as we pass prominent gateposts Like Dallas DrsquoSilvarsquos cottage where he supplies such delicacies as roast suckling ldquoFind us a crisper pigrsquos tailrdquo his regular customers challenge stuffed chicken sausages and sorpotelA busy dhobi ghat sits behind Manish Sea Croft building earlier the bungalow of Braz DrsquoSilva and his matchmaker wife Bidi Yvette informs ldquoTill the 1960s the washing well witnessed drownings Dalda tins tied to their backs locals learnt swimming in itrdquo Currently covered with concrete the well leaves space only for pipes and a pump drawing water sans buckets and pulleys Mushrooming chawls girdle the well thriving with businesses beyond washing and ironingJuttingout verandahs invite the outside in Like unseen ldquoWelcomerdquo signs hung I think as octogenarian Irys Lawrence looks up from watering the lush plants in the garden of her home LrsquoAbode with a friendly wave of her handThe noontime Hour of Grace has struck on December 8 Feast of the Immaculate Conception Every church chapel and home has been fully immersed in 60 minutes of homilypowered worshipWe are back to happily breathing in rumsoaked Christmas pudding and catching the strum of a guitar or tinkling piano notes Dessert always the East Indian forte following meals flavoured with fiery ldquobottle masalardquo thali coconut cake rice atola pudding and boling apart rsquotis the season for ambrosial almond and cashew marzipan soon heaping festive gift trays Who would want more than music and the food of love Allrsquos right with this world for nowAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay You can reach her at mehermarfatiamiddaycomwwwmeher marfatiacom