Most toddlers have their height measured with colourful charts. Mine marked theirs against tender green Christmas tree boughs. Eager to check how tall they stretched, every few months they stood beside a tiny potted tree—eventually replanted in a park. Each one’s first birthday present from my husband’s aunt, Perin Rustomjee. “They’ll have fun shooting up inches with the baby tree,” she wrote in a note. 

When I went to personally thank her for the thoughtfulness, I fell in love with the Colaba lane she lived on. Oliver Street, lined with half-a-dozen quietly elegant, four-storey buildings of mixed architectural design with striking grilles, windows and embellished reliefs. Most of their names have changed with successive landlords. More, later, on how the road could have got its name.