Coming down from Sandhurst Bridge towards the sea, one reaches the vast expanse of the famous Chowpati beach. The Queen’s Necklace starts from Diwane Khas, i.e. Raj Bhavan. Coming down on the slope of Walkeshwar, the sea facing buildings of Diwane Aam get a fabulous view of the sea.
A friend of mine, staying in one of these, was fortunate enough to have Lata Mangeshkar as his neighbour (before she moved to her present house on Peddar Road). The reference to “Queen” in the Queen’s Necklace should have meant this melody queen of India. My friend’s day started every day with her arguments with her “doodhwala” in her sonorous voice.
Where the Walkeshwar Road touched the level road, a customs chowki stood at Chowpati. I never saw any foreigner walking in with dutiable goods but the chowki still existed. Next to it is an eating joint for pigeons and a few benches.
One of the benches provided a perfect setting for free rehearsal of some scenes of a low cost Gujarati drama “Master Phoolmani”, which made it big, by entering its eleventh year at Prithvi Theatres. Its key characters are: Utkarsh Mazumdar and Chirag Shah. Utkarsh plays the role of a middle aged bachelor – a clerk in a small firm, fantasizing about a lady colleague. Chirag plays the role of a man acting in old style dramas to enact a lady’s character, which inspires Utkarsh for his fantasies. The drama being on a shoe string budget, they rehearsed a few scenes on these benches, which made onlookers quite curious !
Further ahead is the Wilson College – a beautiful heritage structure. Three generations of my family studied there – my father, cousin and my very young cousin sister.
Out of these, only my cousin, staying in 7 a hostel next to the college, had a strange experience. Sleeping in a single occupancy room, he found someone climbing over him and trying to strangle him. He rushed out quickly, only to be told that it was a haunted room. A student had committed suicide there some years ago.
Just behind the Wilson College is Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, set up by the uncrowned king of Gujarati literature K M Munshi. It ran several monthly programmes of Gujarati songs, titled “Aa Maasna Geeto” (This month’s songs).
A Hindi mushaira held there ended at late night. Well known lyricist Bharat Vyas, whose couplets and songs were applauded there, found himself deserted there after the programme. None of his friends and admirers thought of offering him lift. He had to start walking towards his house in a distant Western suburb. Distressed, words came to his mind while walking:
“Kaviraja, dhandeki kuchh baat karo, kuchh paisa jodo”
V Shantaram made it famous by taking it as a song for “Navrang”.
A mid-market restaurant “Crystal” on Chowpati became the perfect hang out for students of Wilson and Bhavan’s colleges. A down market restaurant, just behind it, offered excellent dahi-misal (One of the best concoctions of balanced food: protein, carebohydrate, vitamins, fats and fibre, all together at an affordable cost and with mouth watering taste.)
Araam restaurant on the first floor was simply out of this world. It had a long balcony, overlooking the sea. It looked just like the deck of a ship. It offered probably the largest varieties within a thali. Food was so good that diners chose to ignore waiters’ washed clothes being dried next to a wash basin where they all had to go after their meals !
Further ahead is the imposing Phoolchand Niwas as the most vantage location. Its occupants can watch Ganapati immersions as well as Mumbai Police catching Kasab after his dastardly act.
That is followed by Cream Centre, which sort of introduced pizzas to vegetarians, besides chana bhatura to upmarket food lovers.
. On the forenoon of the day when World Cup final was to be played, it got an unexpected group of youngsters – all well behaved and each member of the group paying for him. Left to him, the restaurant’s manager at the counter would not have charged them anything but the leader of the group insisted on paying. He was Rahul Gandhi. His father Rajiv Gandhi was born only 2-3 km away from this place.
Cream Centre’s sibling “New Yorker” opened much later. Its exquisite copper enameled wall paneling was done by Chandrakant Mhatre, who studied this art in Vatican and brought it to India.
Walk a few steps further and you would find an unusual show room – that of life size statues of celebrities who gave their life for India. It was Mumbai’s Madame Tussaud !
Its neighbouring building is Dr Purandare’s Maternity Home. Purandare brothers – eminent doctors and engineers did signal service to the nation in pre and post independence times.
A veg Chinese restaurant in the next building initiated vegetarians to the taste of Chinese food. My favourite, however, was a small and affordable restaurant a little ahead. Aptly named as “Dariya Vihar”, its waiters would take orders for food as well as music. It had a radiogram in lieu of a juke box and a hand written menu of 78 rpm latest releases. Those were the days when new releases were mostly as good as or sometimes even better than oldies. I remember that when we heard about “Jis Deshmen Ganga Behti Hai”’s records had been added to the Dariya Vihar collection, we rushed there and ordered potato wada and tea, though we were not hungry. The temptation would always be to hang around while other customers paid for listening to music. That’s the only time we did not mind our tea getting cold !
Almost coming to the end of Chowpati, there was a cut fruit seller at the bottom of a foot over bridge on the railway line. To save time when customers came calling, he would cut fruits in advance and lay out in plates. Little did his customers realize, however, that bacteria always reached there earlier !
The bridge got extended to the Pransukhlal Mafatlal Swimming Pool footpath. A benevolent (!) private party offered to build it for mere Rs 29,000/- and the BMC, pretending to be poor, grabbed the offer. The Councillors, however, gave away the rights of collecting advertizing revenue from hoardings over the bridge to that party for many decades, in return for the favour (!). Apart from huge hoardings, the bridge also carried rolling illuminated advertisement of Shanksr Jaikishan’s movie titles.
The P M Bath had excellent catering by Ramanlal Thakker, who owned the Rugby Hotel at Matheran. Feasts of jalebi ganthiya on Sunday mornings and idli chutney on other days were too tempting to resist. Their Gujarati thali could not be equalled even in Gujarati households.
The owner himself personally supervised the catering. In case of genuine complaints from customers regarding poor service, which was rare, he would reprimand his staff in such a way that shivers would pass down the customers’ spines.
Reference to Chowpati is never complete without mention of the bhelpuri and paani puri stalls. We once ran unto some of our relatives at one of the stalls. I was surprised to find them discussing scores. I soon realized that the figures of 42, 36 etc were not runs scored in a match but the number of paani puris gulped by each of them ! It was an act which made three kinds of people happy: themselves and the paani puriwalla, followed two days later by their family doctor !
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