Dadar
is to Mumbai what Allahabad is to India.
The Ganges and the Yamuna rivers, which are lifelines of the heart of India, come together at Prayag in Allahabad. The third sacred river, the Saraswati, is said to be flowing
underground and also takes Allahabad on her route.
Similarly,
Dadar is where the Central and Western Railways, which are the lifelines of Mumbai, come together and then part ways. The future Metro, like the Saraswati, will run
underground, also through Dadar.
Allahabad
has given India its first Prime Minister and also its reigning super star
Amitabh Bachchan. Dadar has, similarly, given super stars of cricket, not only to India but also to the
world. Both Sunil Gavaskar and Sachin
Tendulkar and several other Indian players of the past and today have honed
their batting skills at Shivaji Park in Dadar, under famous coaches. It is not
a mere park but a place of pilgrimage to the cricket lovers.
Talking
of pilgrimage, Mumbai’s one of the most
revered Siddhi Vinayak temple is a landmark of Dadar. On Monday nights,
devotees walk down barefoot from far away suburbs to the temple., for attending
its aarti by early Tuesday morning .
Right from the days when Amitabh was hospitalized in Breach Candy after his
grievous injury during the shooting of Manmohan Desai,s “Coolie”, till recently
when the beloved cricketer of India, Yuvraj Singh recovered from his serious
health problem, this has been the temple to which people in distress have gone,
with utmost faith, to seek divine blessings.
Another temple, which is a pride of heritage,
is the Prabhadevi temple, from which the locality derives its name. An equally important place
of worship is the famous Dadar Portuguese Church. Unlike the Portuguese Church at Girgaum, this
one has been modernized twice. It bears testimony to the Portuguese rule in
this part of India.
Memorials
of Veer Savarkar, who fought for India
and spent the prime years of his life in Andaman’s jail, and Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, who drafted
the Constitution of India, both are located on the Western coast of Dadar. Huge
crowds converge at Dadar Chowpati every year,
to pay homage to Dr Ambedkar.
The
same Dadar coast has quarters for officers of the Reserve Bank of India. It has a small
auditorium, which I shall always remember for a very special evening. I
attended a function there, where an audio-visual in memory of late Dattaram, one
of the two assistants of Shankar Jaikishan, was shown. Some of his
contemporaries, who are themselves but currently out of work, thanks to the
monster called the synthesizer, attended the function, gave us the sad news
that the music era of those days will never come back. Those days, music
directors first explained to the musicians the situation of a song, lyrics,
actors who would play out the scene, the playback singers and the feelings to
be conveyed through the instruments. Then, after some rehearsals, there would
be a grand rehearsal, attended by the director and the producer. If a musician could not play the right
note, the music director or his
assistant would personally sit with him and try to make him understand the
emotional intricacies. . The person who said this said he himself had been one
of the instrumentalists for the song
Aansu bhari hai yeh jeevanki raahen, koi unse kahe de, hame bhul jaayen” from
Parvarish”. He said things were not going right with him, despite Dattaram
himself explaining to him. Raj Kapoor, who was patiently watching it, came to
him and, taking the instrument in his own hand, played it for him the right
way. He asked us “Can you imagine a star
of today doing this ?” As against that,
these days they resort to synthesizers. Technologically its perfect but lacks
the personal touch.
V
Shantaram, a doyen of the film industry, set up his Plaza Cinema at Dadar. This
and the present landmark Shiv Sena Bhavan,
both play a sad testimony to the
city’s first serial bomb blasts. The
scars were deepened by yet another bomb
blast in Dadar West, on the bus stop of St Antonio School (near the
Kabutarkhana).
Other
film studios at Dadar were the Ranjit
Studio and the Shree Sound studio. Ranjit iwas located on a road in Dadar East,
which has been very aptly named as Dadasaheb Phalke Marg.
Dadar
boasts of a large variety of culinary
delights. On the Western side, Shetye at Shivaji Park had simple English
style décor and offered authentic continental dishes, at unbelievably
reasonable prices. Dattatreya Arogya
Dham served mouth watering genuine Maharashtrian thali, complete with only
salted but tasty dry dal and rice, followed by aamti, patalbhaji and kothimbir
wada.. Prakash Lunch Home served Maharashtrian specialities, and had menus for people observing religious fasts. The road
leading from Dadar West to Prabhadevi had a small place which had sofa set to
sit and hot masala milk to sip. A major attraction of this place, however, was
a radiogram. The owner himself played records of Sudhir Phadke’s Geet Ramayan,
for a small fee. This was his way of offering a juke box like facility and
presenting Maharasht
No
mention of Dadar West could be complete without referring to Manhar Surat
Bakery at Shivaji Park. I do not know whether they brought their delectable
khari biscuits and nankhatais really from Surat but it hardly mattered. They
were always as good as brought from a
bakery right opposite the railway station at Surat.
A
gift from Dadar West to the nation is one of the earliest Catering Colleges. As
HMT (Hindustan Machine Tools) proclaimed that “We make machines that make other
machines”, this college brings out many chefs every year, who train other chefs
later, not only in India but also in the world.
An
annual show of this college serves as a value for money temporary eating joint
around every X’mas. When I was on tour once, a relative of us, who worked at
the then Burmah Shell, had treated my family there. My family never stopped
talking about it.
If
one wants a quick snack, Mama Kane’s batata wada, just outside Dadar West
station still remains unparalleled. These are different in taste from those
offered by Ramakant Bhavan at Khopoli, on the foot of the Western Ghats but
people love these also, for their distinctive taste.
Dadar
West has another event from history.
During the early twenties, a bright young Dadar boy got his engineering degree
and a good Government job. Soon Gandhiji’s clarion call came, to boycott
foreign makes and make do with substitutes made in India. This gentleman, like
most others, was using a Parker pen and Parker ink. He decided to quit his job and start manufacturing pens and ink. The
industry, set up by him, became popular
as the House of Camlin. Who doesn’t remember a
Camel brand compass box of our school days ?
He
was asked once why he chose the camel as his brand. He replied that he had once
visited Kutch, where his classmate (who happened to be my father) came from. He saw many camels there. It
occurred to him that this animal sustains itself in adverse climate and, therefore,
represented the plight of most Indians then. He also hated the British rulers
in India and, therefore, wanted to select, as a brand, an animal which did not exist in their
country !
Dadar
East, on the other side, had very different kinds of eating places. An Udipi at
the foot of Tilak Bridge at Dadar appeared to have closed down recently. We
almost had tears in our eyes. Two months later, we passed from there and found
the place yet again alive and kicking. Short of dancing with joy, we rejoiced
the moment.
Just
a few steps ahead at Dadar TT was Farmer
Brothers. It offered delicious varieties of milk shakes, buttermilk, lassi and
a few selected varieties of snacks, including mouth watering sandwiches with a
sprinkling of mustard, to enhance the taste.
Most
of today’s and even the earlier
generations do not know what TT stands for. In the old days, we had trams running up and down the city’s
main roads. These were pulled out in the
late 60s, to make way for cars and
busses. This was one of the worst decisions of the city fathers . At Dadar , the
trams terminated and turned around to go back to the city through an elaborate
circular track arrangement Hence this was Dadar Tram Terminus . Later the trmas
were extended to Kings Circle which became the final tram terminus
Going
from Dadar TT to King’s Circle, you see Hindu Colony on the left, There is a
small outlet for delicious South Indian
dishes. Towards the right, you see Parsi Colony. A quaint place in one of the
buildings on Jame Jamshed Road, decorated by traditional Parsi style “rangolis
was “Yezdiar”. It served excellent Parsi food, accompanied by chilled beer. Its
dhansak can never be forgotten. When Yezdiar closed more tears flowed It is
still remembered after 4 decades.
Mohanlal
Mithaiwala, right on the Dadar T. T. (also called known as Khodadad Circle), displayed so many
varieties of freshly made sweets that one ended up buying much more than what
one had originally come to buy. It also serves as the local booking office for
lovers of the famous Regal Hotel at Matheran. Dotting the round of Dadar TT
were landmark stores such as Khorsheds for cloth. Ketkars for Marathi masalas,Valia
another cloth shop and the Irani Yezdan restaurant. Down the road was the only toy shop in the area,
Colony Stores.
Another landmark of Dadar is the Pritam restaurant. A
later addition was Pritamka Dhaba, with a full fledged residential hotel too
added last. The original Pritam restaurant has an interesting association for
me. That’s the place where I took my fiancée first for a dinner date. When I
narrated this to a friend of mine, who was a judge and the Charity
Commissioner, he said it was not mine but his story too !.
Going
towards Parel we had Broadway Cinema as another
landmark which made way for a shopping centre . A little farther away is an authentic and value for money Punjabi food jeatery.
Right opposite that was a Gurudwara and also shops like Chetsingh Gurubax,
selling musical instruments, mostly
brought to Mumbai from UP.
The
early forties saw a youmg boy from UP come down to Mumbai, in search of a
living. He used to sleep on the footpath opposite Broadway Cinema. During
monsoons, he took shelter under a staircase in a building there. He had some knowledge of music. The shop
selling the musical instruments there took his help, at times, to check is some
of the instruments were tuned properly. In return, he would get a cup of tea.
Times
then changed and lady luck smiled at him. He made it big in the Indian cinema industry.
He was Naushad ! When Baiju Bawra was released in Broadway (besides Super
Cinema at Grant Road), he stood in the terrace of the Cinema theatre and said
to himself “ It took me so many years to
cross this road !”