We always called it proper Bombay and heard names like CP Tank, Hanging Gardens , Gowalia Tank and Capitol Cinema. My first memory of Proper Bombay since I came fro what was then the last suburb Borivali, was the million pigeons eating grams on the roof of Third Bhoiwada, that’s were Utkarsh my cousin lived. For a while we had a charpaee or those beds that were made of wooden brackets and coir rope. Very comfartable and highly portable. We were both nine and eleven and Utkarsh (officially Utkarshbhai) had to get up to get milk. I went with him on some days and on other days I did not. I spent a few holidays in 3rd Bhoiwada in Swami Narayan building and as we walked into the row on houses in a square on the second floor with an almost clean dump where we played cricket. Utkarsh grew up in the mala and often we would go to buy kalakhatta and sugarcane juice and were secretly allowed to eat Pau Bhaji that had onions and garlic and potatoes that the Jains did not eat. We promised to go to one place and ended up in another and that was our source of deception that Utkarsh cherished. We were given some money and his kind mother and intelligent father often suggested where we should go. I got my first scooter from them. Scooter being the small petrol free thing that you swayed one leg and gathered momentum.
Something like this it was an old green one that mom had to carry for me with a love and dedication only a single mother (dad was away at that time and came back and forth and coming and going) could.
Right next to Masee’s (maternal aunty mother to Utkarsh) house was a colourless house with a a young girl that had severe head aches and water retention in the head that eventually killed her. But that apart we sometimes slept on the mezzanine floor that was huge and danced on it’s wooden base and the grandparents would get upset. The grandfather read with a huge magnifying glass and we brought Bakor Patel books (something akin to Brer Rabbit) except in this case the lead was a goat. When Utkarsh left Proper Bombay we lost an interesting part of the childhood that went back to Mahavir nagar and kite flying on the terraces and discussing Natalie my first crush and what a crush she was.
You are right, I am reading Shantaram by Gregory ‘Australian chap with an NZ passport’ and have forgotten Mohan Iyer’s birthday and which reminds me of throwing buckets full of water on innocent (notice how passersby are always innocent) passersby from Binto’s house who died in a bomb blast that happened in the Share Bazaar in 1993 where Utkarsh worked as a sub-broker but Utkarsh is safe, at least on that accord.
