Walk with me through Tara Baug,” he wrote. I accepted, as I sometimes do when readers proactively extend invitations to exciting destinations. Barring occasional mention in regional papers, this one appears to have almost no prior description in the English press. The Girgaum colony Mahendra Shah steers me through is indeed special. Not discounting the encumbrances of chawl life, the 90-year history of Tara Baug Estate holds accounts of brimming bonhomie and community spirit among families spanning three generations.
In a phone interview from Bridgeport, Connecticut, octogenarian Jatin Mehta says, “I left Tara Baug decades ago, with an exodus of residents winging away to America. With an overall neat environment, running water for part of the day and civic-minded neighbours, Tara Baug won a reputation of being the best chawl in 1930s-1940s Bombay.” And 82-year-old Saryu Thorat, of F Block, moist-eyed with emotion, declares, “Mala Tara Baug baddal khupach abhimaan aahe [I have great pride in Tara Baug].”
Saryu Thorat and Prem Pande of Block F with Brownie the cat. Pics/Sayyed Sameer Abedi
If this sounds like soupy nostalgia in the autumnal years, there is Thorat’s next-door neighbour, Prem Pande, from a generation after. The 54-year-old says, “My heart and soul beat deeply for this colony. I’ve grown up having lunch in Saryu Fai’s rasodu (kitchen) and continue to. I call her ‘Fai’, meaning father’s sister in Gujarati. Marathi or Gujarati, there’s zero clannishness.”
Thorat agrees — “Gujaratis may seem the majority, but Maharashtrians like me don’t sense a bit of differentiation, ajeebaat nahi. Neighbours of both communities, from Nene Building and Zaveri Building next door, and all around Girgaum and Kalbadevi, came to break the dahi handi at Gokulashtami, and to our Ganesh pandal with equal enthusiasm. Navratracha time aamhi suda garba karat hotey [we too participated in Navratri garbas]. When I was seven, my mother fell sick. Kind neighbours asked daily: ‘Miraben maatey su banaavyey [what can we cook for Miraben]?’” A tawny cat at Thorat’s feet purrs approval. “Brownie is our ‘sarvajanik’ cat — strolling into various homes certain hours of the day, but with me till afternoon,” she laughs.
Several old-timers wish the colony had not changed drastically. Having emigrated in 1969, Mehta says, “Tara Baug’s first-class builder, Kalyanji, was our neighbour in Room A 48 when my parents arrived in 1939. As that generation aged and was less involved, a sorry deterioration set in. Washing areas got dirty, people threw litter in chowks and brass fittings were cut by thieves. I stayed in touch in America with my Tara Baug friend, Dr Hasmukh Shah. We play bridge together regularly.”
Sanjay Vitlani of Tara Baug Farsaan Mart
In the 1950s, appreciative elders encouraged Mehta to become the 12-year-old secretary of the Tara Baug branch of Balkan-Ji-Bari, the all-India child welfare organisation founded in 1923 by Gandhian social activist Dada Sevak Bhojraj. With strong representation from Bhuleshwar and Marine Drive to Ghatkopar, Balkan-Ji-Bari had Morarji Desai as honorary chairman. Its motto — “Education and entertainment” — mirrored in cultural programmes typifying Tara Baug, which has boasted residents like the poet-litterateur Umashankar Joshi.
“Paying a 25-paise yearly membership fee, 70 to 80 kids met once a week in Block AB chowk for activities. The 16 rooms ringing it bore with us,” says Mehta. An expert fundraiser, he was the moving force convincing donors to subsidise Balkan-ji-Bari picnics, skits, debates and dance ballets. “Main events planned were cricket and badminton tournaments between buildings. Block AB alone produced eight players faring well at inter-collegiate competitions, without formal coaching.
“Despite the noise, lack of privacy and often unclean community toilets, people thought Tara Baug heaven. It was about small welcoming gestures. If my father sat with the newspaper with his morning tea, someone walking in the common corridor simply stopped to read the paper’s other side. Considering this no intrusion, my mother willingly made such passersby chai.”
Ashok Solanki at his tailoring table
As we climb floor upon floor, Mahendra Shah (psychiatrist Hasmukh Shah’s nephew), is greeted by shouts of “Babulin, it’s been so long!” He explains, “Everybody calls me Babulin. My home was in Chowpatty, but I count 1956 to 1968 as the most memorable years because of Tara Baug. After school on Friday, I ran to my maternal grandmother’s family in B 41-42. No one challenged me as an ‘outsider’. Our big joy was daylong play.
Football and hockey on the terrace, badminton in the court created in the chowk, marbles and gilli danda in empty gullies with no cars parked. Starting from 6.30 in the morning, we crammed in non-stop games of carrom, table tennis and Ludo, breaking reluctantly for meals.” Residents gather on the third-floor landing of Block AB, narrating anecdotal stories. Dr Falguni Shah, a retired anaesthetist, whose parents came in 1935-36, right after Tara Baug’s construction, says, “Before the 1960s and ’70s exodus of emigrant doctors and engineers to the US, Canada and Australia, we had one doctor on each floor.”
More old-timers soon join in the bustle. Unable to slither down banisters now, they strike poses of 50 years past on the stairway. A swoosh of memories tumbles out… Craning necks to hear Parsi wedding music in Allbless Baug opposite, from the live bands of accordionist Goody Seervai and keyboardist Nelly Batlivala… Giggling while sniffing fancily fragrant cologne waft from “Pandya Saheb”, who possessed the floor’s sole telephone and donned sharkskin suits to the suburban theatre he owned… Spending summer nights sleeping on cool terraces with 50 to 60 people… Tracking “saamnewali khidki” romances conducted across close facing windows and wide open doors (affairs between “toofani youngsters” particularly bloomed after annual Anand Bazar fairs, Navratri and Diwali)… Watching movies like Madhumati and Naya Daur screened in the chowk… Listening to political speeches in those quadrangles, by Jivraj Mehta, George Fernandes and even Naval Tata who rallied as an independent candidate in the 1971 elections.
Senior residents speak proudly of mustering courage in chaos. “Whether putting up a united front at the time of the 1960 Samyukta Maharashtra riots, volunteering for blood drives during the Chinese aggression two years later or saluting the Tiranga flag hoisted every August 15 in the chowk touching Blocks F and E — we’ve stood as one,” says a tenant who enquires if I have sampled the farsaan seller’s snacks.
I head to Tara Baug Farsan Mart, rowed among small shops which would chip in with modest donations for Navratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Janmashtami and Holi celebrations. Sitting from 7 am to 10 pm with an array of delectable Gujarati nibbles, Sanjay Vitlani says, “My father Jayatilal from Junagadh stocked gathia-papri-sev from about 1960. Then he realised this was foremost the Kolis’ city. Batata vada and poha samosa being as important as dhokla and khandvi, he expanded the range.”
Beside Vitlani, the Touch of Class Gents Parlour has an older presence — since 1945, when introduced as New Bhavani Haircutting Saloon by Vasant Laxman Jadhav from Satara. His son Mahesh oversees a staff busily attending to a customer on every chair. In a room located slightly inward, tailor Ashok Solanki assures a client her cholis will be ready on schedule. His family is from Sabarkantha district of Gujarat. “Much changes but some things remain the same,” he says philosophically.
An English literature professor’s grandfather shifted his family after World War II, from an Opera House rented apartment to their Surat ancestral home. When it was deemed safe to return, Bombay accommodation had shrunk, rents soared and he settled for a one room-kitchen Tara Baug tenement — “suffocatingly inadequate for a large family but with plenty of community space”. She recalls few cars, inner lanes, quadrangles within buildings, spacious chowks at the foot of formidably steep stairs buzzing with children playing or women cutting vegetables, sewing and chatting. The corridors held drying laundry and lovingly tended plants, alongside ubiquitous piles of rolled-up gadlas and easy chairs where men discussed the day’s happenings.
“In the outer room, my grandfather sat on an iron bedstead during the day, sleeping on it at night,” the professor recollects. “Two steel almirahs, a desk and pair of chairs was all the furniture that fit. Come night, it was wall-to-wall mattresses. The kitchen converted to my parents’ bedroom, a concession for newly-weds. They never experienced anything like that classic scene in Piya ka Ghar [Jaya Bhaduri and Anil Dhawan barely sleep when knocks on the door announce house elders wanting to fill water from taps that flow from 4 am], but no question of a lie-in, even on Sundays, with demands of early morning breakfast.”
Each floor ended in a sanitation spot with four to six squatting lavatories and a couple of bathing cubicles. The protocol was to carry one’s lota, usually a Dalda tin, and finish quickly inside. The wait outside imposed excruciating pressure: “My mother wasn’t the only woman to dread assessing stares, especially from men, and hate speculations about personal matters, even sex and pregnancy. Gossip and jealousy were rife. Audible quarrels contributed to everyone knowing everybody’s business. A visitor, a new purchase or love interest had no hope of going unnoticed. Yet there was always genuine warmth and caring, helpfulness and looking out for each other.”
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com