Colaba Calling...

I was catapulted into Bombay at the age of 17 and a half by a marriage as sudden as it was strange. Strange because I saw my husband for the first time a couple of hours before the registration took place. It took the cake even by the standards of arranged marriages. And this cataclysmic and unexpected wedding hurled me into Colaba and Elphinstone College in the September of ’89 for which I am thankful. Colaba and E helped me to survive the first few years of life in a strange city among strangers who were suddenly my family.

My concept of family underwent a paradigm shift at this time. I had always thought of family as people I take for granted like my own body, the air I breathe… People I could be completely myself with without any need for pretense, without any need to be hypocritical, without considering each word I uttered. People who would not mind if I sat on a chair back-to-front, if I ran down the stairs and jumped down from the bed, people who would still love me if I broke the most expensive saucer, forgot to clean my room, and said that cooking bored me to tears, and I would eat only sandwiches as long as I lived. Who indulged me and put up with all my stupidities, thought I was the best, and just loved me. Suddenly, some survival instinct told me that this would not be the case here. I had to unlearn and relearn a whole lot of learning. Being impulsive was tantamount to being stupid and outspokenness was being plain rude, disobedient, and stubborn. Expressing my opinion, especially when it contradicted the opinion of all the members of my new family which it always did, was equivalent to being intractable and mulish, and worst, ill-bred.

In those days, during those times of confusion and reshaping of my identity, of the inner me who rebelled at being turned into a people pleaser and had to be quelled at every point, Colaba and E were my friends, my inspiration, and provider of hours of peace and happiness. We stayed at Janjira Chambers, a strategically located building just next to YMCA in Wodehouse Rd., and sharing a common boundary with YWCA. This location gave me access to all the spots that would soon become my haunts and remain so even today.

I took to going for long walks along Marine Drive long before the sun rose. I would be somewhere near the Aquarium or the Chowpatty during sunrise. I would sit on the beach, waiting to see the full orange ball rise up from the azure bed, contented in the knowledge that people at home still slept and would not miss me. On my walk back home, I would walk right up to the point, right up to the narrow strip that extended like an outstretched tongue into the sea and watch the ebb and flow of the waves. The sea fascinated me! The rise of the waves as they hit the rocks lining the wall that divided the Marine Drive promenade from the sea below never failed to mesmerize me. I would sit on the wall, legs dangling, and wait for a wave to crest, surge in, crash against the rocks into foaming ripples, and recede only to rush in again. I would focus on a particular cresting wave and watch to see what flotsam and jetsam it brought with it. The driftwood would be inevitably deposited on the rocks as the wave receded, almost as if it had accomplished its task by depositing the debris and was going back to fetch some more.

During the night, after dinner, when everyone sat down to watch some serial that held no fascination for me, I would go to the Gateway. Gateway at 9 or 9:30 was a bustling spot that captivated me. I had my favorite spot where I would go and sit—this was just next to the steps leading down to the sea. I would sit here, sometimes buy a coolfi from the vendor, and watch life being lived in multifarious ways. There would be those ubiquitous foreigners that you see if you go to Colaba, in shorts and sleeveless tops, the women braless and completely unselfconscious, the men with their arms around the women they were with. I found their free spirit and unconcern for rules and appearances refreshing, energizing. Their readiness to travel the world not knowing where they would spend the next night held a strange lure for me. I would suck on the coolfi and contemplate such issues of interest.

Gateway is where I first saw someone smoke hash—I didn’t know this then except that I found this gaunt, almost emaciated boy skulking under the arch of the gateway, his back to the world, inhaling something from a shiny paper, inconsistent with the bustle around him. He was always alone, always with his back to life and the living, facing the dead stone walls of the arch, pressed against a corner, merging with the shadows. He seemed to be in denial of life and this is what made me aware of him. I longed to go and ask him what was the matter. There was something in him that evoked a strange feeling of pity in me. I would go there and watch out for him every night. He couldn’t have been much older than me, and I felt an unspoken bond with him. He soon got to know I was watching him and would occasionally turn to look at me and give a very faint smile. So faint that I would wonder if I had imagined it. Then, one evening, he wasn’t there. He wasn’t there the next evening and nor the next… I didn’t know whom to ask because I had never seen him talk to anybody. I never saw him again.

I continued my visits to the Gateway, but shifted to sit in another spot—this time on the other corner, facing the thousand glittering windows of the Taj Hotel. The view was different; the life unraveling in front of me was different. It always amazed me how shifting a few feet showed me an altogether different manifestation of life. From here, I faced the Taj entrance, watched chauffeur-driven cars the likes of which I had never seen stop to unload exquisitely dressed human beings who laughed and chattered as they went in. No gaunt figure here, no turning away from life, no half imagined smile. Everything glittered and shone with an unnatural brightness that hurt the eyes.

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