On the trail Of Forgotten structures

Avabai Petit Home, Girgaon

At Girgaon's Thakurdwar junction, opposite Chandu Halwai, is a five-storey white, art deco building called the Avabai Petit Home. Few know that it is a refuge for Parsi widows, some working, others retired, who have no one to look after them.

Pale yellow corridors, a rundown staircase, wooden trellis patches to spy on those walking on the floors below and metal grills form the clean but mildly depressing interiors. The 50 rooms, though large and airy, appear overstuffed. Pictures of Zarathustra and the Virgin Mary and deceased loved ones line the walls. Cupboards, cabinets and metal racks brim with clothes, newspapers and toiletries. Each room has a mori (washing space). For a fridge and a TV, residents have to pay a monthly rent of Rs100.

Like stories from any old age home, these women share similar back stories — children settled overseas, no living relative or friend. Male visitors are allowed between 10am-2pm and from 6-8pm, but only after seeking approval from the matron, the no-nonsense 83-year-old widow Rula Gustash Irani who warns, "Naito doom bajaoga". Irani's children are in Muscat, Pune and Mira Road.

The Nesserwanjee Manockjee Petit Charity Fund that runs the home gives residents an allowance of Rs100-120 per month. But money is not an issue for these women. "I just want someone to hold my hand and take me outdoors, help me pick vegetables or go for a walk once a week," says 88-year-old Katuyan Ratan Bhagat, a former typist. She took a world tour after her husband passed away before making Avabai Petit her home.

Irani Hammam, Imamwada Road

With its coloured glass hookahs, lime-infused kaawa, mildly fragrant Irani chai and the majestic cobalt blue Moghul Masjid in floral Persian imagery, Imamwada Road, a lane that veers off from under the JJ flyover, is a stop for all things Iranian. It is also home to Mumbai's only bathhouse, the Irani Hammam.

Locals, who refer to it as "purane zamane ka spa", estimate that the Hammam is 150 years old, the same age as the masjid that's 10 steps away. Its crack-in-the-wall entrance is usually blocked by bikes and easy to miss. You walk into a large but gloomy sarbineh (dressing hall) and walls darkened with moss. Arched cavities in the walls allow patrons to laze about after a massage and hot bath. On duty are two masseurs, down from the five in its glory days. One of them is Matin, who rudely shoos off tourists, especially inquisitive women who venture into the male-only preserve.

Beyond the sarbineh is the khazineh, a space for full-body tel-maalish (oil massage) and bath on a cold stone floor. Further down are ponds for hot and cold water baths. The ceiling of the former opens for sunlight to heat the waters.

Parel Shiva

Ahead of the Haffkine Institute on a hillock is the Baradevi temple that houses an unfinished monolithic statue of Baradevi, eight bodies of Shiva and four ganas (disciplines). The temple, ranked a grade one monument by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), dates back to the 6th century. This 13-foot idol was discovered during a nearby road construction in 1931. The shrine is open only on Mondays and on Mahashivratri. Devotees are dissuaded from performing rituals and making offerings.

"Parel was an important Shaiva place. My understanding is that there was a factory producing such images. Many are in the Chandika temple premise, the most interesting of which is a monkey scratching his back. This particular statue reflects the evolution of the Pashupata cult and is even shaped like a lingam," says Dr Anita Rane-Kothare, head of department of Ancient Indian Culture at St Xavier's College. The CSMVS museum houses a replica of the statue after residents refused to part with it.

Gaddhegal (ass-curse stone) behind Shiva temple, Pimpalwadi

Whoever tries to covert another's land will see his mother straddled by a donkey, professes the Gaddhegal, the ass-curse or punishment stone. These two-three feet high stones dot Maharashtra and a few can be found at the CSMVS museum. They mostly have three inscribed divisions — the top has symbols of the sun and moon, the middle, writing in Devnagiri script, and the bottom, the carving of a woman mounted by a donkey.

Mumbai has one such 'ass-curse' stone. To find it, ask locals for Shreepati Tower, the tallest building in Pimpalwadi, situated amid chawls with wooden balconies and potted plants. At the base of this residential complex is a Shiva temple beautifully engraved from the shikara (roof) to pista (floor). At the back of the temple, in line with the Nandi and the shivling in front, is the gaddhegal. Curiously, despite the engraving of a voluptuous woman and a donkey clearly pronounced on the porous stone, it is garlanded daily, bathed with milk and sanctified with a red tilak by locals, who are perhaps unaware of its foul disposition.

Doors market, Mohammed Ali Road

Visitors have to literally tiptoe on planks and weave through mountains of doors to navigate the Mohmadi old timber market at Mohammed Ali Road. This lumber market has remain unchanged despite seeing playhouses or theatres around it evolve into single-screen cinema halls of Plaza, Super Talkies, Shalimar, Gulshan Talkies and Alfred Talkies post independence. Several decades later, the vendors, the most popular being Girish Rai, function on government contracts to mainly dismantle and stock Burma teak wood doors from colonial bungalows, mills, palaces, and buildings from Alibaug, Kasauli, Delhi, Bangalore and towns and villages in Gujarat, Goa and Kerala that are being redeveloped.

The 1,800sqft, single-storey warehouses are treasure troves of this grade one wood, storing European and French louvred doors, window panes, brackets, flooring, ceiling, bed posts and planks in Burma teak and Corinthian pillars in pastel hues.

It's a haunt for architects, interior decorators and even movie stars such as Niti Merchant, Bijoy Jain, Shimul Jhaveri, Malavika Sangghvi and Aishwarya Rai. "Gauri Khan's yellow door at the Design Cell outlet is ours," says Rai, who runs the largest space here — 24 workshops. He represents the third generation of this family business and his two sons will be following him into the trade.

Rai discloses how the East India Company exported only teak wood from Burma until 1940 and used it in every facet of architecture. Mango, babul and rose, was used thereafter. "Burma teak is all-season, unaffected by rains and rot by the grainy panel." The wood accessories are only scraped to smoothen unevenness, but the buyer has to handle the polishing.

Ammunition dump, Sion

The orange walls of a public latrine on Duncan Causeway, next to the BMC sewage pumping station at Sion, marks the entry point into Jadhavpur, the site of an octagonal World War II ammunition garrison encircled by one-storey chawls. With just three feet of the six-foot garrison above ground, the structure resembles a raised platform which appears more like a junkyard, with potted plants, water tank, construction debris, broken furniture, bottles and waste strewn over. The fist-sized openings in the walls, once firing posts, are now stuffed with toothbrushes. The entrance is narrow, dark and claustrophobic.

A family of six has been living here for the last eight years. The floor is sloping; they use table fans because nails can't be hammered into its metal walls; it's just a cellar at the centre with the remaining space in a circumambulatory setup, occupied by a gas stove and an altar. There are no pipelines so water has to be fetched from outdoors, and the family uses the community bathrooms outside. The space is an igloo in winters, and a sauna in summers. "Imagine how we sleep!" poses 26-year-old Arvind Swami. To make the dreary interiors appear homely, the family's applied pink paint on the walls and patterned vinyl on the floor, and kept jagged pavement stones as stands for vessels that, oddly-enough, match the pointed edges of the walls.

Curiously, the family pays rent to a former Jadhavpur resident, who has now moved to Vasai. Apparently authorities, including the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI), are in the know, reveals Ashwini Nawathe, who conducts heritage walks at Sion.

Lingam stupa, Dadar West

In the parking lot of the Om Siddhivinayak building compound on the quiet Dilip Gupte Road, a world away from Dadar's teeming markets, sits a shivling on a granite pedestal under a shed with a solitary bell. A narrow burrow runs around the lingam like a moat with one end going off the edge to form a yoni. You realise the lingam is old and odd when you take in its conical crown of five tiers that rest on a thick cylindrical base with a figure in padmasana (lotus position) at the bottom.

"It came to the fore in 1985, while the premise was being dug to construct the building," says resident Nilesh Sawant. "We built a shed for it in 2000 and worship it every day. Some say it's Mahavira, others claim it's Buddha or Shiva, but if you find out what exactly it is, please let us know." Residents organise a special puja during Mahashivratri. But Dr Anita Rane-Kothare, head of department of Ancient Indian Culture at St Xavier's College, says an identical stupa exists at the Mahakali Caves in Andheri and Panhalekaji Caves in Dapoli. "This one is a kamya or votive stupa of the Vajrayana cult, meaning it was donated and perhaps a flag post to indicate there was a Buddhist centre in the locality."