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It looks like something time forgot when it was changing Mumbai city.

Passed over, as it swept past, with its bag of goodies, placing a high rise here, wiping out a mill there, putting down flyovers and paved roads and neon lights wherever fancy dictated.

The trees lined the sides of the thin roads that led into the colony; the roads were lined with parked cars, with a few gaps where the ones that had been driven off by their owners had stood.

A vegetable seller wheeled his laden trolley carefully down the road, bent to pick a stone to stop the wheels from carrying the cart away , as he took an order from someone leaning down from one of the windows, filled the scales, weighed them under the buyers long range scrutiny, and put them in a bag. His cart stood patiently as he disappeared up the steps to deliver his goods and collect the money for them. A few minutes later he was down, listening to his next customer placing her orders.

Up the stairs of these lift-less buildings of four floors each, the world is quieter still. Birds do cheep on the trees outside, and the foliage shadows some of the stairwells with cool, but the doors are closed, and there is little sound filtering outside.

Only the beautiful and near perfect patterns of rangoli in white and sometimes in two colours talk of the pride those behind the closed doors on each floor take in being who they are and in their way of life.

It’s a small touch, but it says so much. Here is a house-proud occupant who ensures her little pattern announces her love of colour, the paisley on the floor is white in outline and filled in with a dot of green. And here, this doorway, without a pattern says that its owner has too much to do and no time for outward appearances. It is so easy to read so much by looking at people’s doorways!

The sound of a fruit seller comes floating up. Sounds that were part of all our childhoods, and have now been replaced by the clamour of honking horns and the hum of machines.

Aaapus, he cries, his voice starting low and rising to a pitch, as if he would squeeze the very juice out of the word. Aaapus… he is in a vantage position, anyone looking down at him walking the road, will see the tempting yellow-gold fruit that is so tenderly cosseted within the beige circle of the basket on his head.

When we were young, part of our play used to be in trying to imitate the sounds we heard as various sellers of food and daily necessities went floating past our vicinity.

And there was a peculiar delight in waiting while someone lucky enough to be summoned, heaved his burden down and allowed us to peer inside to catch a glimpse of the treasures within. Women selling steel vessels for old clothes, men selling green fresh corn on the cob, vegetable sellers, fruit men, and later, men selling enchantingly bright coloured plastic brooms, spades, shovels, water cans, and bottles were all part of the excitement of long summer afternoons. Today of course, for most, the only real punctuation to break a monotonous afternoon is the sound of the courier ringing the doorbell. Enchanted by this unforeseen trip into my past, I waited quietly, sitting on a bench in the patch of green at the centre of the quadrangle, to see what new delight would present itself.

Two men cycled past their bikes heavy with empty cylinders; a boy of perhaps seven or six wobbled dangerously along on a bicycle, while a nanny or aunt watched anxiously, hand outstretched to ensure a break in his fall, should he lose balance completely. A younger girl, wearing a sun dress and a dainty hat followed with an ayah in tow. A car pulled out, and drove carefully past the child, and waited till the teetering boy got off his bike, before it changed gears and drove away. A bird called loud and clear, another answered.

I took a deep breath, realising that I had been holding it, afraid to break the picture perfect magic of a scene that could well be from a movie of the 1970s. And, after a hasty glance at my watch which had been relentlessly ticking on, got into my car and returned to the world of traffic jams, car horns, jaywalking pedestrians, treeless streets, and the stark contrast of the rest of Mumbai city!

Email: ssaran@dnaindia.net