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| Edited By: Ranjona Banerji |Source: |Updated: Nov 19, 2013, 11:17 PM IST
Just under 20 years ago, I moved for sometime from Colaba to Oshiwara. It wasn’t known territory.
Actually it seemed like the middle of nowhere.
The building I stayed in was the last outpost of city before the wilderness began - or that’s what it felt like - and on a dark night you heard sounds of drum beats and singing that sounded a bit like the jhinalala bhush harr harrr in Shalimar while Christopher Cazanove was being worshipped as a god and Dharmendra was declaring his desire for Zeenat Aman in his Pearl Padamsee trained English.
The city seemed far away and actually it was. Autodrivers wouldn’t want to take you there.
There was marshland on one side (where the ancient drum beats came from) and Lokhandwala on the other.
Lokhandwala has just begun, it was still ignored by the municipal corporation and to get to it you had to cross a little bridge that ran over a smelly drain that later turned out to be the River Mithi.
There were very few vegetable or kirana shops. There was one eatery, a combination of a stall and a dhaba.
You crossed Veera Desai road and entered No Man’s land. Far away were the well-known, antique and second hand furniture shops of Jogeshwari Oshiwara and somewhere else the Goregaon bus station. Here it was just very far away.
Later that year I moved to Andheri East. There was Aarey on one side, leopards prowling the upperreaches of Mahakali Caves road and still, there were shops, autos would take you there and there were signs of civilisation.
No forest drum beats calling Tarzan or Phantom. Oshiwara was well left behind, the one time when East was a better address than West in Mumbai.
Well, baby, take a look at her now! That’s where you go to shop, watch a movie, eat. Malls, people, eateries, traffic on the roads, millions of autos, taxis, cars, traffic jams.
This is how Mumbai’s development can thrill and frighten you. A recent visit to Lokhandwala confirmed that.
It was a whole town by itself - peopled apparently by film starlets and TV megastars and whatnots, I only met the whatnots, it could have been Kanpur to me.
But Oshiwara has one way of keeping you grounded in the past.
You still hear those ancient beats - only this time it’s the people of Mumbai singing their hearts out for some reality talent contest or the other. Still too loud and creepy.
