Description

Colaba, the southernmost tip of Mumbai-a bustling locality with the

Gateway of India, the famous Taj Mahal Hotel, and Colaba Causeway, a

shopper’s paradise-is the city’s most iconic neighbourhood. But barely 200

years ago, it was a rocky, jackal-infested island, separated from the rest of the

great metropolis by a temperamental creek.

In this compelling biography, Shabnam Minwalla, journalist, author and long-time

resident of the area, tells the tale of the unexpected forces that reshaped land and

sea; and allowed this remote corner of Bombay-Mumbai to evolve into one of

its liveliest, quirkiest neighbourhoods. Trying to figure out the exact area limits,

she unravels accounts of colonial rivalries and dowry negotiations, and of shrewd

industrialists who transformed the doomed island into the centre of trade during

the cotton boom of the 1860s. She navigates the sometimes charming, sometimes

seedy streets to track the area’s evolution from a retreat for British soldiers and

sailors to a coveted residential area for the English and Indians alike. She digs

into her childhood memories to introduce us to the eccentric Parsis of Cusrow

Baug, the warm yet persistent shopkeepers and hawkers of the Causeway, the

industrious Sindhis who pioneered co-operative housing societies, the colourful

musicians, theatre artists and writers who frequented her corner of Colaba, and

the Arabs who come there every year to witness the city’s monsoons. And in a

moving section, she records how the neighbourhood rose like a phoenix from the

ashes after the 26/11 terrorist attack.

Combining a remarkable flair for storytelling with sound journalistic

groundwork, and drawing upon three generations of family memory, Shabnam

paints an intimate and dynamic portrait of a great and fabled neighbourhood.