It was the golden hour before sunset a couple of weeks back and I was on a walk with my friend Rama on Mount Mary Road. We were generally chatting about that and this and as we approached the steps that leads one down to Hill Road, I noticed a half-buried stone plaque/marker on one side of the steps. A closer look revealed this:
The half-buried stone plaque/marker which reads: “Presented by H. Bomonjee Jeejeebhoy to Bandora Municipality ~ 1879”
Wow ! A 135-year old marker? And Bandra as Bandora? I was immediately intrigued and once I reached home turned to my good friend Google for helping me find out more about this slice of history.
This blog post was featured in the “Around the Blog” section of theDNA newspaperpublished on August 27, 2012 (pg.7).
That rainy day, I was at Hill Road in Bandra on a gastronomical expedition busy stuffing my face and bags with cakes, quiche, and other baked goodies. My eyes or rather nose was trailing the various aromas coming out of the many bakeries that line the road. And that’s when a flash of yellow-orange momentarily distracted me, the yellow-orange of a string of marigolds garlanding a cross.
The garlanded cross
This large cross is somewhere on Hill Road (I can’t remember the exact location). Together with the beautiful veil like green and leafy canopy, the garland really lit up the cross.
I love the way people take something and adapt it to fit their uniquely local culture, be it food, clothes, music…. The sambhaar powder added to the tamarind paste used to make bhelpuri in Chennai, kurtis teamed up with jeans, Carnatic classical music on Western instruments like the mandolin and violin…, And the way we have “Indianised” Chinese cuisine is legendary !
But what I love the most is the way this adaptation plays out in religion. Recently, on a visit to Chennai, I saw a statue of Jesus standing on a lotus with peacocks at his feet. I have heard of aartis in churches, I have seen non-Hindus at the Sringeri and Brihadeeshwara Temples. But this was the first time I saw a cross “decorated” with a garland.
Academics call such expressions of adaptation syncretism; I call it making it our own. 😀
Mumbai Lens is a photographic series which, as the name suggests, is Mumbai-centric and is an attempt to capture the various moods of the city through my camera lens. You can read more posts from this serieshere..
Over the last 2 years or so, elevated pedestrian walkways connecting suburban railway stations to nearby commercial areas have been sprouting all over Mumbai. Known as skywalks, the first one was inaugurated at the Kalanagar junction of the Western Express Highway in 2008. Today, many more are functional all over Mumbai. Somehow, I never got a chance to take a walk in one of these till last Saturday. I was on my way from Vashi to Borivali via Bandra.
It was 9.30 in the morning when my bus from Vashi deposited me near the Hill Road exit of the Bandra Skywalk. I had to walk up to Bandra Station to take a train to Borivali. From where I stood on the road, the skywalk was lit up by the mellow January morning sun making it irresistibly welcoming. Not to mention the fact I would encounter no traffic at all on the skywalk!
Walking on a skywalk is actually quite surreal. It is quite unlike travelling on a flyover or an elevated road in a fast-moving vehicle, while the world around you appears to be stationary. The skywalk’s experience is quite the opposite with you being stationary with the world rushing by. I could get a bird’s-eye view of the Bandra Talao as well as a peek into the BEST Bus depot—places that one would not get to see with such a perspective. I felt like I was suspended somewhere up in the sky, not altogether an unpleasant feeling. Thankfully, the skywalk did not pass near residences or I would have felt like a voyeur, the way I do whenever I travel on the JJ flyover or the Sion flyover in Mumbai!
So, what are you waiting for? Come, take a walk with me in the sky at Bandra 🙂Bandra Skywalk from Hill Road to Bandra Station
Last Thursday, I had a mid-week holiday and that upset me very much. I am probably in a minority when I say that I hate mid-week holidays, but give me a long weekend, and I’m probably the happiest person on earth. But I digress from the theme of my blog post…
Shalini, a ‘teenagehood’ friend, had been saying for a long time that work and home routines were turning us into crabby old women, and something had to be done. So this mid-week holiday presented us with the perfect opportunity to do that ‘something’.
The outcome—a visit to the Bandra Fort.
The Bandra Fort or, to use its more impressive sounding official name, the Castella de Aguada was built by the Portuguese in 1640. It later passed on to the British, who lost it to the Marathas in 1739, and gained it back from them in 1761. You can read more about the Bandra Fort’s history here.
My Favourite Things 