FAREWELL, BHENDI BAZAAR Sameera Khan Reprinted from Time Out Mumbai, February 1-14, 2013, Vol.9 Issue 12, with authors permission. 18 / 207 MRE15.indb 207 04/12/14 11:44 am There’s laughter spilling out of an old but also the projected facelift of the building on Khara Tank Road in the neighbourhood. The nearly 100-year- heart of Bhendi Bazaar. Sitting in the old Mohammedi and Taiyebi buildings house where she has lived for most were demolished a few months ago, of her 76 years, Mehtab behn* is the first pillars to fall under the Saifee recounting a favourite family story. She Burhani Upliftment Trust-promoted was about ten and often went with her Bhendi Bazaar redevelopment project. four brothers to Chowpatty beach. A Though their own building is also horse-carriage ride from Chowpatty among the 280 buildings that will to Bhendi Bazaar then cost six annas. be pulled down, Mehtab behn’s “Of course we didn’t want to pay,” she Dawoodi Bohra family is not against said, “We wanted a free ride and we the redevelopment of Bhendi Bazaar. usually got it.” They hesitate to reveal their real names lest their opinions be construed as The modus operandi of the young objections, but they actually support the schemers was simple. After playing on project’s goal to provide many Bohras the beach, they’d fill a bag with sand with modern ownership flats with better and hail a carriage. When it would amenities. At the same time, they can’t stop in front of Mohammedi Manzil on help but hold on to the memory of their Ebrahim Rahimtulla Road, “We would mohalla as they remember it. get off leaving behind the bag of sand, telling the ghodawalla to mind our bag Bhendi Bazaar is one of the most while we went to get money to pay prominent old Muslim-dominated him,” she narrates. Then the children neighbourhoods of south Mumbai. But would enter Mohammedi Manzil and its significance is not limited to Muslims walk through it to the neighbouring alone. For the larger city, Bhendi Taiyebi Manzil – both buildings Bazaar is one of its old “native towns”: connected by an inner courtyard and layered with history and toasted for common corridors – quietly slipping its economic and social contributions. out from its entrance and going home. Local historians believe that it was “The ghodawala would keep waiting named after the plantations of Portia or and cursing us but by then we were Indian Tulip trees (Thespesia populnea), safely home in another lane,” chuckled locally known as bhendi, that once 72-year-old Sajid bhai*, Mehtab abounded in the area. Planned by behn’s younger brother. “That was the colonial administrators (along with Bhendi Bazaar we knew.” Dongri, Mandvi, Pydhonie, Nagpada) as a means of decongesting the Fort Mehtab and Sajid’s memories now bear area in the early 1800s, it has always the twinge of nostalgia – occasioned been densely populated. not only by the passage of time, * Names changed at request. 208 / 18 FAREWELL, BHENDI BAZAAR MRE15.indb 208 04/12/14 11:44 am By 1839, it was crowded with horse where it’s still not uncommon to see one stables. When the first gas lamps of family running the same business – be Bombay were erected on October 7th, it glassware or hand-churned ice-cream 1865, the streets of Bhendi Bazaar (Taj Ice Cream, in particular) – over were the earliest few to be lit. The four or five generations. story goes that as the lamp-lighter went around lighting the lamps, vast crowds Still the area has undergone many followed him. In the 1863 classic book cycles of change. “At one time, there Mumbaiche Varnan, Marathi writer GN were 32 timber shops here. Now there Madgaokar describes the bhatarkhanas are barely five,” remembers 70-year old or inns of the Muslims located in Bhendi timber merchant Mohsin Gulamhusain Bazaar, “where Arabs, Mughals and Lakdawala, whose grandfather other Muslim travellers buy and eat food started a timber warehouse on Raudat worth two to four annas each day.” By Tahera Street in 1918. The height of 1890, the mohalla had given birth to this warehouse is 21 feet, ideal for Mumbai’s only native classical music holding long planks of plywood and gharana, the Bhendi Bazaar gharana, blockboard. “After redevelopment, developed by three musician brothers our business space will have a ceiling who arrived here from Bijnaur in Uttar height of not more than 13 feet so my Pradesh. Among those influenced by wholesale business will become totally the gharana are Lata Mangeshkar, unviable here,” he added, pointing out Asha Bhosale and Manna Dey. all his favourite places in the area – “my house, my masjid, my beloved sweet Simultaneously, buildings went up with shop [that has] sookha doodhi halwa” mainly chawl-type residences above – and advised us to return at 7 pm – many adorned with wood-shuttered when his preferred dahi-vadawallah windows akin to Dutch doors and opens shop. antique grill-work – and shops below. These sold everything including laces, Over the years, the area came to be ridas, leather buckles and bags (Dhabu the spiritual and professional centre of Street), automative spare parts (Chimna the Dawoodi Bohra sect of Muslims, a Butcher Street), topis and barah handi close-knit business community: today, cuisine (Gujar Street), cinema posters nearly 60 per cent of the residents of and gramophone records (Mutton Bhendi Bazaar are Dawoodi Bohras. Street), Unani medicines to treat piles As Mohammed Aslam, who has worked and eczema (Pakmodia Street) as well in Mohsin bhai’s timber warehouse for as flaky malai khaja and patrelwala more than 35 years, said, “Bhendi biryani (Khara Tank Road). Bhendi Bazaar ended long ago; now it is only Bazaar built its reputation as a retail, known as Bohri Mohalla.” wholesale and antique market hub 18 / 209 MRE15.indb 209 04/12/14 11:44 am Initially, the Bohras had established “Bhendi Bazaar is the centre of the themselves in the early 1800s as Dawoodi Bohra community – all our itinerant peddlers, who would go door- significant events happen here,” says to-door, selling various knick – knacks. 40-year-old Zeenat behn*, who grew The Bohra street vendors’ “chow-chow” up in one lane of Bhendi Bazaar and or mixed-oddment bag charmed many now lives in another. “I will miss the travellers to Bombay such as James house of my childhood, every nook THE TIMES OF INDIA, MUMBAI 8 Maclean, J. H. StocquelerTIMES andCITY Amelia and cranny holds a memory.MONDAY, Here, JANUARY 6, 2014 I Falkland. Later the Bohras set up their feel the pulse of Ramzan and the piety New Year’s gift: Hindi edition own retail businesses in hardware, of Muharram.” of LGBT magazine launched Politics, power and the return of belief Mumbai: While the English can benefit from the materials crockery,Santosh Desai stationery,fort and familiarity, Congressshoes,guish the bulk of itsand represen- doer, and to use a Bush-ism, a ties is being felt by a citizen un- an act of governing from afar. media has much to offer the and resources available. Though has become a party of those tatives from those of the ruling decider. It is not very clear what used to such rapid change. In Corruption is a sign of the de- LGBT community, many have commendable work has been do- perfume.ho would Theyhave whose opened only belief lies in smallthe de- party. provision But in the persona of Na- exactlyZeenat his economic behnphiloso- Modi, expects sections of India seethe a caymohalla of the system which tohas complained of the paucity of ne to address LGBT issues in re- Wthought it? It actually sirability of coming to power. rendra Modi, it has someone phy is, but it is clear that he has charismatic leader who pulls it stopped serving those it is queer writing in Indian languag- gional languages, a void exists seems that the 2014 Paying ritual obeisance to the that has energized a significant a top-down view of progress, all back together and restores meant to and started being es such as Hindi. To plug the la- when it comes to finding materi- stores electionsand mig- dynastichaberdasheries leadership allows its section of theselling country by prom- andbe is focused back-in-action much more on some kind ofin order. aThis feworder used years purely for personalwhen gain, cunae, LGBT magazine Gaylaxy al in Hindi. When a Gaylaxy rea- ht turn out to members to huddle together in Pic for representational purposes only is impatient of too much nu- and hence, needs to be fixed for has launched its first Hindi edi- der sent an email lamenting the be a battle of id- a weak imitation of coherence, ance or marginality, but deliv- reasons administrative more tion on New Year’s Day. lack of resources in Hindi, I tho- needleseas, and at least at threads.hoping that eventually power the redevelopmenters to the mainstream plan view of isthan moral.complete. Corruption, par- “The gay movement has be- ught it was time to launch a mag- the national le- will come their way. Over the development. Under the label ticularly of the everyday kind, en called ‘elitist’ by some critics azine in Hindi,” says Sukhdeep vel. It is anoth- years, Congress has lacked any “Though the of progress,old-world Modi is promising charmrenders the implicitof contractthe as only English-speaking queers Singh, chief editor, Gaylaxy. TNN er matter that inner core of belief, and indeed a reduction of complexity, and between the electorate and its the elections might well be de- has come to a point where even a return to simpler, more cer- representatives null and void Fourcided on the ofbasis ofthe what hap- mostthe idea of havingsignificant one is a faint Dawoodi mohalla maytain change, times.