j o g e s h w a r i

And thou wert sad ~ yet I was not with thee! / And thou wert sick, and yet I was not near; / Methought that joy and health alone could be / Where I was not ~ and pain and sorrow here
Lord Byron, Lines, On Hearing That Lady Byron Was Ill

A patch of calm surrounded by tragedy, Malcolm Baug stirs as dusk settles. Its residents ~ 350 Parsi families ~ walk heavily tree-lined lanes, play carom in their gymkhana, visit each other in bungalows dating back to the 1920s and prepare for weddings and navjotes celebrated at a century-old hunting lodge.

Acquired by a trust from Sir John Malcolm who was then Governor of Bombay, this Parsi colony nestled in Jogeshwari keeps its sanity, and charm, through stringent rules that regulate acquisition of property and construction within. Over the past century, it has become an air bubble in a city that has, surely and inexorably, gone down the drain.

The Balsaras, one of the first to settle in the colony, talk of days when there was nothing outside except fields and a dirt track that they'd drive over in their Buick to get to the Andheri railway station. Things couldn't be more different, or worse, today.

Outside the gates lies the rest of Jogeshwari, sprawled at its most terrible. An impoverished, slum-ridden suburb notorious for communal violence, it made headlines when clashes between Hindus and Muslims at Radhabai Chawl marked what the Srikrishna Commission would later call a watershed in the January 1993 phase of the communal violence that tore through the city.

Still, Jogeshwari is peaceful now. Just off the heavily congested S. V. Road one can get lost in the many tabelas, or stables, that house water buffalos and smell of sweet hay and dung and fresh warm milk. There are fields here on either side of the railway tracks and these spill over, and blossom, all over the Aarey Milk Colony in neighbouring Goregaon.

< Previous   Next >



© 2001–2008 p i n a k i