s a n t a   c r u z

Under the cherry blossoms / None / Are utter strangers
Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694

Commercial jets pass low as Daulat Dastoor sits on a plot her grandfather bought for 10 annas a square yard in Santa Cruz and called Mazda Chaman, God's garden.

Fought over centuries ago by Marathas and the Portuguese who would triumphantly name it holy cross, or Santa Cruz, this little patch of real estate would regain international importance only when Bombay's airport was built here to replace the Juhu aerodrome. Situated on what was then called the Western Express Highway, it forever changed the relationship between the northern suburbs and south Bombay. In contrast to earlier decades, the core city became increasingly dependant on its extensions for residential accommodation and infrastructure. By the 1940s, the concept of Greater Bombay was finally taking shape.

Today, Santa Cruz airport handles around 35 flights an hour. A far cry from the days when Daulat would run out to smell wet earth as bullock carts watered the dirt track outside and yellow frogs with blue throats croaked through the monsoon. "It's been so long", she says between Shrewsbury biscuits, "that I've heard such a delightfully throaty sound". She tells of baiting palm fronds with dried fish to get little crabs out of overflowing storm drains and the fruit of their Bora tree which were so famous that relatives from across the city would clamour for their share while passing school children had to be shooed off. In those days theirs was the only house with a telephone, and she and the other children were kept busy relaying other people's messages all the way up to Ghorbunder Road.

Those were times when Sundays meant relatives, flush, mah-jong, roast mutton, rice-flour chapattis, pre-dinner schnapps and, of course, that quintessential Parsi stereotype, the dhansak.

In the adjoining bungalow, Prakash Majmudar looks over the house that three generations of his family have lived in since the 1920s and talks of a childhood spent playing marbles and less idyllic moments when he'd come across the skulls of infants while retrieving cricket balls that strayed onto the Hindu crematorium that still stands today. Meanwhile, his ninety-year-old neighbour Sabirbhai sits in the glow of stained glass and looks out on what was once the sea and is now reclaimed land that Bombay has always thrived on. A few minutes and a world away, Santa Cruz's lights sparkle: Akbarally's, that old institution of a department store; Yoko, where one gets the best sizzlers in Mumbai and an ever-present Barista that glows in yuppie comfort and smells of coffee beans and other things nice.

Juhu Tara Road and the new town planning schemes that changed the face of Santa Cruz by the 1930s have pushed the sea back a long time ago. Where there were once waves now lies Lion's Park where a huge walk-in concrete Air India jet stands testimony to what changed Santa Cruz forever, it's most prized possession yet.

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