Colaba- The Diamond at the Tip of Mumbai

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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 longtime 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.

SHABNAM MINWALLA writes for newspapers. plays mother to three teenagers, devours murder mysteries and shops for saris. But her absolutely, totally, completely favourite activities are writing books for children and seeking out ghosts, stories and bargains in her beloved Mumbai.

IF WE WERE TO DIVIDE NEIGHBOURHOODS INTO THE HAVES and the have-nots, Colaba would sit squarely in the second group.

This narrow strip of land-an arthritic index finger crooked in a grey sea-is neither known for its pulchritude nor its places of historical significance. Here are no forts with medieval pasts, tales of tragic queens or echoes of bloody battles. No tallest buildings or longest bridges. Not even a liberal sprinkling of Bollywood stars or shimmering socialites.

Stare out of the tinted window from one of those Bombay Safari buses, and you will see monsoon-battered buildings, flapping cotton skirts, sparkly-shoe stalls, Blue Heaven Beauty Parlour, Lucky Collection. Ohmazing Fast Food, fruit carts, Teenage. Hampton Court, Sunita, Connaught Mansion, Doggy Articles-which makes it even more difficult to crack the mystery of Colaba's quirky charm and cosy-but-cool reputation.

What Colaba doesn't have is easy to list. What Colaba does have is not. Its qualities are concealed by the voluminous skirts and peeling paint. As is the precise alchemy that transforms this muddle of crumbling buildings and double-parked cars into a land of extraordinary characters and ideas: that allows this paltry protrusion of rocks and cement to occupy such a wide expanse of the imagination.

Of course, Colaba has something that the rest of Bombay lacks-a clutch of must-see landmarks and Tripadvisor worthy attractions. So, no matter whether they land at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport or hop off a train at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, visitors to the city are likely to make their way southwards. After all, they can hardly come to Mumbai and ignore the Gateway of India. And if they're braving the traffic anyway, they might as well wander beneath the opalescent dome of the museum. (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya) and stroll past its jewel-bright miniatures and stuffed flamingoes, frozen in the middle of ballet routines. After which they usually follow the advice of the guidebooks and drop in at Leopold Cafe for a plate of salt-and-pepper prawns and a gawp at the bullet-riddled façade of this venerable eatery.

These postcard personalities are, however, only a small part of Colaba's appeal. Much greater is the role played by a cast of intangibles. There are the warm, fuzzy feelings that are tough to name. And the abstract nouns that are tricky to spell (words like cosmopolitanism, tolerance and multiculturalism that we meet all the time but that suddenly acquire heft and meaning in this corner of the city). And the slow realization that this old-fashioned neighbourhood-a babel of tongues, a potpourri of aromas and stinks-is central to the soul of Mumbai.

This was something we grasped on that acrid, blood splattered night of November 2008, when flames licked the indigo sky and bullets zigzagged Colaba Causeway (some of which are still lodged in the walls of Leopold Café). Newspapers around the world declared that terrorists had struck at the 'heart of Mumbai'. For once, they didn't exaggerate.

Subsequent reports made it clear that the killers wanted to destroy more than lives and landmarks, they wanted to shatter the spirit of the city. That they had sought the symbolic heart of Mumbai with surgical precision-and homed in on Colaba.

Book's Contents and Sample Pages