The place where I grew up - Part 1

The Diwali weekend is just coming to an end. It's been a relaxing weekend with the usual diwali sweets, meeting up with family and friends and completely forgetting work. Last night, a couple of my childhood friends were home for dinner. The same gang (Shekhar, Kalpesh, Ninan, Aditya and myself) that used to get together on Sunday evenings a decade ago now assembles along with our respective wives, save for Ninan and Aditya who are not in India now.

Our conversation invariably touches upon Kalina, which is where all of us were born and where we lived for over 20 years. Last night, I thought I should write a post just to capture some details of Kalina, so that I can read this later in life and reconstruct the place in my mind much later on in life when my memory may not be so good. So, while this may not make interesting reading, I'm sure it would bring a smile on the faces of anyone who lived in Kalina in the 1980's or 1990's.

I will be attaching here rough maps of all the areas that I intend to describe. In the direction from the erstwhile Kurla Depot towards Santacruz, here are the places as I recall them and as they will be in my memory forever. Since this is too long to write in one go, I am going to write this in several parts. Her eis part 1:

1. Rows of scrap dealers and car mechanics on both sides of CST road from Kurla Depot till just before Kapadia Nagar

2. A small bridge over the Mithi river (which was as polluted as one could imagine) and immediately after the bridge, a left turn going to Bandra Kurla Complex.

3. Past the BKC turn, the 'Metro' bus stop and Shekhar's house (3rd floor, Dena Bank building) and Vivek Apartments exactly opposite the bus stop.

4. Lupin Laboratories, Maha Auto, Nityanand Restaurant on either side of the road at 'Maha Auto' bus stop.

5. 'Napha' bus stop just adjacent to a petrol pump. Manhas Mansion (green colour) and the Allahabad Bank building with a municipal school and a large playground outside just opposite the petrol pump. 'Polar Ground' opposite Allahabad Bank, where we sometimes played cricket.

6. Just after Allahabad Bank, the road became wider and you had to suddenly turn left to remain on the left side of the road. Kalina Univerisity on the left, Tirupati Apartments, La Monde Laundry and Merchant Footwear on the right. Just before the University gates was the 318 bus stop, behind which was a white hostel building of the university. Two red coloured water tanks on this building, which I thought were two large buttons when I was a kid. Just outside this building was a tree which was mostly barren. It had 4 branches, 2 on either side of the trunk, extending horizontally. This tree had flowers which were white in colour and felt like very soft cotton. The flowers used to be dispersed by the wind during winters.

7. Just opposite the University gates was Manipada Village Road. I shall come back to this road a little later

8. Just after the University Gates were 2 bus stops (312, 374, 37, 313, 507) and the Post Office. The Post Office was a very old structure with a huge banyan tree next to it. A red post box was for outstation letters and a green one for Bombay letters. The gate of the Post Office was painted silver. Satyanarayan puja was held every year in the post office.

9. Opposite the Post Office were:

• a small pan shop (owned by a guy who bore a strong resemblance to Mamooty). When I was a little kid and went for walks with my dad, he used to buy me a Cadbury Eclair (in the red wrapper) at this shop. We also used to get betel leaves from this shop for any pujas at home
• Kirti building (Ketan's house on the 2nd floor, India Coffee House on the ground floor)
• Kedar Bungalow with the black gates and a lot of pink bougainvilleas. The gates had thick diagonal bars
• Air Niketan building (Vinay's house on the 2nd floor)

10. Just after Air Niketan was a gully on the right which had Framps Villa. Manoj building was at the end of this lane

11. Hans Bhugra Road on the left a little further, a cemetry on the right

12. Geesee Apartments on the left (Aditya's house on the 4th floor), some garages next to it. Bali Garage was where my father used to get our old Premier Padmini serviced.

13. Further towards Kalina Market, rows of bungalows on the left and right with roads sloping downwards on either side of the road. The first slope on the right side used to come out just outside the Sunder Nagar temple. This slope was rather steep and difficult to climb up on a cycle, so we avoided this one unless we were walking
14. The second slope on the right led to Kappa's house. Just as you went down the slope were a row of very homely bungalows. There was a doctor who owned the first house on the right (can't recall the name now). This row also had the house of Dr. Sadanand Dixit, who was one of the trustees of our school. There was a road running on the left side which led to Kalina market. The road had a garbage dump towards the end on the right side, just before the junction. Geeta mami's (Anand's mom) parents lived on this road on the left side. If you passed the left turn and went straight ahead, Kappa's house was on the left side. Kappa's house was the headquarters of our gang and we've all spent countless hours there. No visit to Kalina market or the temple was complete without either dropping in at Kappa's place or waving out to someone from his house. After crossing Kappa's house, the road narrowed a little. A little further down was a right turn which led back to the housing board colony. On this road was Surbhi teacher's house. We went to her for our tuition in the 10th standard. Many of our classmates lived around her building.
15. On the main road, just opposite to the second slope was a slope on the left side of the road. This went down to the Bombay College of Pharmacy. Going down this slope and taking the first right went to the BSES office where we used to drop our electricity bill payment every month. Manmeet's house was in the same line as the BSES office. Right next to the BSES office was a small Datta temple which I used to visit every Thursday. The lane next to this lane had Savitri mami's house. Manish Barot lived in a building in the same line and Vivek Vaswani's house was right in front of Savitri mami's house. Crossing Savitri mami's house and taking the left turn led to a junction which had one road sloping upward and one sloping downward. A flight of steps connected these 2 roads. Just on top of this flight of steps was the 313 bus stop. The road sloping upwards went past the MES colony on the left and the military camp on the right. The military camp extended all the way down this roaduntil the Vakola junction. From there, you could turn left to go to Vakola market and then cross the Western Express Highway and head towards Santacruz station. If you went straight at the Vakola junction, it led to the old airport. The entry to the airport was once from this side, but that was long before I was even born. This road wound back and ultimately reached the Kamran junction near Kurla.
16. After Savitri mami's house, if you went left and took the road sloping downwards, it went past Mathuradas Colony. Vasan teacher's house was in the first block on the 3rd floor. I have seldom gone down this road much further than her house, though this road ultimately led to Vakola.

17. Just before Kappa's house was a right turn going into Sunder Nagar. This was a long stretch of road which led back to CST Road. Our school had a separate kindergarten section which was a one storeyed structure on this road. This structure had one park in front and one behind. The park in front was a public park and quite a large one. When you went from Kappa's house, the first corner of this park you came across had a huge peepal tree. When I was in KG, I imagined that my mother waited for me behind this tree while I was in school and came to pick me up just as the bell rang. The diagonally opposite corner of this park had Tillam Singh's house. This park served as our PT ground when we were in school. On weekends, this park was full of kids playing cricket. At least 3-4 games went on simultaneously on this park. I remember playing with the KG school wall as the stumps. A small shed housing a Ganesha idol came up in the corner where the tree used to be. This was when we were in the ninth standard, if my memory serves me right. Many students used to sit on benches outside the temple during the exams. The temple kept adding idols and expanding in size. Much later, a fence came up around the temple and the whole structure took up nearly a third of the park. I don't recall too many kids playing cricket there once the temple took up so much space. The temple became a major social center, even more so since a South Indian trust started running it and Sunder Nagar had a lot of South Indians. The evening aarti at this temple became a big event and the temple was invariably crowded in the evenings. We used to visit this temple on Tuesdays and Saturdays and the walk to the temple itself was quite an event, as we ended up meeting some friend or classmate every 10 steps on the way. I have myself prayed a lot at this temple and have also fulfilled several promises there. I remember praying for Sachin's recovery after his back injury in '99, for Shane Warne's recovery, for Ashok to get through his CA, for my engineering results and many many more such things.
18. Past the temple and the KG school, there was another smaller park on the left side of the road. The road itself was quite peaceful and we could play cricket there without too  much of disturbance. On the right were some buildings. Rahul stayed exactly opposite the smaller park. Sujit, Rangaprasad and Prashant lived down this road.The smaller park had a huge bump right in the middle which made fielding difficult. We did play quite a lot of cricket on this ground too. Pillai teacher's house was in one corner of this ground. One of my proudest moments as a child was hitting a 4 off the last ball and winning a match on this ground.

19. If you went left at the temple, the road had independent houses facing the ground. The road wound towards the right and there was a dhobi's shop just a little before our school. The road wound left after the dhobi's shop and there stood our school building. The front gate of the school was right at this junction. There was a small marshy area right across the road, which later got converted into a ground towards the end of my schooling days. The road went past the facade of the school and went right, where the back gate of the school was, right outside Avadhut building. Prakash lived in the last block of Avadhut building. Between the gate of Avadhut building and the school gate, was a small gap which led through a marshy area back to the Manipada road. Past Avadhut building was the housing colony on the left side. Amol Vadhavkar's house on the 3rd floor, Vikas Kasat's house on the ground floor. The housing colony road wound back to Surbhi teacher's house.