Tall tales from a hilltop Far from the avenue of pretty tree-ringed villas it was, Altamont Road struggles with newer avatars First things first. It isn’t Altamount but Altamont Road. Signboards persist with the “u”, plus postal address sanction blithely spells it as Altamount. But Colonel Altamont served the Nawab of Lucknow before settling on this Cumballa Hill slope up from midtown Kemp’s Corner. In his book, Altamont Road and Other True Stories, philosophy scholar Sheryar Ookerjee insisted, “Not Altamount, please.” Known now as SK Barodawala Marg (that 1926 Sheriff’s home is Rizvi Park today), it ranks among the world’s ten most expensive streets. Ookerjee’s grandfather, Cursetjee Manockjee Cursetjee (grandson of Cursetjee Manekjee Shroff, the Khada Parsi of the landmark Byculla statue), bought a bungalow – presently Pushpak building – in 1907 from the Portuguese de Ghas family, amid an orangey-yellow sea of gulmohur and mango trees lost to road widening. Trees have always been a lovely leitmotif on Altamont Road. “This was truly the most beautiful street,” avers Mona Mehra. “We came in the 1970s when our building, Olympus, was the only high-rise on the road, nestled in its lane between huge gulmohar and plumeria trees. The main Altamont Road was lined with banyans, peepuls and neems. We could see part of the Breach Candy waterfront as there were no towers on Pedder Road either. The uniqueness of our road was, and still is, that there are no traffic signals.” The only sound Mona and her sister Manju heard was the twitter of birds when they moved into matinee idol Shashi Kapoor’s apartment in Olympus, which the star occupied in the 1960s. “We were happy forwarding fan mail to his Atlas Apartments residence on Nepean Sea Road. Visiting us years later, he said his years in Olympus were the happiest of his life. He was teary-eyed remembering his wife Jennifer and the happy times they spent together here.” The most stunning tree has stood reassuringly outside the mansion of Mafatlal Gagalbhai (born to an Ahmedabad weaver, he initiated a thriving textile trade in 1905), an ancient banyan with roots spread wide. Like some arboreal angel’s sheltering wings, I think, each time I gaze at it in awe. Generations have clambered over this tree fronting Gagalbhai’s Bombay home. “We hid in its every crevice for our Chor-Police games,” says his great-granddaughter Anuradha Mafatlal Singh. Opposite, on fairy-lighted lawns of her childhood home, the Khandelwal bungalow Prem Nivas (its charming champa hugged by that beautiful banyan leaning across the road), Anuradha Mahindra launched Verve in December 1995. As the magazine’s text editor, I met wonderful women we had featured on its inaugural pages. And introduced cover girl India Hicks, Mountbatten’s granddaughter, to activist actor Priya Tendulkar. “I was bitten by the publishing bug hanging around the paper stall at the start of our street,” Mahindra laughs. What was earlier Tata Mansion, built by Khorshed Bulsara’s granduncles, is Maskati Corner. “See, my family’s kiln made our wall bricks,” Bulsara says, showing me her greatgrandfather Rutton S Tata’s initials, RST, on one. Up the bend along the road housing several foreign consulates, stood Washington House, the US Consulate building Jehangir Vazifdar designed, which Lodha Altamont has rudely
replaced. Around the corner, Roman Stores got its foreign moniker from expats bringing Kraft cheese and Japanese tea to sell when Jethalal Murji Chheda and brother Dungarshi set up the area’s sole provisions shop in 1959. “Young man, I’m your customer,” JRD Tata said, welcoming Jethalal’s son Girish who once ducked a rain shower under the awning of JRD’s Scottish-style cottage on elevated rock, The Cairn. The Tatas epitomised boomtime Bombay’s sheer professionalism, then a clean liveand-let-live attitude towards neighbours and business competitors alike. Two illustrious granddaughters – Mountbatten’s and the Mahatma’s – were a hedge from each other the night Verve released. A wall separates Prem Nivas from Prabhu Kutir (once the villa of Baghdadi Jew businessman Victor Sassoon) where 80-year-old Usha Gokani, daughter of Gandhiji’s son Ramdas, resides. Her son Dr Anand Gokani says, “We are a hill that’s become a township. Ambani and Lodha created statements of power, not buildings of relevance. Overnight the Antilla monstrosity replaced the Khoja orphanage.” The 1894 orphanage, Bagh-e-Karim, was named for baronet businessman Currimbhoy Ebrahim. As a child Sangita Advani visited it on her birthday. She loved listening to strains of Padma Vibhushan Arvind Parikh’s sitar waft from his home in Palmera. That private gully is dubbed PROVAD: acronym of Palmera, Rizvi Park, Olympus, Venus, Ashiana and Dilkoosha. Mohan T Advani, who established Blue Star Refrigeration and Air-conditioning in 1943, dreamed of an ultra-modern residential block where his mother and siblings, in Bombay postPartition, could live. “Olympus was the abode of the Greek gods,” he declared. “That’s what I’m going to build.” He did, with the visionary architect Piloo Mody. “Blue Star was a sole proprietorship when Olympus was constructed, completely self-sufficient with a dhobi, tailor, seven elevators in two wings, car spots and a provision store,” says Advani’s daughter Suneeta Vaswani. “Dad hit it off with Pilloo, who understood his obsession for the extraordinary.” A hop away, Dilkoosha neighbours Naseem Khan and Usha Parkash chat in Parkash’s garden flat. I learn of an agreement letter to the Chief Presidency Magistrate, between Badraddin Tyabally Barodawala and Taley Mahomed Khan, the Nawab of Palanpur procuring Dilkoosha in 1954. Beside them, Ashiana was Bungalow 5 with the Botawalas on the first floor. The Dutch Consul General’s and Washington House families primly called in playing kids for 4 o’clock milk and biscuits, reminisces 98-year-old Sheila Botawala. “At our place they attacked Nilgiri pancakes and chocolate fudge,” says her daughter Miriam. Another blind lane off, Anstey Road was named for Judge TC Anstey. At its end, in Jupiter Apartments, lives Saleem Ahmadullah, my go-to mentor for exploring the city. Crisscrossing the road, I reach what was Chattan, Tarachand Gupta’s landmark bungalow, redeveloped by the Rahejas. Manufacturing steel fabrications for train wagons, Gupta outlived three sons. He was stoic as a chattan – a strong stone hill – says his grandson Nikhil. The five floors of Chapsey Terrace seemed soaring to Goolu Adenwalla in the 1940s. “I live in a high-rise,” she wrote to pen pals (remember we had that charming form of friendship then). Himanshu Dwarkadas mentions the building has belonged to his family from his greatgrandfather Chapsey Jeevondas’ time in 1926. “Altamont Road was much quieter and with no cars on the road. I recall my mother tell me about Dwarkadas, Chapsey Jeevondas’ son, not
wanting to stay there because their business hub was in Kalbadevi and this area was full of trees and so little peopled that in the late evenings it was scary going there without a vehicle.” One of Chapsey Terrace’s most famous residents was playwright and theatre director Adi Marzban. His third floor-flat was the rehearsal space for stars of the Parsi and English stage. He scribbled sparkling radio plays between chess moves with the Adenwalla patriarch in their apartment above his. Jinx Akerkar fell in love with Chitrakoot and the airy spaces around it – “We looked over Flame of the Forest trees to the sea.” Her husband Anand was an editor of Top of the Hill, the Shirish Shah-published newsletter reporting everything from revitalization plans for Altamont Road to peacocks strutting behind Olympus. “A thousand homes were sent this free of cost,” Shah says. “It was great communication between citizens and the Altamont Road Area Citizens Committee.” The Akerkars’ actress daughter Avantika says, “I whizzed on roller skates with a gang of 20 kids. You proved your worth on steep slopes of buildings like Pemino.” “Some of the best years of my life were spent on Altamont Road,” declares another Pemino resident, Neville Golvala. “There was still a sprinkling of gracious mansions and some semblance of open land. Every Wednesday night, a blind family would plant themselves outside our building and sing a dirge accompanied by a heartrending melody on an instrument. Across from us was Washington House, which had only one resident our age, an American boy nicknamed Toto, who’d invite us to play cricket and croquet on their lawn. Yes, there was a lawn there before it became a fortress, and now a vertigo-inducing glass tower.” In Navjeevan Kutir from 1964, Amfico Agencies’ chairman Keki Cooper drove an Alvis Convertible “when two cars passed every hour”. His beautician wife Kamal opened her still popular salon here as well. From their kitchen window they enjoyed a view of Rolls Royces purring out of the Dadiseths’ Greek-type mansion which became Prithvi Apartments. A slant from the Dadiseths stood Khambatta Hall, now Nishant. Erected in 1918 by Hormusjee Khambatta, who supplied coal to ships in Bombay harbour, it was laid with chessboard tiles from Carrara quarries. Hormusjee’s grand-nephew Noshir Khambatta recalls his mother run Butility Products from the bungalow. Its embroidered baby clothes and cribs won classy clients including the Maharaja of Kashmir and, Noshir’s sister Rashna Dalal adds, “Shashi Kapoor looking like a god dropped from heaven.” An eminent Khambatta Hall tenant was Dr Jivraj Mehta, Gujarat’s first chief minister. Interestingly christened Bombarci, built in 1925 for heads of the Bombay Baroda and Central India Railway, derives its name from those letters: BB&CI. In 1949, BB&CI merged with the Gaikwads’ Baroda State Railway to form Western Railways, whose General Manager’s official residence Bombarci continues to be. Paranjoti Choir conductor Coomi Wadia’s home, on marrying jeweller Nariman Wadia, was close – “With gladioli flowerbeds we had so many coconut trees, I never bought a coconut for my curries.” A hop away, facing the Indonesian Consulate is the South African Consulate, flush with Terrace Cama where English professor Mehroo Jussawala and gynaecologist Hilla Banaji were murdered. Raj Mahal is my favourite on the road. Legend has it this was called The Castle. Skyward turrets do lend this jewel of a structure such an aura. Filmmakers Srila Chatterjee and Mahesh Mathai’s attic guestroom boasts its own trapdoor entry. Meher Davis has spent 68 years
walking over “1903”, the year of the building’s construction, exquisitely etched in mosaic chips wreathing garland motifs around that date on the floor of her ante room. Capitol Electronics, below Raj Mahal, was a stereo repair adda bonding music buffs on Saturdays. At raddi shop turned library, Kamal Book House, in Maskati Corner, Buddhichand Maroo took up a sales job in 1957 to pay for his studies. With robust Kutchi acumen he established Shemaroo Entertainment five years later. Burge Cooper, helming AudioVision India, describes his surgeon father Soli Cooper ride horses to Carmichael Road via red mud paths. Beyond Bagh-e-Karim, jungles echoed with jackal howls. Discovering a cobra coiled in his bedroom, Moez Mohemadally says, “Altamont Road was peaceful to the point of deserted. You felt the air float differently in its countryside ambience which wouldn’t let summer heat touch us.” The Coopers occupied Rustom Villa which, with Ruttonsha Lodge, became Saahil, Harish Mahindra’s home. From Sai Manzil next door, Vernon Miranda smiled to see the industrialist’s son Anand’s baaraat dance the few-feet distance to his bride Anuradha Khandelwal in Prem Nivas. Sai Manzil, with wooden staircases and fretted veranadas, was initially Yusuf Mansion, after owner Abbas Motabhai’s son. “Sitting by a cotton tree to read, I saw a lovely city sprawl beneath,” says Rashida Anees from the Kajiji family there – reiterating the serene presence of trees dotting the street. Vernon’s distinguished father CJV Miranda was Deputy Inspector General of Police, State CID, before becoming the first Director of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, seizing smuggled gold and diamonds worth millions in the ’60s. Retiring from police service, he was appointed Chairman of the Maharashtra Public Service Commission. “I last met him wearing a suit in an Electric House bus queue,” says urban historian Deepak Rao. “He was a graceful man from a graceful era.” Just as well he didn’t live to lament the trite towers of mega magnates blot out the essential elegance of Bungalow Boulevard.