Bandra by Night
I almost always got the call while tying my shoelaces. Two rings, then cut. Walking to D’Monte park along Perry Road, I’d see his long shadow strobing down the Pali streetlights. There’d never be a wave, it always seemed unnecessary. The route was approximately the same too, but we’d sometimes turn into unplanned lanes.
So we walked Bandra at night. As kids, most of the day zipped by rushing to school, reaching in time for assembly, getting through the day, the evening cricket and late evening girl-watching, dinner and then some homework, maybe some TV. And then it was the wait for the two rings.
The walk from D’Monte to Carter Road was brisk, impersonal. Never knew why, it always felt like we had to just get through Perry Road to the sea to loosen up, to sigh in the sea-breeze, grab a coffee, and then we’d chat.
Today he had news. He’d received a letter from Nissim Ezekiel about some poems he’d submitted. And heard about some Channel [V] Scriptwriting job that he’d enrolled both of us in. And his Mum had left for Lucknow. And Paritosh had left him at the bakery and he was really pissed off. It never stopped, each element of this infinite day coming alive on a bench on Carter Road.
Bandra was ours and we had our own piece of it. Before the rising sun reclaimed it for the Joggers, the Walkers, the Dog- owners and every other element on the street. Bandra was more intimate, more home than ever at those unearthly times.
Bandra transforms at night. It somehow becomes more Bandra than ever. Television tattle ends around 11.00, lights dim, more or less when I’m tying my shoelaces. A hush descends, cars get sparser, road vendors pack up their shanty stores and leave. The city’s masses, commuters, shoppers, visitors, locals and urchins have found their spots for the night.
The streets are wet, vast and empty, reflecting lights, allowing shadows to crisscross undisturbed. So many things subtly change and the fragile impermanence of this shift never fails to surprise.
How impersonal by day, how intimate by night. Bandra grows and shrinks every day, like clockwork.
It’s strange how much more you see at Night. The bounty of fragrances that burst forth from every street. It seems like the Raat-ranis and the Mogras are swirling out massive waves around every corner. This assault comes from every building we’ve hurried past, from every lawn we’d never stopped to look at.
A secret Bandra reveals itself.
Rose Cottage, 1928
I saw Rose cottage for the first time ever at night. A tiny blue-green-red light in the midst of massive looming black emptiness. Fragile and homely, an Enid Blyton-like flicker in the dark. Conjuring up images of gingerbread and fairy tales, with young children playing around, to the soft strains of a guitar or a lace-topped piano. I peered closely, only to realise it was the stained glass window above the door, allowing some of the dim light inside to shine through. How beautiful, how reassuring. I smiled, and decided to look for it again on the way to school. The next day overshadowed by the massive building sitting on it, enveloping it’s fragility in a monolithic squat, Rose Cottage had lost it’s romance.
But it returns to Bandra every night.
We reclaim Bandra after 11. The suburb opens it’s arms to anyone in flip-flops, its expansive promenades allowing just about everyone to inhale deeply for maybe the first time in their days. People are friendlier, talking to strangers over tiny plastic coffee cups, tsk-tsking cars driving fast, nodding appreciatively at each other’s music. The hectic Bombay is gone, with the rush and the buzz. It’s replaced by the spirit of the fabled Goa, of which Bandra has always seemed like a slice. A friend who just moved here from New York, having a bad day at work, confused and restless with her immediate reality, fell in love with the city over coffee at Carter Road.
The hotter, the sweeter, the more unpalatable the better. Bandra transforms it with its alchemy.
Bandra is home at Night. Nightfall picks out the subtlest, tiniest, most beautiful pieces of the vast jigsaw that is Bandra, and presents it on an orange-gold platter. The sweetest of fragrances, the bounty of night birds and their soft hoots. The silence, stillness, and suspension is real. The soft sound of the sea, that universal background hum, moves to the foreground and asserts it’s presence, it’s immediate impact on our lives.
Night society and Night culture. A bizarre mix of subcultures emerge. The gangs of old, staking their claims to all the various benches on Carter Road. The night-walkers and young couples. The late night dressedup young guns, stooping over and laughing.
The big buildings masking themselves and the small cottages emerging from their shadows with a romantic tinkle. The trees and their shadows, crisscrossed canopies of swirling branches netted across amber streets.
I’ve always thought that Darkness puts a filter over things. I think it does exactly the opposite to Bandra.