I’m the third generation of my family that was born and raised in Bombay (Mumbai much later). My children are the fourth generation. There’s a Mumbai we all know that’s unique only to us. Whether it’s the houses, the schools, the colleges, hospitals, shops, or the local paanwala. Whether it’s the trees and the beach and the streets. Or some heritage structures we may not even notice as we go about our lives.
In the last few decades, the city around us has changed in a thousand different ways. So much so, it’s hard to recognise certain nooks and corners if we have been away for a while. Yet, the smells, the sounds, the vibe, don’t change.
Our home, though old, is more precious than anything else because that’s where we have grown to understand the world around us. But what happens when this home changes beyond recognition?
I’ve never felt so strange walking into any Starbucks anywhere in this world but this one. I feel a nervous energy inside me whenever I see it. I almost don’t like it at all. The modern glass façade, the shiny white window frames, the crowd, the chatter, the faint music wafting from the door every time it opens, all seem so unnecessary to me. So odd and unfair in a way.
My hands want to push the door open, for this door never remained closed. My feet want to barge inside, to simply run around like they used to on the mosaic tiles where they first learnt to crawl, stand, walk, and run.
But now the doors are shut. They swing open every now and then when people walk in and out of it. The floor now belongs to the hundreds of strangers who walk all over it daily.
The house where I grew up is now a brand-new Starbucks. The giant gulmohar and peepal trees right outside the house have now been replaced by concrete pillars for a Metro station, which we will hopefully see in this lifetime. I am unable to get past the fact that the house where my grandparents moved in after having their first born over half a century ago, the house where my parents met and got married, where my sisters, my cousins, and I were born, is an unrecognisable concrete tower with a Starbucks exactly where I lived!
I feel lost. My brain is incapable of connecting with the place. As I enter this Starbucks, I am unable to see it for what it is. The menu stuck behind the counter used to be a wood-carving painting of a shikara my grandfather bought in Kashmir. The chairs and tables to the left used to be our dining table — where we ate, studied, and even played ping pong using steel glasses and a long broom for a net. The green Starbucks mermaid perches herself on the glass window where I used to sit with my legs dangling outside the window — sometimes throwing paper boats in puddles, sometimes shooing crows, and sometimes just watching the world go by.
I have vivid memories of the neighbours who walked into our house like it was their own, the vendors who would drop by to say saheb ji to my Baa sitting on the sofa overlooking the road — her only window to the outside world.
But this is perhaps just my world. The memories I have built and stored into the deep recesses of my mind. I may forget what I had for breakfast today but not the sounds of playing lagori and saakli and luka-chhuppi with my friends; of neighbours walking in with freshly cooked meals and walking back with goodies from our kitchen; of climbing trees and walls to cross over to the neighbour’s house, still echo around the glass façade of this swanky new Starbucks that has replaced it.
When I tell my children how much I miss the old house, they agree that I must feel strange. They have accompanied me to my childhood home many times. They have heard stories about how we could see the coastline from the house. Of how my dad, their Nanu, used to play cricket with his friends on the main road. But the coastline seems distant now, thanks to the rampant construction in the area. And the roads are no longer safe to play cricket on. It’s when my first born tells me, “Just imagine how your Baa and Dadaji must have felt when they saw buildings where there were only open spaces before. Or how Nanu must have felt seeing there’s barely any space to walk on, let alone play cricket on,” that it really hit home.
Change can be hard to accept. Especially a change in things we hold dearest to our heart. This change could mean significant alterations to the way we have to lead the rest of our lives. Sometimes, we’re not ready to accept them. Sometimes, we have no choice but to move on.
The Metro construction in our neighbourhood has been going on for nearly a decade. An entire generation of children has been born and raised watching the construction of humongous pillars that resemble rockets. Sometimes I’m glad they don’t know any better. At least they won’t keep comparing the old times and the new.
Will I ever get a “chai latte” from this Starbucks? I don’t know. Maybe I should — just sit there with a cuppa and look at everything more closely. Feel closer to those days and times.
The rest of my family don’t think too much about it. But it has affected me at a deeper level. Is home just an idea? A figment of our imagination? Is it, after all, just an emotion, which moves with us wherever we settle with our loved ones?
If walls and floors and ceilings could think and talk, these ones would be telling me stories of the past that now only live in my memory.
I’m walking in.
Shroff is a children’s writer and script-writer
