Colaba

DescriptionColaba, the southernmost tip of Mumbai-a bustling locality with theGateway of India, the famous Taj Mahal Hotel, and Colaba Causeway, ashopper’s paradise-is the city’s most iconic neighbourhood. But barely 200years ago, it was a rocky, jackal-infested island, separated from the rest of thegreat metropolis by a temperamental creek.In this compelling biography, Shabnam Minwalla, journalist, author and long-timeresident of the area, tells the tale of the unexpected forces that reshaped land andsea; and allowed this remote corner of Bombay-Mumbai to evolve into one ofits liveliest, quirkiest neighbourhoods. Trying to figure out the exact area limits,she unravels accounts of colonial rivalries and dowry negotiations, and of shrewdindustrialists who transformed the doomed island into the centre of trade duringthe cotton boom of the 1860s. She navigates the sometimes charming, sometimesseedy streets to track the area’s evolution from a retreat for British soldiers andsailors to a coveted residential area for the English and Indians alike. She digsinto her childhood memories to introduce us to the eccentric Parsis of CusrowBaug, the warm yet persistent shopkeepers and hawkers of the Causeway, theindustrious Sindhis who pioneered co-operative housing societies, the colourfulmusicians, theatre artists and writers who frequented her corner of Colaba, andthe Arabs who come there every year to witness the city’s monsoons. And in amoving section, she records how the neighbourhood rose like a phoenix from theashes after the 26/11 terrorist attack.Combining a remarkable flair for storytelling with sound journalisticgroundwork, and drawing upon three generations of family memory, Shabnampaints an intimate and dynamic portrait of a great and fabled neighbourhood. 3