They might well sound strange but are real all right. Some oral histories the city throws up sound almost too dramatic to ring true

A sketch of Garrison Cinema by Dilshad Faroodi, reproduced from Ah! Colaba (1989)

“It’s hard to believe some of the stories on your page,” one of this column’s most loyal readers recently said to me. Then quickly, gallantly, he added, “I trust you. It’s just that a few of these oral history accounts are too incredulous for words. Don’t you agree?”

I do. But I believe.

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I believe in possibilities, in probabilities, in potential. The potential of the past to enable making sense of a world-gone-wrong in the present, which in turn might flag a better future. Whether it elicits the occasional chuckle, gasp or exclamation, research for these pages has helped understand that the outre, the outlandish—even the incredible—are less far-fetched than we think.

Renamed Defence, the theatre got its present name, Sena, in 2004. Pic courtesy/Swords and Shield, published by HQ M and G Area

Appearances sure can be deceptive. Working on interviews for an article on Tardeo, I visited Dolly Malbari on the upper floor of a building mysteriously called The Reward. It shares a wall with ruins of the city’s first twin-screen theatre, Ganga-Jamuna. I had a phone conversation with the daughter-in-law of Jamshed Master, whose sisters, Alla and Tehmi, supervised each brick laid here 90 years ago. Sacrificing their jewellery as investment, the ladies were “rewarded” by tenants rushing to rent here. Petite though she was, sporting a sturdy sola topi, Alla would boom the sternest instructions from her hand-held horn to nervous labourers atop scaffolds.

“She was every bit like a dragon, the most severe disciplinarian when annoyed,” Malbari declared. I still laugh each time I pass that building, remembering the
incongruity of that situation. Alla, the pint-sized dynamo, hollering out daily orders to rough and tough workmen.

Charmaine Bocarro, lawyer and long-time resident of La Nina in Bhoiwada

Another fire-breathing Bombay woman residing nearby in Sunama House at Kemp’s Corner, was socialite beauty Bapsy Pavry. The daughter of a priest, she was considered the only Indian Marchioness in history. Pavry became Marchioness of Winchester at 51, wedding the twice-married Marquess Henry William Montagu Paulet in 1952. The aristocrat husband soon strayed, falling back into the arms of his ex-girlfriend Eve Fleming, the mother of James Bond creator Ian Fleming. An enraged Pavry........

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