The Colaba Post Office junction has little to large institutions with histories jostling for the telling
Fr Christopher Ephrem SSS, at St Francis Xavier’s Chapel
There is uniqueness here. Rarely in the city has a post office more firmly stamped its entire neighbourhood. This is Colaba Post Office. Since 1940, these three words have actually named the core address of a longish stretch of iconic residences and establishments.
Temporarily closed, when this office with the ubiquitous red and yellow India Post logo will return to base from the relocation to Nariman Point is anyone’s guess. Incidentally, the arresting symbol—suggestive of a bird in energetic and expansive flight—represents the dynamic range of our postal department operations, committed to swiftness and the ability to reach remote areas.
ADVERTISEMENT
Apart from the striking architecture of handsome, century-old buildings, some familiar haunts around the triangle-shaped post office hub hold charming backstories.
Dolly and Polly (Parvez) Mistry, former proprietors of Sunshine Snack Corner, presently at Cafe Churchill on Colaba Causeway. Pics/Atul Kamble
A pink panther whizzing along on a tricycle was the mascot two generations would recognise in a flash. “Meals on Wheels” read the line tagging that zippy mascot of Sunshine Snack Corner, diagonally across the post office. “Ours must have been the city’s first delivery facility,” says Dolly Mistry. With her husband Parvez, she took over Sunshine from a Mr Davar and a Mr Poonegar in the early 1980s, to minister to loyalists feasting on their scrumptious sandwiches, rolls, burgers, cutlets, fish and chips. That was all happily rounded off in the evening by a live counter sizzling with fish koliwada, barbequed seekh kabab and steak dishes.
“The jumbo tuna and egg sandwich, and the jumbo ham and cheese sandwich were big hits,” says Dolly. “Among the first to introduce pizzas and the second Frankie outlet in Bombay (after Aga’s at Cusrow Baug on the Causeway), we sent out so many deliveries to recently come up ‘modern Cuffe Parade’, that those entries filled one address book daily. The very kind Munchee Cama came regularly. As did patrons from other prominent Parsi families. We enjoyed such classy customers.”
Busloads of kids let out of school engaged in fights, complete with boisterous boys grabbing each other by the collar, to buy the last grilled items left. Parsis beyond Colaba delightedly devoured Sunshine’s fat chicken farchas and sweet doughy bhakras. When the eatery passed into the hands of Mohammed Chaki, he promised to retain the Zarathushtra portrait on the right entrance wall. He is proud to have kept his word. I pop in to see a bare interior, perhaps about to be renovated, with this metal-worked frame, the old ceiling fan and clock in place.
The India Post logo representing a swift bird in flight
In her engrossing book, Colaba: The Diamond at the Tip of Mumbai, Shabnam Minwalla writes: “The light of religion was determined to shine upon Colaba. Christianity had begun to assert itself in Bombay, and as Archdeacon Nix-Seaman remarked, Colaba was ‘stirred by the same awakening’. First came the little Catholic chapel near Colaba Post Office that was later used by the Portuguese Government to house officials on their way to Goa.”
Encircled by a garden twinkling with fairy lightbulbs for this festive month, the St Francis Xavier’s Chapel, clearly announcing that Christmas is in the crisp air, does have a rather interesting past. The Colaba community of the SSS was born in 1964 with an invitation from the late Valerian Cardinal Gracias, then Archbishop of Bombay, as he prepared for the 38th Eucharistic Congress held in the city. It associates with the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament, founded in 1856 in Paris by Saint Peter Julian Eymard.
The Indian government at the time only allowed Australians or Americans resident visas. As the American Province had already invested in the Philippines, it fell on Australians to respond to the Cardinal. When the diocese of Daman was created in 1886, this became the de facto residence of the Bishop of Daman in Bombay. The entire house and chapel were rebuilt in 1900. The first four priests coming over took up residence at St Francis Xavier Chapel in August 1964.
Hampton Court old-timers: Salim Khan of Fitwell Tailors
The official name of their apostolic Congregation of Pontifical Right is Congregatio Sanctissimi Sacramenti, so members add the abbreviated SSS behind their names. Earlier, “SSS” derived from what Father Eymard founded as Societas—a society. That explains the triple “S” suffix that I observe the Superior and Administrator, Fr Jesu Augustine, and the Priest-in-Charge Fr Christopher Ephrem, attach to their names when I visit the chapel. “It is believed that our patron, Francis Xavier, wants each and every one of us to live like a traveller on a pilgrimage to God,” offers Fr Ephrem, smiling.
After meeting him, I walk slightly onward to find an unexpected connection between the chapel and a couturier. At Fitwell Tailors, on the Wodehouse Road flank of Hampton Court, Salim Khan recalls how, besides top industrialists and movie stars, his father’s expertise once also extended to stitching the cassock robes for the St Francis Xavier Chapel priests. “He never charged them, of course,” he says of Mohammed Miya Khan, a Bareilly-to-Bombay migrant who moved into Shop No. 2 of Hampton Court in 1954, a year after Shapoorji Pallonji constructed it.
Having spotted the master coat cutter at Charagh Din and especially marvelling at the sharp jackets he fashioned with practised ease, Shapoorji Mistry encouraged Mohammed Miya to pursue his craft from this space in his new building.
Mohammed Miya Khan, founder proprietor of Fitwell
“My father expired when I was 13, leaving me forced to learn his skill. Reluctantly, until I realised I was good at it,” Salim says, glancing at an ancestral iron and pairs of scissors that have snipped the best suits for everyone from the Birlas and Seksarias to his own filmi favourites, Vinod Khanna and Sunny Deol—“They were truly nice gentlemen. Back in the day people really knew how to dress, identifying what was appropriate for them individually. Youngsters today just pick international styles online to get suits done.”
And where would the Khans’ smart suits get laundered and pressed if not at Dryman’s Dry Cleaners barely three shop galas away. Opened in 1960 and run by Mark Martis, it soon came to be widely appreciated for the immaculate manual dry cleaning which grew to be its hallmark. “Gone are the years when people brought mainly simple cottons to take care of. Now it’s all about heavy embroidery, shiny sherwanis and elaborate lehengas. They need a lot of extra delicate handling,” says Dilip Kanojia, running the show since the last 15 years. As he reminisces with old-timer Bharat Sawant, who has been employed at Dryman’s for 35 years, I hear of the Bollywood brigade and other showbiz celebrities who brought their choicest wardrobe items to them—from the lovely Nutan to Juhi Chawla, Raveena Tandon and Anup Jalota.
All this is on the Wodehouse Road end of the post office. On the facing Shahid Bhagat Singh Road side stands the Bombay Baptist Church. For background information on it I turn again to Minwalla’s text. Describing two tall, white tombs “on the middle of Colaba Island”, she writes: “One of the tombs belonged to Sir John Child, the luckless governor compelled to strike a deal with the Sidi of Janjira. Distressed by his inability to evict the gutsy admiral and by vicious accusations of corruption, Sir John Child is supposed to have died of shame. He was buried in desolate Colaba, while a fleet of boats fired three volleys. For over a century his tomb towered over the narrow island and greeted sea-weary sailors.
Dilip Kanojia (right) and Bharat Sawant of Dryman’s Dry Cleaners
“‘References were also found to another large tower-like tomb known as the Jew’s tomb or Moor’s Sepulchre, situated probably where the Baptist Church now stands,’ stated AJ Nix-Seaman, who was the Archdeacon of Bombay in the 1930s and wrote a book called The Afghan War Memorial Church and Historical Notes on Colaba. The Bombay Baptist Church that Nix-Seaman mentioned is a sturdy stone edifice dispensing blessings near Colaba Post Office… Sir John Child’s Tomb and the Moor’s Sepulchre served as both a welcome and a warning to ships heading for Bombay.”
Hitting Bombay shores in 1867, the Baptist Missionary Society was befriended by a group of Canadian Christians worshipping in Colaba. They moved to a Byculla ice factory where the counter doubled as a pulpit on Sundays and members brought chairs from home.
The church shifted to Bombay Central before resting in Colaba in 1911. Its Canadian and British pastors paved the spiritual path for the tenures of ministers like Charles Lazaro and Stanley Mehta. As families migrated to the suburbs, several satellite branches were planted across town.
Undertaking various outreach and rehabilitation programmes, the Baptist Church seems to have consistently abided by the words of Henry Procter, Chairman of the Bombay Chamber of Commerce. At the inaugural service in 1911 he urged—“The life of the individual should be lived for the good of the nation, and lives as individuals and members of the nation should be lived as unto God.”
Amen to that. And fingers crossed—that the next bunch of Xmas cards might just end up sorted at the original site. The spot where the small post office resolutely christened this southern strip.
Author-publisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay. You can reach her at meher.marfatia@mid-day.com/www.meher marfatia.com
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
