I don’t visit Khotachiwadi often
so I use the two bulls flanking the entrance to Gaiwadi to alert me to
Khotachiwadi’s proximity on the drive from V.T.
I settle on the cement bench facing the Chapel. The three girls are gone. A light breeze is blowing.
Past Gaiwadi, just short of St.
Theresa Church, I look for a narrow lane on the right that leads past a small
chapel across the lane from the Catholic Gymkhana before disappearing into the
heart of the old settlement in Girgaon settled in 1800s with East Indians and
Brahmins by Khot from the Pathare Prabhu sub-caste of Brahmins, hence the name Khot-achi-wadi.
Early this week, on a warm late
afternoon, after finishing up with work early, I made my way to Khotachiwadi
from Jehangir Art Gallery after a quick visit upstairs to see Sayali Ghotikar’s
photo exhibition of abstractions, close-up pictures of surfaces worn by time
into palettes of colours arranged into irregular forms, the kind that arrest
attention to their form.
Shops were open and the street
bustling with traffic when I got off the taxi and made for the narrow opening
leading into Khotachiwadi.
A group of three school-going
girls, bent over their mobile phones, were huddled together on one of the two cement
benches facing the Chapel (A.D. 1899) where Catholic residents of Khotachiwadi
prayed for their wellbeing and those of their families during the plague
epidemic that ravaged Bombay
in the 1890s.
A plaque in Latin at the foot of
the cross cresting the Chapel reads:
A Peste Libera Nos
Domine.
(O Lord, Deliver Us from
Plague, Pestilence)
~
The last time I met Willy over a
year ago, he was busy with a ladder and looking up at what was the tallest
cactus I’d ever seen. I had never imagined cactus to grow as tall as the one
Willy was contemplating when I arrived at the gate that opened into the
courtyard of his home behind the Chapel and across the lane from James
Ferreira’s house.
The cactus, located in a corner
outside the gate, had reached the first floor window of his neighbour 's house and Willy
was seized with ensuring it did not bend under its own weight like its
predecessor had done. A ladder stood against the wall, approaching the first floor window but not reaching it. That was then. I remember Willy hoping the cactus would survive.
Ever since, I kept an eye out for
the cactus on my infrequent visits to Khotachiwadi, pleased to see it survive.
This time around, while I spied a
ladder, it wasn’t against the wall by the cactus but against the sloping roof
of Willy’s home. His brother, Philip, was busy on the roof setting up a
Christmas tableau complete with a snowman playing a guitar among paper reindeers
while his friend in dark glasses stayed below, hand on the ladder.
At first glance, the cactus was
nowhere to be seen, instead long, snow-tipped/silver coloured tinsel garlands
streamed to the earth from a nylon rope fastened to a bracket supporting the
rafters, covering the cactus from view.
“The cactus hasn’t grown any
taller,” I said within Philip’s earshot as I paused in the shade on my way to the
gate of Willy’s home.
“It keeps growing. We’ve to chop
it from growing any taller,” Philip answered from the roof, straightening up as
he turned to follow my gaze to the cactus obscured by the tinsel garlands lit
by a warm late-afternoon sun.
It was 3 pm.
I walk ahead to the gate in the
compound enclosing Willy’s courtyard and peer in. I see am elderly woman pause
on seeing me.
“Is Willy in?” I ask her.
“Wait,” she says before
disappearing through the door.
I wait.
The lanes are quiet except for
the occasional bustle of residents passing through the lanes. Behind me, a
metal door opening into a short enclosed approach to his neighbour’s house and
painted with a large dog is ajar. There’s no dog as far as I can see. I can
hear Philip and his friend discuss the Christmas decorations Philip is setting
up on the roof. The woman reappears.
“He must be somewhere outside,
here only,” she said.
“In the lanes around here,” I ask
her.
“Yeah, somewhere here only,” she
replies, “he should be coming soon.”
I set off among the lanes,
passing fast disappearing heritage homes made of wood with open, airy
street-facing verandahs and external staircases reaching first-floor rooms.
Some were painted bright and cheerful while others wore subdued colours. One
house near Ideal Wafers was getting a fresh coat of paint as I passed it.
Willy wasn’t to be found. I
returned to his house and approached his brother still busy on the roof.
“Any chance Willy is at work?” I
ask Philip.
“Not today,” Philip answers back
from the roof, “He must be around somewhere. You can wait a bit.”
“I’ll be sitting by the Chapel
here.” I reply, indicating to the cement bench. “Let him know when he comes.”
Philip nods.
I make for the cement bench
further from the wall with a fading painting of Mother Mary holding Infant
Jesus shown standing in a lotus and flanked by elephants raising a garland each
to Mother Mary. I was more familiar with the traditional depiction of Goddess
Saraswati seated or standing in a blooming lotus, not Mother Mary.
~
I settle on the cement bench facing the Chapel. The three girls are gone. A light breeze is blowing.
I watch residents and visitors
pass me along their way elsewhere. The sun finds an opening among houses to
light up pink bougainvillea leaning over the fence of a double-storied heritage
house with projecting wooden verandah running along the front. The ground floor
is home to the Catholic Gymkhana.
Later, Willy told me that the
Catholic Gymkhana used to own a billiards table that they sold off recently as
fewer and fewer members who played billiards were left in the neighbourhood. A
Hindu family stayed on the floor above.
The Chapel is open. Jesus on the
Cross is flanked by statues of two women, one with hands cupped in prayer, the
other with her hands close to her body, palms spread in the manner of one in
shock and helpless to make a difference. Pain is writ on their faces.
Time meanders along the lane;
seconds tick over into minutes, minutes near an hour. Still no sign of Willy.
Philip is laying out lights among
the reindeer. His friend watches from below, as before. I walk up to them and
check after Willy.
“Is he in.” I ask Philip.
“Not yet. I didn’t see him come
in,” Philip answers and reaches for his mobile phone in his pocket and calls
someone. His friend does likewise.
Turning to me, Philip says, “He
is not answering the phone.”
“Oh, you called him as well,” his
friend exclaims. “I called him. Not picking up.”
Philip calls the second time,
then a third.
“Where are you,” he says into the
phone, likely to Willy.
“Here? Here where? In the house?”
Philip enquires of the voice at the other end.
“On the terrace? Sleeping on the
terrace?” Philip enquires, “Someone is looking for you,” he tells Willy and
hangs up.
“He was sleeping on the terrace
all this while,” Philips tells me. “He’s coming.”
I hang around. Residents passing
along the lane stop to admire the Christmas decorations and exchange
pleasantries with Philip. I lean against the wall.
Soon, Willy emerges from the
gate, hair tied in a pony tail as before. He’s aged since the time I first met
him about a decade ago.
“Hey, how are you?” his voice
booms out.
We shake hands and return to the
cement bench by the Chapel and lapse into a long conversation, the kind that a
long intervening time without one, usually engenders.
Every once in a while a passer-by
stops by to talk with Willy.
One of them is Mr. Kulkarni.
“He’s a dentist,” Willy informs me after he leaves.
Another is a young woman in a black
skirt and a pronounced accent. She opens the bag she’s carrying and shows Willy
the Christmas decorations she’s bought, figurines to prepare the traditional Christmas
Crib. They discuss the purchase.
“I’ll be around your place after
9:30 pm tonight,” Willy informs her, “I’ll be singing Christmas Carols and will
be stopping by homes along the way, singing.”
“I’ll be there,” she tells him
before going along her way.
“She’s visiting Khotachiwadi from
abroad, for Christmas,” Willy explains after she leaves. “This time, many from
here have gone to Australia
for Christmas so the place is somewhat empty come Christmas. Some have come
down from abroad.”
Soon, a young boy with a
distinctly West Indian hair shows up and asks Willy if he can borrow his
guitar. “I want to practice Carols,” he explains to Willy.
Willy nods and tells him to pick
it up from his house but not before extracting an assurance from the boy that
he’ll accompany Willy tonight to sing Christmas Carols in the lanes.
“He (the boy) stays with his
mother here who’s divorced from his West Indian father,” Willy tells me. “His
father is from the place Brian Lara is.”
Willy Felizardo is helping keep
an old neighbourhood tradition going.
“Before (many years ago), we’d
have people travel to Khotachiwadi from Bandra in the week before Christmas to sing carols in
these lanes, now hardly anyone is interested. They’re too busy with work and
too tired after it, and many have grown old, and many have left,” he says,
voice trailing off.
He spoke about the time back in
the days when most houses in Khotachiwadi retained their original architectural
character and had families living in them, when letting go of family homes to
capricious builders was not an option anyone considered.
Willy’s family will be making a
Christmas Crib in a triangle shaped cut on the outside of the compound after
emptying it of displays of driftwood he’s sculpted over the years while the Crib
in the chapel would be community inspired.
“We will cover ‘Jesus on the
Cross’ and place the Christmas Crib out front,” Willy said, pointing to the
small empty space in the Chapel.
~
I’m thinking of returning to
Khotachiwadi later this week to see the Crib and take in some Christmas air.
