If you don’t know Chembur, then praising it is a bit like trying to sell you a date with an unattractive cousin purely on the basis of their wonderful personality. Because honestly, if you’ve lived here – however briefly – you’re bound to love Chembur’s tree-lined roads, its few remaining old Goan bungalows, and its still-extant sense of neighbourhood.
But if you’ve never lived here you’re likely to get caught up in small details like the atomic reactor close by, near the Turbhe (Trombay) Hills; fertilizer factories and refineries around us; and the noxious dumping ground further north in Deonar. All very bad for health, I’ve heard, but like others who live here, I prefer the blissful path of denial. Because seriously, if an atom is split behind a verdant hill and I don’t hear it, it’s not anything to go nuclear about, is it?
Unlike the atomic reactor, the Deonar Dumping Ground definitely makes its presence felt – especially if you’re downwind. In fact, garbage is why the city first laid railway lines to Chembur in 1906, bringing its refuse into Deonar, and with it, the start of construction. Goan Catholics came here between the late ’20s and the ’30s, followed by the Sindhis in the ’40s and South Indians in the ’60s. Hemmed in by the new middle-class colonies, Chembur’s original villages retracted shyly, and only a few still survive as gaothans. Each of these parts – the Marathi, the South Indian, the Sindhi and the Goan – has a distinctive ethos. It’s wonderful to walk through the localities and get a sense of what it must feel like to live among people who eat, drink and pray like each other.
But you mustn’t think of Chembur as a bucolic hick-town. We’ve been groped by glamour in our day. Raj Kapoor built the RK Studio here in 1950, and between the ’60s to the ’80s, stars like Ashok Kumar, Nalini Jaiwant, Shivji-ke-filmi-avtar Trilok Kapoor, the redoubtable Kishore Sahu, and lovable Dhumal lived here. Shilpa Shetty was my junior in school (though I personally have no recollection of this, but hey, that was many surgeries ago!) and so, they tell me, was Vidya Balan . Anil Kapoor and Shankar Mahadevan attended the boys’ school across the ground.
Neighbourhood gems:
Food at the Station: The market at Chembur Station has a powerful pull. Probably because it’s actually a foodcourt disguised as a shopping haven. Satguru Pavbhaji makes the stuff piping hot and you wash it down with sweet, cold mosambi juice. Exactly the balm you need after you’ve dodged cars, hawkers, and people’s elbows to buy veggies. A particularly tasty Mumbaiyya version of bhel puri, made in spectacularly smelly environs, can be had at Gupta Bhel. Across the road, after the sun sets, the mutta dosai works some egg magic on the dosa theme. At Hotel Saroj, the Sweet Nazis will order you to queue up for their yummy faraal, and no talking in the line back there.
Sindhi camp: Morarji Desai, it is said, first looked at the rolling greens of the military-owned Chembur Camp area and decreed that it should be used to house Sindhi refugees. Slowly, houses, schools and eateries mushroomed on the stretch outside the Golf Club. Sindhi Camp’s ‘food mile’ is the culinary expression of a nostalgic community, and everyone’s invited to eat the chaats at Jhama and Sindh Paani Puri House, and the kheema and paya at King’s or Sobhraj. The man at the counter in Jhama is stern, but ask nicely, and he might tell you that Raj Kapoor often took their gulab jamuns to Russia.
Mallu joints: Built in the ’60s for the employees of Burmah Shell, the buildings of ‘Shell Colony’ didn’t meet the company’s standards. So the flats were sold in the open market to working-class families – mostly Malayalee. With time, some phenomenal Mallu eating joints grew around the area – like ‘Jose’ under the railway bridge, which served marvelous shark-fin curry and hot jeera water (it’s shut now). Pradeep near Sawan Bazaar makes a phenomenal beef fry, and at Sunny’s (opposite ‘Hot Baby’ Rasila Bar) fish is conjured into a mean ‘meen curry’.
Soul watch: In Chembur you could pray up a multi-faith storm. Apart from the many dargahs and the Turbhe mosque (one of the city’s oldest), Chembur has the stately OLPS Church and many Syrian Christian churches. The most interesting among its temples is the 400-year-old Bhoolingeshwara Temple near the Fine Arts Hall. It is chief among Chembur’s six or seven gaondevs, village temples which once stood at the ‘borders’ of the smaller villages here. Chembraayi, the gaondevi of Chembur, a shapeless stone form, wears a benign smile and presides over us from a ceramic-tiled room in Charai village, Sindhi Camp.
Green memories: Though Chembur’s tree cover has reduced dramatically of late, it still has many trees, and trees mean birds. All over Deonar and Chembur, you can sit in your balcony and see golden orioles, crow pheasants, magpie robbins, red-vented bulbuls and owls. Industrial development around Mahul has meant that not too many residential buildings came up there, leaving the mangroves for aquatic birds. Take a fishing boat from the Mahul Jetty to get up close and personal with Mumbai’s annual pink visitors, the flamingos.
