A tale of two lanes

Gautam and Nasreen were madly in love. It was 1985, and they thought everything was possible. They lived on Hasnabad Lane in Santacruz West, just by the railway tracks, in the cross section of Bohris, Sunnis, Catholics, and Marwaris.

Gautam was my uncle. I visited him as a kid from Haryana on summer trips with my mother. The exciting, rich diversity of Santacruz West was an extreme contrast to the sedate, everyone-is-the-same life of Hisar.

In Santacruz, everyone was different, but shared the same space at the same time. I would make new friends and reconnect with old ones. I learned new names like Kainaz, Clinton, Fakhruddin, Murtaza, Avani — a welcome break from the monotony of Vikas, Pankaj, Rakesh, and Ramesh. Even I believed that everything was possible.

Many years later, my parents moved to Bombay and also settled in Santacruz in a lane perpendicular to Hasnabad called Chapel Lane. Hasnabad was the lane of mosques; Chapel Lane was the lane of churches leading to SV Road, which housed the Ramakrishna Mission and the area’s largest Jain temple. A perfectly harmonised secular bubble where everyone co-existed.

Chapel Lane boasts of the cross of Santacruz, proudly displayed in front of Mother Teresa’s Missionary of Charity’s Home for the Destitute, which shares a common wall with my building — Rehana. A 200-year-old bungalow owned by Rehana Begum had stood on the land now occupied by my building. From here, Rehana Begum watched the church across the street change multiple hands to finally end up in a re-allotment to the Martoma Syrian Christians of Kerala. Santacruz is not known for its Malayali diaspora. I see them every Sunday, dressed in their finest, making a beeline from Sion, Matunga, and Mulund.

This little short lane is barely 300 metres long, stretching from the old Akbarallys on SV Road to Bhagwan Cutpiece Centre in the market lane. But it has many stories, some still on proud display. In direct contrast to the Sunni, Shia, and Bohri mosques of Hasnabad Lane, Chapel Lane also has a beautiful 19th Century Ismaili Jamatkhana, where prayers take place at 5 a.m., led by men and women, who sit together.

The Jamatkhana is surrounded by tenements straight out of Ravan & Eddie, built for working class Hindu Gujaratis, a rare sight in a rapidly gentrifying neighbourhood.

In the summer, the lagerstroemia and gulmohars are in full bloom, providing much-needed respite to hundreds of commuters who pass by Chapel Lane, unbeknownst of its many hidden treasures, its only virtue being a short cut to the railway station.

The everyday life humbles the neighbourhood. While rich kids walk across to Poddar School, the poor ones still go to the municipal school in Chapel Lane that proudly advertises admissions for pre-primary and primary divisions in Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada. The crippling, under-staffed infrastructure of the municipal school is evident from the single room from which all the signs hang, overlapping one another. But they exist.

Santacruz, in more ways than one, made me the person I am today. The love of Gautam and Nasreen symbolised the promise of Santacruz for me and somehow of life itself. They were the most attractive couple in Hasnabad in 1985. As kids, we would follow them around, try to interpret their secret signs, and wonder about all the exciting things they did when they left the lane. In our minds, they were meant to be together.

However strong, the promise of Santacruz failed Gautam and Nasreen. The Marwari matriarch, my mother’s grandmother, vetoed the relationship. They went their separate ways and married different people. Now years later, my uncle Gautam is dead, and Nasreen is divorced and back in Hasnabad Lane. I see their kids playing with each other when I walk my dog. They too believe everything is possible.

By arrangement with thecitystory.com