Walk Through Mumbai's Heritage Locales Through The Words Of Its Legendary Poets

Mumbai is easiest to enter through a line of verse. Maps will tell you where the streets begin and end but poets tell you why they matter. In the decades when the city’s mills rattled, its cafés steamed, and the sea licked at stone, a loose collective of writers, Nissim Ezekiel, Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla, Eunice de Souza, Dilip Chitre, Namdeo Dhasal, among others, made Mumbai legible by walking it, arguing over it, and writing it down. Their poems are kerb-level instructions for where to look and how to look: the cracked glass of an Irani showcase; the iron girders at Chinchpokli; the salt on your lips along Cuffe Parade; the tired laughter in a college corridor at Marine Lines.

This guide takes you through the city by following those lines. Each stop pairs a place with a poem and a poet, along with a short note on what to notice when you get there. Some sites are still bustling (Yazdani, Flora Fountain’s bookish byways), others survive only as memory (Samovar’s tables, the Wayside Inn’s windows), but together they form a walkable anthology. Read aloud if you can. The city will answer.

Stand in the triangle and imagine Arun Kolatkar’s morning choreography: Wayside Inn (now Punjab Grill) for eggs and bacon, Swagat for upma, Anand Vihar for shira. His cycle of tiny urban still-lifes turns the art district into a comic, affectionate map of habits, hawkers and passing clouds.

Breakfast Time at Kala Ghoda by Arun Kolatkar

They're serving khima pao at Olympia,

dal gosht at Baghdadi,

puri bhaji at Kailash Parbat,

aab gosht at Sarvi's,

kebabs with sprigs of mint at Gulshan-e-Iran,

nali mehari at Noor Mohamadi's

baida ghotala at the Oriental,

paya soup at Benazir,

brun maska at Military Cafe,

upma at Swagat,

shira at Anand Vihar,

and fried eggs and bacon at Wayside Inn.

For, yes, it's breakfast time at Kala Ghoda

as elsewhere

in and around Bombay

— up and down

the whole hungry longitude, in fact;

the 73rd, if I'm not mistaken.

Home to the PEN All-India Centre where Nissim Ezekiel worked, this stretch helps you hear his famous register — dry, lucid, unsentimental — cataloguing a “barbaric city sick with slums” and yet refusing to look away. Walk towards the sea and read him under your breath.

A Morning Walk by Nissim Ezekiel

Driven from his bed by troubled sleep

In which he dreamt of being lost

Upon a hill too high for him

(A modest hill whose sides grew steep),

He stood where several highways crossed

And saw the city, cold and dim,

Where only human hands sell cheap.

It was an old, recurring dream,

That made him pause upon a height.

Alone, he waited for the sun,

And felt his blood a sluggish stream.

Why had it given him no light,

His native place he could not shun,

The marsh where things are what they seem?

Barbaric city sick with slums,

Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains,

Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged,

Processions led by frantic drums,

A million purgatorial lanes,

And child-like masses, many-tongued,

Whose wages are in words and crumbs.

He turned away.

The morning breeze

Released no secrets to his ears.

The more he stared the less he saw

Among the individual trees.

The middle of his journey nears.

Is he among the men of straw

Who think they go which way they please?

Returning to his dream, he knew

That everything would be the same.

Constricting as his formal dress,

The pain of his fragmented view.

Too late and small his insights came,

And now his memories oppress,

His will is like the morning dew.

The garden on the hill is cool,

Its hedges cut to look like birds

Or mythic beasts are still asleep.

His past is like a muddy pool

From which he cannot hope for words.

The city wakes, where fame is cheap,

And he belongs, an active fool.

This is the distribution spine of small presses and little magazines. The pavements around Flora Fountain are where poems became books became friendships became more books. If you love the idea of poetry as a civic craft, linger.

To the Tune of a Swing in a Municipal Park by Adil Jussawalla

Children                      swing
kites                              dip
waves                          trail
trains of                     foam
            here’s there
            exile’s home
        the sun flickers

pops.    Late evening
    comes the lame
    guard to shut
the gates    lock
the lank chains.

Industrial Bombay in one hard stare: girders, smoke, tenements, a working day’s ache. Dilip Chitre’s poem is a precise, unsentimental witness and the railway thrum underneath you is the original backing track.

The View From Chinchpokli by Dilip Chitre

A fouled Sun rises from behind the textile mills
As I crawl out of my nightmares and hobble
To the sink. Then I luxuriate in the toilet
While my unprivileged compatriots of Parel Road Cross Lane
Defecate along the stone wall of Byculla Goods Depot.
I shudder at the thought of going out of this lane
Towards the main road. Hundreds of workers are already returning
From the night-shift, crossing the railway lines.
The bus stop is already crowded. I begin to read
The morning’s papers and cover my naked mind
With global events. The ceiling fan whirs, but I sweat.
I breathe in the sulphur dioxide emitted
By the Bombay Gas Company, blended with specks of cotton
And carbon particles discharged by the mills
That clothe millions of loins. Then I shave and shower,
Dismissing all untouchables from my mind, fearing
More palpable pollution. On my way out
I shall throw a used condom and a crumpled pack of cigarettes
Into the garbage. And like a glorious Hindu hero,
Reluctantly riding his chariot to the centre of the battlefield,
I will take a cab to the Manhattan-like
Unreality of Nariman Point. There I will shape India’s destiny
Using my immaculate gift. I will ride in a taxi.
I will pass the Victoria Gardens Zoo without blinking.
Byculla Bridge will give me the first line of a poem,
And the Christians, Jews, and Muslims on my way
Will inspire a brilliant critique of contemporary
Indian culture. Of course, I will ignore
The junk-shops, the tea-houses, the restaurants, the markets
I zig-zag through. I shall smoothly go past
The Institute of Art, Anjuman-e-Islam, The Times of India,
The Bombay Municipal Corporation, and Victoria Terminus.
If I glance at Flora Fountain or the Bombay High Court,
It will be an absent-minded observation
And if I seem to look at the University of Bombay’s
Clock-tower and buildings it will only be the sulking
Stare of a dirty-minded alma mater-fucker at the old hag herself.
But beyond all lies my daily sigh of relief
Because the gross millions are temporarily out of sight.
Some culture is possible in that half a square mile
Where the wall of India cracks open and the sea is visible.
At Chinchpokli, once I return in the evening,
I plot seductions and rapes, plan masterpieces
Of evasion. The loudspeakers blare at me.
Bedbugs bite me. Cockroaches hover about my soul.
Mice scurry around my metaphysics, mosquitoes sing among my lyrics
Lizards crawl over my religion, spiders infest my politics.
I itch. I become horny. I booze. I want to get smashed.
And I do. It comes easy at Chinchpokli,
Where, like a minor Hindu god, I am stoned
By the misery of my worshippers and by my own
Triumphant impotence.

Namdeo Dhasal drags the city’s underbelly into the light, melts moral distance, and rebuilds language in the heat. Walk with care and respect. The point is not voyeurism but recognition: the poem as siren and mirror.

Cruelty by Namdeo Dhasal

I am a venereal sore in the private part of language.
The living spirit looking out
of hundreds of thousands of sad, pitiful eyes
Has shaken me.
I am broken by the revolt exploding inside me.
There's no moonlight anywhere;
There's no water anywhere.
A rabid fox is tearing off my flesh with its teeth;
And a terrible venom-like cruelty
Spreads out from my monkey-bone.

Release me from my infernal identity.
Let me fall in love with these stars.
A flowering violet has begun to crawl towards horizons.
An oasis is welling up on a cracked face.
A cyclone is swirling in irreducible vulvas.
A cat has commenced combing the hairs of agony.
The night has created space for my rage.
A stray dog has started dancing in the window's eye.
The beak of an ostrich has begun to break open junk.
An Egyptian carrot is starting to savour physical reality.
A poem is arousing a corpse from its grave.
The doors of the self are being swiftly slammed shut.
There's a current of blood flowing through all pronouns now.
My day is rising beyond the wall of grammar.
God's shit falls on the bed of creation.
Pain and roti are being roasted in the same tandoor's fire.
The flame of the clothless dwells in mythologies and folklore.
The rock of whoring is meeting live roots;
A sigh is standing up on lame legs;
Satan has started drumming the long hollowness.
A young green leaf is beginning to swing at the door of desire.
Frustration's corpse is being sewn up.
A psychopathic muse is giving a shove to the statue of eternity.
Dust begins to peel armour.
The turban of darkness is coming off.
You, open your eyes: all these are old words.
The creek is getting filled with a rising tide;
Breakers are touching the shoreline.

Yet, a venom-like cruelty spreads out from my monkey-bone.

It's clear and limpid: like the waters of the Narmada river.

Classrooms that produced the most incisive, acid-sweet voice in Indian English poetry. Eunice de Souza’s lines about confession, aunties, parish life and female agency hum differently when you cross the quadrangle at recess.

De Souza Prabhu by Eunice de Souza

No, I'm not going to
delve deep down and discover
I'm really de Souza Prabhu
even if Prabhu was no fool
and got the best of both worlds.
(Catholic Brahmin!
I can hear his fat chuckle still.)

No matter that
my name is Greek
my surname Portuguese
my language alien.
There are ways
of belonging.

I belong with the lame ducks.

I heard it said
my parents wanted a boy.
I've done my best to qualify.
I hid the bloodstains
on my clothes
and let my breasts sag.
Words the weapon
to crucify.

Studios, rehearsal rooms, and the cross-pollination that made form feel porous. Bombay poetry grew in this ecosystem of painters, actors, ad men and doctors trading methods and metaphors.

From Bombay Central by Gieve Patel

The Saurashtra Express waits to start
Chained patiently to the platform,
Good pet, while I clamber in
To take my reserved window seat
And settle into the half-empty compartment’s
Cool; the odour of human manure
Vague and sharp drifts in
From adjoining platforms.
The station’s population of porters,
Stall-keepers, toughs and vagabonds relieve themselves
Ticketless, into the bowels of these waiting pets;
Gujarat Mail, Delhi Janata, Bulsar Express,
Quiet linear beasts,
Offering unguarded toilets to a wave
Of non-passengers, Bombay Central’s
In-residence population.

That odour does not offend.
The station’s high and cool vault
Sucks it up and sprays down instead,
Interspersed with miraculous, heraldic
Shafts of sunlight, an eternal
Station odour, amalgam
Of diesel oil, hot steel, cool rails,
Light and shadow, human sweat,
Metallic distillations, dung, urine,
Newspaper ink, Parle’s Gluco Biscuits,
And sharp noisy sprays of water from taps
With worn-out bushes, all
Hitting the nostril as one singular
Invariable atmospheric thing,
Seeping into your clothing
The way cigarette smoke and air-conditioning
Seep into you at cinema halls.
I sink back into my hard wooden
Third-class seat, buffered by
This odour, as by a divine cushion.
And do not suspect that this ride
Will be for me the beginning of a meditation
On the nature of truth and beauty.

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