SunCorp

Mancherji Joshi’s marble bust at the entrance to the world’s largest Parsi enclave underscores the conflict between the modern and the traditional. The memorial to a man who founded a colony of mansions and stately apartments in Dadar is flanked by a structure covered all over with concrete pillars to raise its height; behind is a shabby, lowslung building with the vernacular look of the 1930s. One represents the manner in which houses have changed over years in keeping with market demands and government regulations, the other is a remnant of a bygone age when a house bore the seal of its owner’s personality.

Zervin Baam (21), a medical student and resident of the redeveloped complex, belongs to a third generation of settlers at the Dadar Parsi colony. He seems a tad removed from the furious debate among his elderly neighbours on ways to preserve the colony’s architectural grain.
    Baam takes pride in the fact that the precinct’s been cleaned up in recent years—the best example of it is the beautification of the Five Gardens, which encircle Art Deco homes in the neighbourhood—but he does not quite endorse the views of conservationists. “I don’t think highrises replacing bungalows have made the colony a more crowded place. Most of the flats might not even be occupied,’’ he says.
    The Dadar colony was founded in the 1920s by Mancherji Joshi who rallied around his community to develop a large swathe of land on the outskirts of the city. Encouraged by concessional pricing of plots, Parsi elders banded together to raise a settlement of two-storey buildings ringed by green and open spaces. Built in Deccan basalt and adorned with filigree on the windows and ornate balustrades, the style is a mixture of things that hark back to both European and native influences. “These were, in fact, the first apartment homes in India,’’ says urban designer and architect Prasad Shetty. “They are low-rise, low density buildings, which blended various styles. A Rajasthani balcony here, a Gothic cornice there, a bit of Art Deco thrown in.’’
    Its distinct ghetto character,
seen to represent a key aspect of Mumbai’s cultural mosaic, has won the Dadar Parsi colony the status of a ‘protected’ heritage precinct. In practice, the tag means little. The place, with its wide roads and open gardens, has been drawing hordes of developers. Most of them are busy forging deals with landlords of decaying structures of World War I vintage. Despite the protection conferred by the state, owners can sell or pull down the structures under a rule that allows redevelopment of pre-1940 tenanted buildings.
    Seated in a vaulted apartment of a 1919 building, former municipal corporator Rustom Tirandaz tries to capture the changes around him amid a game of solitaire. “As long as Parsi Colony was Parsi colony, everything was hunky dory. Now Parsis have gone broke and they are selling out to outsiders keen to commercially exploit the tranquility and peace of the area,’’ he says, adjusting his skull cap.
    On Jame Jamshed Marg, one of the main arteries to the area, every second building is now either a highrise or an old edifice with extra floors piled on. Some of the bigger projects like Western Court (which houses prominent Parsis, including actor Boman Irani) have been undertaken by builders within the community. But given high real estate rates and the fact that tenants pay low rent under archaic laws, the landlords say they are left with little choice but to raze these magnificent brick-and-stone edifices.
    In the process, the conservation movement has taken a severe hammering: nearly 50 out of the 225 two- or threestorey structures in the borough have been redeveloped, to the dismay of heritage lovers. “The state government needs to take a relook at the laws before it’s too late. This loophole that allows heritage properties to be pulled down needs to change,’’ says conservation architect Vikas Dilawari. “There have to be some checks in place to ensure that the redevelopment is in keeping with the overall character of the precinct.’’
    Dilawari is referring to the suggestions made time and again by groups of architects, historians and conservationists. They exist in the form of draft proposals that have been gathering dust with the state’s urban development department, a wing directly under the control of chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh. But that’s another story.