Disappointing because supporting India more often than not led to heartbreak and an unending litany of ‘what-if’ woes; rewarding ‘cos watching cricket telecast by Channel 9, and the sheer spectacle of seeing green fields and fast pitches, with the hook and the cut played in utter disdain of the crazy pace was an experience in itself.

Australia, to me as a young cricket fan, was the ‘final frontier’ where India would go with hopes and be completely cut down to size. Except for the 1985 World Championship of Cricket, where Shastri and Srikkanth and S Vishwanath wrote themselves into the hearts of every Indian fan, while also winning the trophy and a luxury car with an unpronounceable name. All other visits ended in complete humiliation. With or without a certain Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar. Even when he was driving McDermott and Hughes and Whitney to a sublime century, at the WACA (of all places), or playing a boy-on-the-burning-deck innings in 1999, there was always an air of inevitability about the final result.

Till 2003, and Ganguly’s greatest Test innings, and a drawn series which made me and a bunch of other Indian fans believe. Come 2008, and we could do the previously unthinkable. But it ended with a whimper at Sydney, and an aborted charter flight which took the Indian team to Perth, and perhaps one of the greatest Indian test victories of all time. Hope was reborn.

2011, and it was India versus Australia time again. This was the series where everything would change. The magnificent Indian batting lineup, certainly on its last tour Down Under as a unit, against an Aussie team fighting its own battles of succession and adjusting to life without any consistent success. Surely, the stars had aligned.

As a fan of the last 25 years, I couldn’t let this chance go. Watch a test in Australia, with the seagulls and beer and fast scary bowling and bright sunshine. And with an Indian team looking to scale it’s own pinnacle of achievement. (Forget England and 4-0, that was an aberration, and Australia was always the final frontier.)

The die was cast, and I booked my tickets to Adelaide to watch the last test. Before I could board the flight, reality bit. The Indian cricket team was hammered, and might even be whitewashed atAdelaide. (I still think not, and hope for a magnificent turnaround, with Dravid playing a magical innings.) But here I am today, in Adelaide, excited to go watch the test in a few hours, and still hoping for a fighting Indian performance.

I have few expectations. I hope the team plays well, and fights hard. And I wish to see the trio of Dravid, Laxman and Tendulkar play the way the Aussie crowds remember them. They are great cricketers, each one a legend in his own special way, and a few poor innings does not make them any lesser cricketers. I, and most other fans, would still remember the many magical innings they have played. 

Just go and make yourselves proud, all over again. And sign an autograph for me. And I will come back from Adelaide a happy fan.

I went to Khotachiwadi on a Sunday afternoon, armed with a camera and instructions on how to get there, and promptly lost my way. Eventually, after a lot of wrong turns and direction-seeking, I chanced into Khotachiwadi, and there was a sudden difference in the vibe. No car horns, no pedestrians walking hither-thither, no roadside shops hawking their wares – there was just a narrow alley, with multi-colored houses on both sides, and ending at a very brightly painted red-and-yellow two-storey house. It was heart-warming.

I walked through the colony, and it is a maze, with lanes criss-crossing with each other, which make it seem a much larger area than it really is. And every lane has something new to offer. The kaleidoscope of sights makes it even more difficult to button-hole Khotachiwadi into any one narrow niche. Ancient and well-maintained, Khotachiwadi is.

Some of the sights that I was able to frame are here, and illustrate the diversity of experiences on offer in Khotachiwadi. A shrine of Jesus, the committee chawl (see ‘17 families, 1 house‘), beautiful window arches, cast of the face of the Buddha, a wide-porched house being rennovated, wall temple of the Sai Baba, gym whose façade looked more like a nursery, pretty children, shrine of the Virgin Mary donated by the Patkars, a Maharashtrian family.
All in all, tremendous diversity on offer.

‘Wadi’ in Marathi means an orchard, and colloquially, a village. There are many Wadis in Central Bombay – Fanaswadi, Ambawadi, Sitafalwadi, Khotachiwadi being some among those. Khotachiwadi was founded in the late 1700s by a Pathare Prabhu Brahmin called Khot, who sold plots to East Indian Christian families. Today, there are a number of Christian and Brahmin families living in the village.

The architecture is distinctly Goan – quaint low-rise wooden bungalows, with large open verandahs, trellised balconies, latticed windows, bright colours and an external staircase leading to the first floor. Khotachiwadi has been marked as a heritage precinct of Bombay since some years now, and the residents have been very steadfast about not selling of their houses / plots to developers. In spite of all efforts, only 30 or so of the original 65 bungalows still remain, and it in an uphill battle to maintain those in the same way as before.

One of the high points of the Khotachiwadi visit was the house of Willy Felizardo. Seeing the camera in my hand, and taking me to be the ersatz photographer that I am, the family welcomed me in. The first look of the courtyard was mindblowing – bright colors, patterns, figurines, lanterns, stools, fishes, birds. The mind boggled! Kitschy, but very attractive. Apparently,Willy ends up buying interesting things as and when he sees them, and the result is the open courtyard with its various artifacts. The house has been featured in various travel magazines as well.

More than colours

Another high point of Khotachiwadi is an eating place called Ananthashram, where one can get the cheapest seafood, and where the food is cooked on wooden fires, and served on standalone wooden tables. But more on that in another post.

I came away from Khotachiwadi, very pleased at having been able to take a peek into a Bombay that existed years earlier. Like seeing a sepia-toned photograph of a friend’s younger days.

How to get there? From Charni Road railway station, walk east past the Central Plaza theatre, and turn right at the traffic light intersection. Another 200 meters, past a GSB (Goud Saraswat Brahmin) colony, and then turn left into the first lane. You are in Khotachiwadi.
Or just get to St. Teresa’s church, and ask for directions.

For the next few days, I will post some of these snapshots from the walk, and also a short essay about the walk.