Adenwala Road, Matunga was where I was born and brought up.
I spent the first 25 years of my life, on that beautiful road, lined with huge trees, on both sides, quiet, close to the 5-gardens on one end, and the King’s Circle on the other. All those 25 years when I was there, I lived in the same flat, same building, same road. That one place..
Since then, I have moved to Chembur, and have already been at three different places in Chembur, in this period!
However, that is not the focus of this post.
The post is triggered by a visit to Adenwala Road today, after many years. Okay, I have passed that place, many times, in between, but today after many years, I went to the road, specifically, once again.
There are a lot of great memories associated with childhood. Part of those are clearly around the place where one grew up.
For me, I have memories of Adenwala Road. One of the smoothest roads of that time. Which allowed for us to learn and then ride the bicycle there. And also learn skating on those Bharat Bandh days, and play cricket as well, on the road.
I have memories of the buildings and the people, the walk on that road, to go to 5-gardens, or the other side, to run errands and pick up stuff from King’s Circle.
Ahh.. those were the days. The days of innocence.
A lot of years have passed. And I don’t want to count them, and feel old!!
But when I went today, although the road was the same, the trees were there, and so were the 5-gardens, it all seemed a little different.
Most of the building had changed. In place of the quiet old, small buildings with nice balconies, and the old elegance, I now saw the many multi-storeyed, modern structures. With fancy styles, colors, the multi level parking lots, and what not.
I also sensed a lot of traffic now. Obviously the kids there today, may not find it easy to learn skating on the busy roads. Of course, we also do not have the Bharat Bandhs now, to catalyze that movement. Then again, I am not sure, if kids of today, WANT to learn skating at all. They should have the time between their XBoxes and Wiis and Facebooks and Blackberrys, right?!
The 5-gardens were not the same either.
The gardens used to be very quiet and absolutely beautiful. One garden was where some cricket would get played, one had some stuff for younger kids, there was yet another more suited for senior citizens, and then one, was frequented by lovers. The central garden was more decorative in nature, smaller, and just made up the circle at that cross street.
Walking on a Sunday evening today, we had to keep dodging scores of other people. In spite of a World Cup cricket match going on. There were all kinds of people everywhere. There was no automatic segregation, like it used to happen earlier. There were also the slightly rougher crowd, that would make young girls a little hesitant to walk alone. This was surely not the case, in my childhood. A lot of traffic and a lot of crowd.
Even around the 5-gardens, there were monstrous buildings that had come up, I am sure, commanding astronomical prices.
We took just the one round. We were little uncomfortable.
I had never felt like this in all these years. Maybe it was just the passage of time.
Or maybe I still associated the place with that Age of Innocence, which had long gone past..
Random Musings 