Of serendipity and suggestibility… starting with the street where I live

Neil Warden and his wife Lindsay in their Suffolk garden holding a portrait of their ancestor Captain Richard George Warden, “direct ascendant” of Francis Warden after whom the Mumbai street is named. Pic/Prakash Nayak; (right) Zareen Engineer and Sooni Davar at their grandfather Mancherji Joshi’s statue in Dadar. Pic/Pradeep Dhivar

The years render everything relative. We live daily disconcerted, dwarfed by dizzying tower heights. Hard to think an 11-floor “high-rise” was Breach Candy’s tallest skyscraper around 1960. 

At first a bungalow, Mecklai Mansion, opposite the sea-hugging American Consulate (at the time) in Lincoln House, was bought by a Sindhi builder two decades after the Aga Khan had presided over its 1936 housewarming ceremony. The result was this building I live in. Peacock Palace on Warden Road, officially named Bhulabhai Desai Road, to honour the patriot-philanthropist who as well lent his name to a most vibrant cultural hub on the street: the Bhulabhai Desai Institute, considered the forerunner of the National Centre for Performing Arts.   

While that’s a fairly known fact, I was eager to find out more about the Warden who gave the street its former name. At least, more than the three-line descriptor in Samuel T Sheppard’s handy compendium, Bombay: Place-Names and Street-Names.   

Voila. Serendipity stepped in softly to work the magic it so often does. It happened a few years ago. Walking with me in the garden across our road, my friend Khorshed Nayak suddenly shared a remarkable experience. She and her husband Prakash had returned from visiting their daughter in England. Out on a stroll there, they’d taken a wrong turn along remote paths of the small wool town of Lavenham in Suffolk. Crisscrossing in confusion, they realised they were properly lost, never dreaming a memorable encounter lay literally round the corner.  

Dr Ernest Borges. Pic Courtesy/The director, Tata Memorial Hospital

Exploring that quaint Tudor village — with timber-framed, two-colour tiled cottages dripping medieval heritage — the couple spotted, with some relief, an elderly gentleman raking fallen leaves in his rambling garden. 

Khorshed recounted, “He saw us poring over our map. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked. Visibly excited when we said India, he added, ‘Which city?’ The moment we said ‘Mumbai’, he said, ‘Oh a Mumbai street is named after my ancestor. Warden Road.’ In unison, we burst out saying, ‘What, that’s our road!’”The........

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