Walking to Learn

He tells them the tomb is that of Ratanbai Mahomed Ali-Jinnah and the place is possibly the only one where Muhammed Ali Jinnah,political leader and founder of Pakistan,had shed tears in public.

The group scribbles down notes and some of them click pictures of the tomb,which they come to know was of Ratanbai or Ruttie,the then Bombay’s most beautiful Parsi,who became the wife of Jinnah. The group learns that she passed away at a very young age.

Baghdadi is playing guide to the group at the cemetery,which has some remarkable graves in the south of the city. The cemetery is one of the pit stops in a five-part walk series called ‘Know Your Mumbai’ organised by the Mumbai Press Club.

“Graveyards are beautiful. In European countries,there are regular visitors who just go there and sit,” says Baghdadi,who has spent more than half his lifetime walking around the city discovering it and its people,habitats and architecture.

When the Mumbai Press Club decided to do something innovative this year,they relied on their oldest friend and cinema buff to take fellow journalists and history researchers on Sunday morning walks.

“I tell everyone,if you want to see Bombay,come with me,I will show you,” he says.

The five-part walk began last week and promises among others a “Taj Mahal in Mumbai,famous tombs,visits to old villages,the ship-breaking yard,the only Hamam left in the city,pockets resided by Tipu Sultan’s descendants,dargahs,old police stations,famous foodstalls,churches and some of the oldest theatres. While commissioned walks by tour guides take people to familiar parts of “old Bombay”,Press Club managing committee member Mrityunjay Bose stresses that a walk with Baghdadi is different as he adds an ambience around the place with his rich commentary. “I have stayed in Mumbai for 20 years. I still made some new discoveries. These are places we have never heard of but is still so important,” he says,adding,that the walk is also “topical” as it includes a visit to the 1930 residence of writer Saadat Hasan Manto,as this year marks his birth centenary.

Photographer Fawzan Husain has brought his two daughters along. A reporter from a national daily calculated the number of times he has passed a lane and missed the huge mousoleum off it.

As the walks crawls through the once-Portugese-ruled Mazagaon,Baghdadi tells the group of tales when it was the most fashionable address in town. The group learns about how some pathans “used to sit with a watermelon turned into a headgear collecting interest” and some of the early settlers of Christians “who would dry fish across the jetty lending its name machi gaon according to one version” and the Chinese “who settled as re-fitters for ships”.

For Baghdadi,a walk is the most liberating process and something that fuels his curiosity.

“We still don’t have a sociological holistic researched piece on old Bombay. I tell my friends who join me for a walk to stand and take the scene outside the building,which was once Majestic,where the first sound film played,” says Baghdadi.

This Sunday,the crowd will walk by Royalchand Premchand building belonging to the founding member of the Bombay Stock Exchange,Premchand Roychand,paying tribute to another Mumbai lore,the stock market.