Colaba's Eerie But Always Interesting Past

Shabnam Minwalla provides a riveting glimpse into Colaba’s eerie but always interesting past.

- Shabnam Minwalla 

I DECIDED THAT MY FIRST STOP therefore, should be a British cemetery marked on a map in my recent guidebook. I took a taxi down to Moscow Lane, at the very tip of Colaba Causeway and began walking past cannons and Connaught Barracks, past an “officer’s mess” and “Single Officers Accommodation” bungalows—all the way down to an abandoned lighthouse. Not seeing any sign of English tombstones, I turned into the Indian Institute of Geomagnetism and asked a passing geomagnetist where they might be. He asked a passing non-geomagnetist, found out that the cemetery was now a high school, and said rather gallantly, “Good bye my dear” as I trooped off. Behind us, in the back of the old army school, a man was standing solemnly in khaki shorts, in the middle of a huge patch of empty grass, practicing “Reveille” on his trumpet.’

—Pico Iyer in his essay, ‘Bombay: Hobson-Jobson on the Streets’

It was in the early 19th century that the antelopes and jackals of Colaba were seriously disturbed for the first time. The Colaba Cemetery was built in 1816 and served as a final resting place for soldiers and victims of shipwrecks. Then the Colaba Observatory and Lunatic Asylum were built in 1826—close to where the US Club stands today.