Alyque Padamsee on Bombay's Colaba Causeway

In the 1960s, I started work on my first play – The Taming of the Shrew – in a historic building called Kulsum Terrace overlooking Colaba Causeway. Today, forty years later, I am working on another Shakespearean drama – Romeo and Juliet – at the same venue. It's the same playwright, the same building and the same locality…yet everything else around me has changed.

I was born in Kulsum Terrace, which belonged to my father, and hence have a very special relationship with Colaba Causeway. The building is one of the country's principal theatrical landmarks – my elder brother Bobby started the English theatre movement in Mumbai from there in the 1940s, and it later went on to become the focal of the Theatre Group of Bombay.

In the 1950s, when I was a schoolboy reveling in shooting small, green peas at the passersby below, or ogling the leggy blondes as a teenager, the Causeway was the premier shopping center of the city. Back then nobody gave a second glance to Warden Road or Linking Road. Colaba Causeway was the most prestigious shopping street, offering everything from garments to shoes, provisions and artifacts. It attracted a very cosmopolitan crowd – Anglo-Indians, Parsis, Sindhis – and it was a childish thrill to hide and watch the fisticuffs that the British sailors would get into outside the Prince of Wales Bar, opposite the Bombay Dyeing showroom.

The Prince of Wales Bar is no more. Neither is Swabal Stores – a Parsi shop selling the most delicious pickles or Atlantic Stores – that had the best variety of provisions and foodstuff in town. The demise of the Strand Cinema is, of course, one of the Causeway's biggest, and most well documented, tragedies.

What survives from the original Colaba Causeway are mainly shops from the golden era of Indian mills and their grand, open showrooms like Bombay Dyeing and Vimal. Or the few oldies like the Regal cinema, Phillips Antiques, Bata and Leopold Bar – whose never-say-die sense of pride and belief in the area is extraordinary. They are extraordinary structures that have altered little in the last half-century. The other shops have changed hands pretty often, and quaint names like Binny's and Kwality have been replaced with Nike, Adidas, Scullers and Barista.

Not that I am complaining. I love change – without change, the world cannot go on. The capacity and love for change is what has kept me young. And private enterprise across the Causeway has certainly improved in terms of quality. Earlier the shops used to be dark and dingy, and the shopkeepers were totally callous towards the buyers. I remember being whacked by a shop-owner simply for standing and admiring a shirt in his display window. Of course, I was so furious that I never ever went back there again!

No, the tragedy of Colaba Causeway is not the changing nature of its shops. That was inevitable. The tragedy of Colaba Causeway lies is in the sheer callousness and indifference of the Municipality. The municipality of 'A' Ward has no time for the Causeway – they are too busy looking after the posh residential area of Cuffe Parade.
Why are the pavement squatters allowed to occupy, and defile, the beautiful arcade of Colaba Causeway? In the former days this would never have been tolerated. The Causeway was known for its beautiful, breezy arcade and was an extremely fashionable street for an evening stroll. Today, the thought of having to dodge the encroaching hawkers and their pavement stalls is enough to put anybody off the idea of coming here. There is no place left to walk on that pavement, let alone to spend some leisurely time.

And then there is the garbage problem – Colaba Causeway is fast turning into a slum, with open piles of rubbish stinking away to glory. There is a marked shabbiness to the entire area, and its dirty and crowded. Thank God, the open-air buses of old have been retired – having to navigate through the congestion of today would not be at all pleasant!

My advice, or plea, is simple – remove the garbage heaps, banish the hawkers and wash the streets regularly. That is all that is required to restore Colaba Causeway to its true heritage. Because, I firmly believe, there is still a very gracious road under all the filth and overcrowding.

Colaba Causeway is one of the city's most exceptional areas. The narrowest strip of land in Bombay, it is a five-minute walk away from the sea from all sides. With Apollo Bunder on one end, and Backbay on the other, it is extremely central. Most importantly, the Causeway has suffered very little structural changes over the years, unlike the rest of the city. There is still time to save it.

And while we are at it, let me put on record that I was born on Colaba Causeway in Bombay, and will (most probably) die on Warden Road, and I know of no such place as Mumbai, AK Naik Marg or Bhulabhai Desai Marg!

(As told to Anubha Charan for Design Today)