By Raj Lalwani, TwoCircles.net
What must it be like to witness the birth of a city? To start a new life in a place where life was new, to grow up in a city that is still a child. It was in 1981 when Zeenat’s family, along with a small section of their community, moved from the main city to New Bombay. She was only a young child at that time and was excited about living in a large bungalow, unlike Bombay, where even the privileged seem to stay in matchbox-sized flats.
“Earlier, if we wanted to go to a good restaurant, we would drive to Lonavla (a neighbourhood hill station),” she laughs, but then ponders, “now, everything is here, it’s lovely. But considering how fast things are going, maybe, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing, this will eventually become another Bombay.”
In a very curious way, Zeenat, who runs a printing business with her husband, has grown up alongside New Bombay. The highway that leads to Vashi is 38 years old, exactly the same age as this mother of two. Her daughters are not posing for this picture, but they are still a part of it, since the frame in the background is a portrait of theirs—incidentally enough, a picture that I had made, last year.
In the bungalow right opposite her own, stays her 93-year old grandfather, who shows me a wall that has two black and white photos of a young child who looks just like the girls in the other picture. “That’s young Zeenat,” he says, proudly.
TCN Series: Ramadan 1436