Small mercies in big Bombay
- Meher Marfatia
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 hours ago
From Byculla to Bandra, from Juhu to Churchgate, from Dhobi Talao to Mazagaon… little acts of monetary help have led to big beginnings
As everyone scrambles to get their financial year-end accounts in order, we tune in to tales of quiet charity. That touched ordinary lives with uncommon warmth and wisdom.
The good doctor
Imagine a surgeon who unobtrusively slipped small envelopes of money under the pillows of poor patients he treated for free. That was to support their aftercare during the period of bed-rest he prescribed on discharging them.
“Dr RN Cooper was all things to all persons,” noted Bombay Samachar editor Jehan Daruwala in his popular column, Parsi Tari Arsi. “His behaviour and approach to the humblest patients, servants and subordinates was the same as to Viceroys, Governors, Maharajas, statesmen and industrialists consulting him.”
These were several such monetary kindnesses the good doctor so readily extended – some of which his great-grandson, Hormuz Dadabhoy, describes with rightful pride (watch the video).
A founder of the Indian Association of Surgeons, Dr Cooper became the first Indian to be conferred membership of the American Association of Surgeons. There was everything exceptional about the man who lived by the Hippocratic oath and whose sterling contributions the municipal authorities commemorated with the RN Cooper Hospital in Juhu. “The BMC decided to name the hospital after him, with absolutely no lobbying from the Coopers. Quite to the contrary, it came as a surprise to them,” says family friend Dr Jehangir Sorabjee.
It takes a village
The presence of our women at the Olympics owes a great deal to a local dance. Mary D’Souza Sequeira set a record as India’s first lady Olympian and Double International (track and field, as well as field hockey), selected to represent India at the 1952 Helsinki Games.
Though she lacked coaching and finance – the government only extended airfare – Mary had the best people around her. Members of her village community, Rajan in Bandra, organised a fund-raising dance and whist competition. These events helped raise the seed money she needed to do the country proud.
St Joseph’s, her school, had no grounds in which she could practise. “At night, I jumped over the wall, landing in St Andrew’s School, at a time when girls weren’t allowed to train with boys,” Mary would say.
Sprinting against the world’s best with her raw talent and grit, a year before the Olympics, at the first Asian Games, the dual athlete had won a silver and a bronze. Two years later at the Asian Games in Manila, she secured India the gold in the 4x100m. The track-blazer went on to lead India’s women’s hockey team in Australia, England, Japan and Ceylon, besides being a coach and mentor with Indian Railways.
To think this Dhyan Chand Award recipient, for a lifetime contribution to Indian sports, realised her ambition thanks to a simple village dance.
Knock on wood
I came upon one of my favourite examples of gentle philanthropy while researching the history of Victoria Road (renamed Sant Savta Marg) in Byculla. Facing such august institutions as the Masina Hospital and Rustom Baug here, stands Mustafa Bazar. This row of timber depots and sawmills is where merchants like Farouk Sodagar flourished. It was said: “Bazar e Mustafa, kharidar e Khuda – Name this market after Prophet Mohammad and Allah will send customers.”
At 1901-established Latiff Sons, inherited from his grandfather, Abubaker Abdul Latiff, a proud Mohamed Ali Latiff shares a beautiful account of generosity (watch the video). Abubaker would phone the shop daily around noon in the 1930s – on its telephone number lengthened to 4860 from the quaint two-digit 60 it was originally.
Ostensibly, it appeared that he was calling for both, a report of the day’s business at his store and to find out how other timber shops on either side of Latiff Sons were faring. But it was not about beating the competition. The real reason for making that afternoon call was far nobler. Shop owners who struggled with sales were invited to the back door of Latiff Sons, to buy quality logs at cost price. The rear entrance: so that passersby need not witness the largesse.
As Mohamed Ali Latiff observes, “He always saw himself as part of the community, wanting every timber trader to do well. There’s so much to learn from people like him.”
An accidental cafe
How Tulun Chen came to possess Kamling, the iconic, now shuttered Cantonese-Hunan eatery at Churchgate, is an account warmer than the soup bowls that steamed up his tables.
It all began with an incident of pure serendipity when he was a very young man. Crossing the road after a show of The Guns of Navarone playing at Rex Cinema near Ballard Estate, 18-year-old Chen and his friends saw an elderly Chinese man knocked down by a taxi. Disconcerted but caring, they admitted him to hospital.
The accident victim recovered, revealing that he was KC Tham from Hong Kong. Getting their neighbours and friends involved, the boys somehow pooled together money for his 3000-rupee sea passage back. On recovering, when he was about to sail, the gentleman pressed a piece of paper into Chen’s hand, whispering, “This is yours.” Gratitude for the so-very-Bombay kindness of strangers – it was the sale deed for Kamling. Opening in 1939, the restaurant gradually expanded with over 400 menu items to delight customers for 80 years.
Tailored for music
Credit for much of the music the country enjoys to this day should go to a small group of Dhobi Talao tailors.
John Gomes was a little boy growing up in the stables of the Wadia bungalow on Malabar Hill, where his father was employed as a butler. Daring to dream big enough, he established an empire that changed the country’s Western music retail and education scene forever. Furtados. Humble though his beginnings were, what 26-year-old John Gomes had in heaps was belief in the dignity of labour and a head for enterprise.
The year was 1953. Going about Dhobi Talao diligently to sell Catholic religious items to community members in the villages of Cavel, Dabul, Sonapur and Khotachi Wadi, he heard news which proved a turning point in his life. BX Furtado & Sons, in Jer Mahal, risked being liquidated. Established in 1865 by Goan immigrant Bernard Xavier Furtado, the shop sold religious supplies and serviced musical instruments. Next door, his brother Luis Manoel set up LM Furtado & Co, stocking print music.
The tailors of Dhobi Talao (the transit point where sailors inhabiting native clubs, called coors, got measured for clothes before boarding their ship) pooled in funds for John to win an auction bid for BX Furtado. “If you’re honest, people back you, my father said,” remembers Anthony Gomes, director of the Furtados group of companies.
Working hard through nights, John turned around Furtados’ fortunes in three months. He introduced piano hire and a printing press with an arm to manufacture wedding cards. In 1959 he ventured to buy LM Furtado, persevering when it was near impossible to, with the 1961 government ban on imported instruments. Living till 2003, he was gratified to see his four children march Furtados forward to the reputation and success it enjoys.
Lead, kindly light
It must be the best night to explore Matharpacady. Or so I thought on a Christmas evening a few years ago. Almost every East Indian village in the city sparkled with stars and fairy lights. Not this one I found myself suddenly treading through in the dark. Residents of the historic enclave had decided to not flood Matharpacady with electric lighting that festive latter half of December. The money they collectively saved this way could, instead, be donated to COVID relief funds.
Softly glowing candles on verandahs lit the otherwise bleak scene. And the hospitality of its inhabitants warmed visitors – or rather random strangers – some more, being invited to enjoy freshly baked Xmas sweets.
This village has always brimmed with heart and hope. Matharpacady nestles snug in midtown Mazagaon, a maze of tight paths I tumbled into from the Dr Mascarenhas Road turn-off at St Isabel School. Estimated to be over 300 years old, it is now left with the merest fraction of lovely split-level cottages inhabited by a once sizeable Catholic population.
In the thick of rampant reconstruction, with monstrous cranes spookily silhouetted against skies grey with pollution, Matharpacady springs surprises at every step. Vintage Indo-Portuguese cottages with round brick roofs present half-hidden porches, veiled verandahs, ancient staircases, unexpected doorways.
Yes, Matharpacady soldiers on. Continuing to believe in goodness. Reciting rosaries for safety. Seeking comfort in maxims like “Plague and pestilence make the shield of faith even stronger.”
© Meher Marfatia
Multimedia production & digital marketing: Danesh Mistry
Dear Meher, you know I love your stories. But each of the gems I read today taught us lessons of generosity, philanthropy, perseverence & kindness. I hope all hearts were touched. ♥️
Such beautiful stories. An article like this one in times like these is itself and act of kindness. Well done, M!
Wonderful to read this with my Sunday morning toast and marmalade in these unsettling times. Thank you
Very nice stories , tells d stories of kind hearted n compassionate souls.
Lovely walk through the history of Mumbai as usual