)
An enduring memory of many a Bengali childhood is reading (or being read to) Sukumar Ray's Hajabarala. The poem is a flight of fantasy - nonsense verse as it is commonly categorised - and is both childlike and profound at the same time. It begins with a young boy, one extremely sultry afternoon, nodding off on a grassy patch with his handkerchief beside him. He wakes up to find the handkerchief has turned into a cat. Astonished, he sputters and stutters, but the cat sagely ticks him off; if an egg could turn into a quacky duck, then what was the big surprise (if a handkerchief did the same)?
Mumbai's spaces seem to be undergoing a transformation of a similar sort. What was once a film and television set has become a gallery and hub for music concerts; an old mill is now a warren of restaurants, jam rooms and art galleries; and the Mahalaxmi Race Course is doubling up as an open air arena for theatre and dance. In a space-starved city, spaces are being rearranged to do more than one thing and being repurposed such that their old character is completely erased from contemporary memory.
Look at the iconic Mehboob Studios where films such as Mother India, Hum Dono and Kaagaz ke Phool were shot. The expansive studio, located in Bandra at a busy street corner, has become an open-air arena for literary festivals, art and music. V G Jairam, joint managing director of Fountainhead Entertainment & Oranjuice Entertainment, which mounts the Mahindra Blues Festival here every year, says, "We were looking for a place and my partner Owen (Roncon) came up with the concept of using Mehboob Studio." It took them some time convincing the owners but in the end the festival found a home in Mehboob and since then, many others have followed suit.
In the city's Lower Parel-Worli corridor, which was once a bustling mill district, stands Blue Frog, a live music performance centre, Canvas Laugh Factory, a stand-up comedy club and Trilogy, a newly opened library-cum-bookstore. The space where Trilogy sits, in a quiet corner of Raghuvanshi Mills, was once a part of Vallabhbhai Thakkar's vast textile empire. (He was murdered by gangsters over a property deal in 1997). The mill is now a centre for luxury home decor stores.
A short distance away from Trilogy, at the end of a narrow alley that emerges from the shadows of large garbage dumpsters, tea stalls and car repair shops is Sitara Studio. It used to be a storehouse for Marathi theatre group Natyasampada, which has discovered several doyens of Marathi stage and screen. Sitara turned into a studio for Marathi television serials in the 1990s and is now an auditorium where plays are held. It also houses a jam room where the city's numerous bands practice night and day.
Sanjna Kapoor, co-founder and director of Junoon, which stages many shows at Sitara, says, "From theatre's perspective, the search for alternative spaces has arisen from the lack of enough performance opportunity." Junoon has worked closely with many new and upcoming spaces, which Kapoor believes is the natural order of things given the "growing number of performing groups and limited access to dates at the National Centre for the Performing Arts and Prithvi (the city's two oldest performance spaces)."
The need for greater creative expression, the lack of affordable non-mall based entertainment and the shrinking pie of open spaces is driving a change in the way the city uses its spaces. And so is the rise in amateur groups willing to look at spaces differently. Kapoor believes these new places have a very specific role to play; strong practices of the arts have evolved from strong amateur engagements of the arts, which the new places allow. "New York's Broadway exists because there is an Off-Broadway and an Off-Off-Broadway. In India we must enable the alternative spaces to thrive."
The city seems to be willing to play along. People make the effort to plan their days, weeks in advance to catch a special show or go to a library or participate in an event. Ahalya Naidu and Mitheel Momaya are co-founders of Trilogy, the library-cum-bookstore that has 80-plus members since it opened in December. Naidu says, "Reading needs space. We wanted people to browse and that needs room." The two says that many of their members live in far-flung suburbs such as Kandivali (nearly 30 km away) and Thane (nearly 40 km) but make a trip to the library every Sunday. They say, "In Mumbai, people know how to incorporate things into their schedule; they have a day plan and a week plan." Many members of Trilogy are young professionals who come in after work or in the middle of the day and are happy to just sit with a book. "Hardly anyone even uses a cell phone here," Ahalya says. There is a desire, perhaps unstated, that these spaces are tapping into.
Getting the crowds in is not the challenge - either at the libraries or at the performance spaces. At Sitara Studio, Nikhil Hemrajani, head of business, says, "People have spread the word about Sitara." His studio, which he and his wife are currently running, has been around for 20 years. It donned its current avatar in late 2012. The plays perform to a full house and the music festivals are packed too, he says.
Audiences are willing to experiment with their time, say the entrepreneurs who run these places. Clue Hunt, a real life escape game where players have to work with a set of clues to get out of a room, was started by Ketan and Tina Chhatpar. The concept was new and the couple had to spend on marketing it but in less than two years, they have opened three branches in Mumbai and are planning to scale up to seven in the next 12-15 months, says Ketan Chhatpar. "While the target market is pretty large, with anyone between 13 and 65 years, our main focus is on corporate teams, college students, and families."
Tina Chhatpar, a dentist, found a space in the same building as her clinic where Ketan has his office too and the two converted it into a real life gaming experience. They discovered that escape games have been popular in cities such as Tokyo and in Silicon Valley since 2007 and decided to follow their passion.
Kunal Kapoor of Prithvi Theatre, who recently used the Mahalaxmi Race Course as an open air arena for night theatre, says, "Performers and audience have been incredibly supportive." Mumbai is not the best place for open air experiments given its huge noise levels and the weather, he says, "particularly when trying to maintain the intimacy of Prithvi Theatre. The raised seating, lights and sound, make-up rooms, backstage area - all this has to be created from scratch. It was challenging, fun and a great learning curve for us all."
There are many old-timers who dismiss these as flash-in-the-pan experiments - the fleeting fancy of a handful of young people. Perhaps, but the large number of people thronging these new spaces is an indication that the city is willing to give them a chance.
But Mumbai is still a long way from other global cities when it comes to using public spaces innovatively, or creating them at all. As Kunal Kapoor says, "The mood in our bureaucracy is simply to make money and if there isn't any to be made, then they are not interested." Perhaps they may be forced to change as people demand better opportunities for their time. Until then, the city is just doing what it does best: adjust.
