Tireless chronicler of Mumbai (1942-2012)
When souls are conjoined, be they people or, a person and a city, the bond of the spirit remains unshakable and unbreakable; so it was between Sharda Dwivedi, historian and writer, and her city. Born in Bombay in 1942, she schooled at Queen Mary’s High School for girls, graduated from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, and obtained a degree in Library Science from the University of Bombay. Her training, coupled with her passionate love affair with the city, made her delve into library archives. Soon, her knowledge of the city and its transformation through the decades was unmatched.
Daughter of a civil servant who had served as Chief Secretary to the Maharashtra Government, Sharada reserved her greatest angst for the current generation of public officials, whose lack of spine and scruples, she opined, were playing a significant role in historic Bombay’s destruction. So, when she served on the civic Mumbai Heritage Conservation Committee, she took on the politicians and withstood their pressures on issues of conservation, never mincing words.
Back in time – I had just graduated. Those were the days when every evening, quite religiously, I would walk down to Mulk Raj Anand’s home at Cuffe Parade, to sit by him and gain some gyan. On one such evening, in walked a dignified lady, unannounced, elegantly dressed in a salwar kameez, her silver hair coiffured. “Ah! Sharda” said Mulk Raj, rising to greet her, “Come in” and as he seated her there were introductions.
Sharda Dwivedi, regal, gracious and warm, her friendly smile immediately made me feel comfortable. They launched into a conversation that soon became animated and centered around the haphazard development and consequent destruction of Bombay. The politician-builder nexus, unabated monetary greed and the bending of laws, was a sore point with both Mulk and Sharda, and came through strongly in their discussion. I listened with rapt attention.
In the 1980s, Sharda had began researching the history of South Bombay’s Taj Mahal Hotel and had come up with so much material that she, along with architect Rahul Mehrotra, began a newspaper column on the city’s history. This led to the idea of a full-fledged book. The result was, Bombay: The Cities Within. An encyclopedia to the city’s transformation, from a group of nondescript marshy, malaria ridden islands in pre-colonial India, to a pulsating city of the 21st century. Today, this book is synonymous with Sharda Dwivedi herself. She was one of those, who made many Mumbaikars realise the worth of their city.
The publication of Bombay: The Cities Within, launched a prolific period of publications co-authored by Sharada. Her works took you back in time along the town’s familiar bends. In her book Fort Walks, co-authored by Rahul Mehrotra, she re-created the old city and peppered it with local lore. Just such a story is of the Ghoga Street that owes its name to a family nick-name that was born out of a quarrel. Histories of the Banganga Tank in the Walkeshwar Temple complex at Malabar Hill titled, Banganga, Sacred Tank; the Chatrapati Shivaji Rail Terminus or Victoria Terminus – Anchoring a City Line: The History of the Western Suburban Railway and its Headquarters in Bombay, and the city’s Art Deco buildings titled, Bombay Deco.
In the preface to Fort Walks, she asks her readers to keep their eyes open for any desecration of landmarks and raise it with the authorities. She urged, “Your opinion, suggestion or objection—however minor it may seem, will go a long way in ensuring that the government safeguards and protects this cultural heritage of the citizens of Bombay.”
A stickler for presentation, Sharda got involved in book production, setting up her own publishing house, ‘Eminence Designs’, in 1996, as she found few publishers who could do justice to the magnificence of the historical material, in particular, the array of archival images she dug up to buttress her texts. Her end came after a brief illness on 6 February 2012. A staunch guardian of Mumbai’s heritage, she will always be remembered fondly and respectfully. Salaam Sharda!