Piyo Chai Suno Kahani

Burn bright, eternal flame 

The story behind Lady Jamshedji Road in Mahim is a warm one. Distraught after miscarrying babies, Lady Avabai Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy, the wife of First Baronet, Sir Jamshedji Jeejeebhoy, prayed at Mount Mary’s Basilica. Local Kolis rowed her there in a boat between Salsette and Mahim islands. When a child survived, in the 1840s she donated Rs 1,57,000 to construct the Mahim Causeway, bridging the dangerous swampy distance and connecting the city.

A robust cosmopolitanism marks LJ Road, from St Michael’s Church to Victoria Church. The faithful kneel at pews surrounded by sounds of the call to Azaan. Maharashtrian wedding revellers respectfully halt mid-dance for a Christian funeral procession. Under Muslim rulers of Gujarat, at the tomb of the Sufi saint Hazarat Makhdoom Ali Mahimi, the Qazi of Mahim, rose one of the city’s oldest mosques. It was constructed by Sultan Ahmed Shah in 1431, the year also dating the Haji Ali dargah. A ten-day annual Urs festival draws thronging pilgrims to the shrine where Mahim Police Station cops are first to offer a chadar.

In and around the Contractor Baug and Khan Estate colonies here, the reverence for Soonawala Agiary is traced to Aden. That thriving port attracted large numbers of Parsi traders. An agiary erected for their worship in 1883, by shipping magnate Cowasji Dinshaw Adenwalla, was consecrated with fire (atash) of the holiest Adaran grade.

When the British left Yemen, relocating Parsis brought back the sacred fire that had nurtured them on foreign shores and miraculously burned bright through the bombings. Flown on a chartered Air India Boeing in November 1976, it “rested” at Mahim’s Soonawala Agiary, before being escorted by a convoy personally facilitated by Indira Gandhi. Other Bombay-Poona highway traffic was restricted, until the flame finally glowed in Lonavla’s Adenwalla Agiary