Has Kala Ghoda lost control of the fabric of its culture?

By Khorshed Deboo
03 May, 2023

Has Kala Ghoda lost control of the fabric of its culture?

By Khorshed Deboo
03 May, 2023

With more and more retail players entering Mumbai’s arts and heritage quarter every few months, what impact has it had on the area’s socio-economic and cultural landscape?

“We had restaurants, we had bookshops, we had places where you could go and play chess—but here was a place where all three came together,” writes Gerson da Cunha in Awakening: 60 Years of an Eternal Journey, a commemorative volume published in 2006 to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Chetana, Mumbai’s eminent institution located at Rampart Row (now K. Dubash Marg) in Kala Ghoda. The veteran theatre actor and adman was introduced to Chetana by his friends—actor Bomi Kapadia and artist Mehlli Gobhai—in the 1950s. 

Established in September 1946 by Sudhakar Dikshit, former assistant editor of the Patna-based daily Indian Nation, along with writer Raja Rao, the space was a single, open-plan area of 2,500 square feet comprising a bookshop, a cultural centre, the Chetana Art Gallery, and a spot to enjoy tea and snacks—a congregation point for artists, musicians and poets. 

Until 2010, the lanes of Kala Ghoda largely wore a deserted look. Image: Robert Stephens

The vernacular-style building that now houses Artisans' lying vacant, around 2009-2010. Image: Robert Stephens

“Chetana was the crucible for the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Group, fuelling the currents of art before the Jehangir Art Gallery came up across the road in 1952. Artists like Prafulla Dahanukar, Lalitha Lajmi and Laxman Pai had their works displayed at Chetana before they went on to fame. Down the street, there was Thackers’ Bookshop, a store called The Drawing Room specialising in vintage French furniture, and Artists’ Centre, an exhibition venue from 1950 that recently had to vacate their premises,” recalls Dikshit’s daughter Chhaya Arya, now in her eighties. 

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