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

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 IndianNation, 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. 

“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. 

The style mile dons new clothes 

Today, the demarcations at Chetana are clearly defined: the restaurant—known for its sumptuous thalis—overlooks the street, its bay windows intact. While the bookshop is relegated to the back, the art gallery and cultural centre no longer exist. In 1990, Arya set up Chetana Craft Centre next door, which stocked handlooms, textiles and jewellery from across India—from kalamkari sarees to ikat prints and mangalgari cotton in sharp contemporary silhouettes. In 2021, the centre wound up, and the space was rented out to designer Wendell Rodricks’ namesake store. 

“I used to travel frequently to remote corners of India to meet the artisans and then showcase their weaves at the centre. But I’m old now, and the store wasn’t a sustainable business in the last three to four years. The COVID-19 pandemic did affect sales, but the popularity of online shopping meant that our business had slowed down even before the pandemic struck,” shares Arya. When it opened over three decades ago—under the able direction of revivalist of Indian handloom and handicrafts, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Roshan Kalapesi of the Paramparik Karigar—the ethos of Chetana was akin to what a clutch of new homegrown labels in the rear lanes of Kala Ghoda today exemplify: local, mindful and handwoven, long before they became buzzwords in the sartorial lexicon. 

Past perfect

The crescent-shaped tract of Kala Ghoda—part of the larger Fort district—is long considered the city’s arts quarter, home to several galleries, cafes, restaurants and retail stores along with places of worship and institutions like the Maharashtra State Archives, the editorial office of the 76-year-old Marg magazine, the Mulla Feroze Library guarding a rich corpus of Persian manuscripts, and the Le Cercle Littéraire, perhaps the oldest French library in India. Architecturally characterised by handsome Victorian, Indo-Saracenic and Neoclassical edifices such as the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, the Elphinstone College, the David Sassoon Library & Reading Room and the Army & Navy Building, the area has always been conducive to the stroller.

Bursting at the seams 

A walk down the tree-lined Rampart Row—from the sculpture of the riderless horse, an iconography that emerged in 2017 from the erstwhile bronze equestrian statue of King Edward VII, sculpted by Sir Joseph Edgar Boehm and a gift to Bombay from the Sassoon Family that anchored the traffic island until uprooted in the mid-1960s—reveals a lot has changed since Arya’s narration of the heyday of Kala Ghoda. A few steps from Chetana, a slew of designer labels have recently begun to occupy prime frontage: Pernia’s Pop-Up Studio, Payal Singhal, Falguni & Shane Peacock, SDS by Kunal Shah, and Ekaya. Somewhere in between is Golden Thimble, the oldest surviving ‘fashion boutique’ in the area, established in 1970 by Munira Chudasama and now run by her daughter Shaina NC. In 1987, the multi-designer Ensemble opened around the corner towards Lion Gate. Ahead of its time both spatially—restored and designed by architect Bijoy Jain—and conceptually, it began by housing creations of independent fashion designers who didn’t have their stores.  

However, it isn’t just Rampart Row that is witnessing this metamorphosis. The many rear lanes and alleys of Kala Ghoda—dense with old, crumbling, Mangalore tile-roofed buildings and traditionally home to law firms, offices of chartered accountants and stock brokers, and dimly-lit shops specialising in machine tools like air compressors and circular saws—is where the transformation is stark, and more so since the pandemic. Newer luxury storefronts include Herstory, Gaurav Gupta, Payal Khandwala, Shantnu & Nikhil, Sartori, Shivan & Narresh, Anita Dongre, Aisha Rao, Kunal Rawal, Gulabo by Abu-Sandeep, Gazal Gupta, Dolly J, Vaishali S and Jatin Malik. Some have set up shop in centuries-old heritage structures, taking over entire commercial buildings, a model that banks in South Mumbai adopted in the 1980s and 1990s.  

What do these luxury retail spaces add to Kala Ghoda in a larger cultural context? Do they just define a sort of cosmopolitanism for a select elite, or is the neighbourhood benefitting from them in any way?  

Adieu to despair and disrepair

“Historically, Kala Ghoda was always Bombay’s art and culture hub, at least until the middle of the last century,” says Vaishali Mangalvedhekar, partner at SJK (Shimul Javeri Kadri) Architects, who worked on restoring Fabindia’s flagship store in the area. The space in Jeroo Building was occupied by the Bank of India, before which it was a horse stable. The architecture firm began the restoration work in 2003; the ground floor was completed a year later and the first floor in 2006. “We had to unearth the arches and the tall, beautiful wooden ceilings hidden by false gypsum ceilings and cast-iron columns concealed in ply boxing. There was an overall degree of neglect,” she explains. 

“The precinct did have retail spaces then—there was Kapoor Lampshades and the iconic Rhythm House [which shuttered in 2016]. But the buildings were mostly non-descript, their elegant façades crumbling. Repair work was haphazard, with frontages covered in insensitive signage, stone walls caked in layers of paint or overrun with vegetation, and windows packed in multiple box grilles,” she adds. This sense of despair was reflected across the neighbourhood. Once offices and banks shut for the day, the area—especially the poorly-lit back alleys—would be dingy and unsafe, with drug peddlers lurking around. “No one knew or cared about old buildings, nor did they point out that this is Art Deco or that it is Victorian Gothic. It is only in the last 15 years or so that people began thinking about restoring and taking care of their property,” says Brinda Miller, chairperson, Kala Ghoda Association (KGA).

The first attempt at reviving the neighbourhood can be pinned to the maiden edition of the Kala Ghoda Arts Festival held in February 1999, a nine-day cultural event organised by the citizen-led Kala Ghoda Association. Since then, the locale comes alive every year, with lakhs of people in attendance. The KGA—comprising architects, urban planners and heritage experts—was conceived in 1998 and contributes towards the upkeep of the area, including paving for pedestrian walkways, creating a public amphitheatre, installing street furniture, tree guards and information signboards, and restoring buildings in partnership with public or corporate bodies. In 1995, the Heritage Regulations Board for Greater Bombay accorded neighbouring Fort—and by extension, Kala Ghoda—the status of a heritage district. 

In the mid-2000s, Mangalvedhekar and her colleagues had anticipated the area to change for the better. “The transformation was slower than we had hoped for but  has been brilliant because it reinstates the historic position of the precinct known for art and shopping. It has something for everyone—from mid-bracket stores like Westside or Fabindia to more high-end ones,” she says. 

Expanding on the idea of luxury brands occupying heritage structures that were otherwise slumped into somnolence, Miller says, “Landlords slowly began to realise the potential that the buildings in the area held and that renovating and maintaining them would attract better rents. Lawyers’ offices started turning into fashion boutiques, and let’s be honest, the fact that such stores now occupy these spaces means that their upkeep is guaranteed.” She cites the example of designer Anita Dongre’s two-storeyed flagship store, which opened earlier this year on the main thoroughfare. Housed in Sassoon Building, a Grade-III heritage structure from the late 1800s, the 8,500 square feet space was thoughtfully worked upon by conservation architect Kirtida Unwalla and interior designer Shonan Purie Trehan.

Similarly, the Shantnu & Nikhil store next door is in a 133-year-old building; the structure was stripped down to its bones to create a space that bridges time. “There were layers of insensitive adaptations it had suffered, the latest one being the office of a travel agency. Thus, our first task was to peel off the newest layers. Steel columns supporting wooden beams, Burma teak rafters, and age-old lime plaster were discovered. Once the original form of the building was revealed, the task was to use it as a guide to insert the new build delicately,” explains Viraj Kataria, design director at Achal Kataria Architects that was roped in on the project.

Ground realities 

While Lower Parel and Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) might be seen as the new destinations for retail, dining and entertainment in the city, they lack the “aesthetic pull” or “old-world charm” of Kala Ghoda, as Miller mentions. “You cannot compare a mall to a heritage building. There is a certain prestige in being part of a heritage district,” she says. Although retail shopping has gained momentum online, Kala Ghoda continues to drive footfalls, given its historic significance and the draw it holds for tourists.

“The model of creating a shopping hub in Kala Ghoda is similar to what we’ve been seeing in European cities for a few decades now. Older buildings are repurposed to set up stores, restaurants and cafes, and it makes sense to have them clustered together—it creates a brand for the locality,” says real estate broker Kailash Rajani. Besides a certain ‘snob appeal’ attached to the area, this surge can also be attributed to the shift in the retail landscape from neighbouring Colaba, which seemed inevitable. “Colaba, at some point, became too congested with shops. Stores were losing their frontage and visibility as hawkers encroached on footpaths. Some of the spaces aren’t large enough; parking is not easily available anymore. The next most viable option would be neighbouring Kala Ghoda. Here, there are two dedicated car parks, and people realised that as offices, courts, and banks would shut for the day, the area had greater potential to become lively,” adds Rajani. Furthermore, with the controversy surrounding the Mumbai Port Trust’s (MbPT) attempts over the last five years to evict tenants (and sub-let tenants) in Colaba—whose leases have expired or those who have allegedly failed to pay their dues—newer retail players are looking at Kala Ghoda and beyond, towards, Fort or Ballard Estate. The MbPT is one of the largest landowners in the city, controlling over 1,800 acres of the eastern shoreline from Colaba to Wadala.   

Following the abatement of the pandemic in 2022, “rents for retail spaces in Kala Ghoda have been in the range of ₹ 400-450 per square foot on the covered area [built-up area] for anything over 2,000 square feet, while some have also transacted at ₹ 500-600 per square foot on carpet area,” says Prateek Misra, director of luxury retail at real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) India. According to Misra, market rates in Kala Ghoda rose once the third wave of the pandemic began to subside last year. “An increased demand for luxury fashion, and malls being closed for long durations during the lockdowns meant that more brands wanted to open larger experiential stores in South Mumbai,” he says.

Given that Kala Ghoda still has many tenanted buildings that are weathered and ageing, does the Rent Control Act pose a hindrance? “It is a major ill for landlords and tenants,” says conservation architect Vikas Dilawari. “It’s high time rent control is modified, starting with commercial properties. There are prime spaces on the entire DN Road stretch [in Fort] that are vacant and disputed in court for this reason,” he adds. Misra, however, offers a differing opinion: “As long as the contract offers protection to the brand, and both the landlord and tenant are on the same page, the Rent Control Act isn’t a problem. Luxury labels prefer clean, non-litigated and freehold spaces and are more likely to face a supply crunch as many buildings in South Mumbai are tenanted or part of the pagdi system.” JLL transacted the Anita Dongre store at approximately ₹ 350 on carpet, with the landlord doing most of the scope of work for the brand.

Market forces, however, are a factor that can’t be fought against, and shifts in occupancy will keep occurring. In 2013, jewellery designer Nitya Arora decided to house her label Valliyan in a space  she shared with her friend, fashion designer Masaba Gupta. “When Masaba moved her store to Lower Parel, the landlord here wanted to hike the rent by 50 per cent. With the industry still grappling with demonitisation and the change in the Goods and Service Tax (GST) rules, it wasn’t sustainable to have that space anymore. Plus, the brand did well online and had a presence at other multi-brand stores in the city,” shares Arora. She gave up the space in 2018. “Honestly, a retail store entails a lot of work. Moreover, as a product, jewellery is not seen as much of a necessity, as opposed to clothes. Perhaps two of ten people who come here will purchase jewellery,” she points out. 

Hanging by a thread? 

Considering the influx of high-end labels and bridge-to-luxury boutiques, have simpler eateries and smaller shops been edged out? Looking back in time, what, then, was the turning point that galvanised this makeover?

In the wake of the global recession in 2008, the rather buoyant art market crashed for the first time in seven years, compelling several smaller galleries in Kala Ghoda to wind up their businesses, with premises lying deserted. A year later, the then four-table-large Kala Ghoda Café made a quiet entry on Ropewalk Lane. Tailoring shops Stylo and Smart & Hollywood were still thriving; several existing tenants in the area hadn’t thought of sub-letting their premises yet. “Around the corner from the café stood a boutique called Muse, run by Tarini Jindal. It had clothing from a few European and American labels and some chic Indian labels, with a very avant-garde aesthetic,” shares Radhi Parekh, the founder of ARTISANS’, a gallery and shop committed to promoting indigenous art, craft and design that also hosts evenings of music and conversations. After working as a designer in the digital space in Noe Valley in San Francisco, Parekh had just returned from the United States. Her father wanted to sell his one-storeyed building, where ARTISANS’ eventually set up shop on the first floor in 2011. “Having previously witnessed the resurgence of urban neighbourhoods like Covent Garden in London, I thought this vernacular building had the potential to be a design destination. Following the economic crash, and given that I had no experience running such a space, I didn’t want to take on the entire building as that meant there wouldn’t be any income,” says Parekh. The ground-floor space, occupied by the unassuming Madras Café since 1952, was then lying vacant. But for Parekh, it was crucial to let it out to the right brand.

Around the same time, designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee happened to showcase a few pieces—just a rack—at Muse next door. “He was looking to have his own flagship store in the arts quarter, and I thought he was the right person to occupy that space. It was a rather strategic decision—there was nobody of that nature around. Sabyasachi had a very singular vision, and worked with handmade techniques. Even though the rent would be lower than what one would expect, I wouldn’t have opted for others who had outbid him,” shares Parekh. 

This development was in 2010. Mukherjee—from occupying less than 2,000 square feet at this location on Forbes Street, graduated to about 8,000 square feet on Rampart Row in 2014, and today boasts a majestic address at Horniman Circle—along the periphery of Kala Ghoda—at over 25,000 square feet.

According to Parekh, it was around the epicentre of the first Sabyasachi store that smaller standalone stores like Tulsi by Neeru Kumar—a senior textile designer from the National Institute of Design (NID), Translate that specialises in ikat, and Soham Dave, an Ahmedabad-based textile designer, began coming up in the rear lanes. “While they have a more or less similar clientele, they are all surviving today, without stepping on each other’s toes,” she mentions. These shops have a carpet area of 250-300 square feet and are yet well-laid out. “Their collections aren’t aimed at being fast-changing or trendy, so despite being tiny, there is a clever use of space,” she adds.

Much of a muchness?

Once Mukherjee vacated the ground-floor space rented out by Parekh, couturier Gaurav Gupta went on to occupy it for seven years. “When we wanted to have a bigger footprint in the city, we weren’t looking beyond Kala Ghoda,” shares Gupta. Earlier this year, he shifted the label’s address a few lanes away on Apollo Street. It is an experiential retail space spanning three floors, “designed to carry haute couture, demi couture and luxury prêt pieces along with menswear collections.” Meanwhile, for Parekh, Gupta’s exit was both interesting and worrying. “I had requests from real estate agents bringing in brands but had to hold a lot of them at bay,” she says. What these brands were creating didn’t align with what Parekh steadfastly had in mind. “It didn’t make sense to let the space out to a popular chain powered by heavy private-equity investment. It also gave me an insight into where the neighbourhood might head towards,” she explains. Eventually, the space was rented out to Suvasa, a family-owned business that has grown slowly over 40 years. “They do have a few stores across India, but at the end of the day, they are not just a tenant.” 

In the interstices of the precinct lies another ecosystem, with Medows Street (now Nagindas Master Road), or the old English Bazaar Street, as the nerve centre of a spectrum of businesses that flow into its multiple dendrite lanes. Save for Sundays, this back street is heaving with activity. There are tea shops, scrap dealers and raddi shops, and Xerox and stationery shops offering everything from box files and inkjet cartridges to lawyers’ robes and notary services. There are key makers sitting cheek by jowl with typists who double as translators of legal documents. There is an Irani café, an Udupi hotel, and street stalls meant for a quick lunch of ‘rice plate’ or chowmein noodles. Look out for the signage on the machinery shops here—whether through the gaze of nostalgia or appreciative of sheer design ingenuity is up to the beholder.  

This is also a streetscape where change is writ large. Emerging parallel to these establishments are bars, alternate art spaces and mid-level—often matchbox-sized—designer boutiques. A popular spot on the back street is the restaurant Americano—opened in 2019 by chef Alex Sanchez along with Mallyeka Watsa—known for its casual, lively atmosphere, small plates and fine cocktails. “For us, it was definitely no mistake—we wanted a space in Kala Ghoda and waited for a year and a half before finding one. The area, for me, has always had a quaint, unique charm to it,” says Sanchez. It reminds him of the SoMa neighbourhood of San Francisco, a city he calls home, “with its godowns, art galleries and a bohemian air about it”. Sanchez, however, has mixed feelings about the templatisation in the neighbourhood. “One can definitely say it is a fashion hub; leading designers covet a storefront here. But if you just have high-end retail, it attracts only a subset of the demographic, whereas if there is range and diversity, it becomes a dynamic space, like Khan Market in Delhi, for example,” he shares. Elaborating on why landlords in Kala Ghoda prefer letting their spaces out to retail over restaurants, he says, “The biggest challenge for restaurateurs is their overheads—your rent cannot be at a percentage higher than your revenue. Eateries need a robust workforce, whereas most clothing stores do not. The latter can, therefore, afford to pay higher rents.”

Existing tenants will attract similar tenants in the locality, creating a snowball effect. Given the tendency of conspicuous consumption when it comes to wedding-shopping, what does it spell for the locality? “Once the Omicron wave subsided [in mid-2022], landlords insisted on going back to pre-pandemic rates. Wedding-spending is immune to market rates. The market in this neighbourhood is pretty resilient; almost in a euphoric bubble of its own. So, I’d call it ‘wedding fashion’ instead of ‘luxury fashion’,” argues Parekh. 

Robert Stephens, principal architect at RMA Architects and author of Bombay Imagined: An Illustrated History of the Unbuilt City, whose office is in the neighbourhood, cannot help but feel that the new ecology of Kala Ghoda is just another form of the old ecology, where design was at the forefront. “Good design and production (formerly of mechanical equipment) proved to be lucrative, and encouraged other vendors to set up shop. The new burst of energy is what the district must have felt when the previous wave of mechanical products hit the market,” he shares. 

Sense and sensitivity 

As a precinct that sits at the intersection of economic production and cultural development, the proliferation of the retail landscape in Kala Ghoda is also translating into being mindful of its visual and spatial fabric without veering into nostalgia. For Mangalvedhekar, fashion designers understand the need to transcend a “museological and educational” approach and instead, deal with ideas of continuity by bridging the past with the future. “What you are designing is for today and for tomorrow. This infusion of fashion with heritage is amazing because designers follow the principles of geometry, balance, proportion and colour, working with the interpretation of culture and tradition in their creations—exactly the principles used in designing buildings. So they are, more often than not, aligned with and understand the ideas of beauty, of preserving an endearing part of our city and its collective memory,” she elaborates.

In terms of retaining the authenticity and aesthetics of the district, how do you articulate the idea of heritage as a dynamic, fluid, evolving entity? An evolution of our contemporary heritage is one where spaces are re-used and reinterpreted, with conservation efforts made more collaborative by involving multiple stakeholders. “Conservation is always flexible whereas preservation is rigid. Hence, flexibility should be allowed; it is up to individuals’ (owners and designers) sensibilities on how authenticity is respected. If they do so, that’s a brownie point. At least the good thing is that it is not replaced by an ugly monstrosity,” says Dilawari.

Misra is of the opinion that art and heritage become part of the narrative that luxury labels are trying to sell, making the experience which Kala Ghoda has to offer as the centre of it all. Does an address in Kala Ghoda, then, have the advantage of being part of a small, close-knit community, one where the old and the new can flourish together? “Sure, they do co-exist but this dynamic is quickly changing as it is lucrative for landlords to rent spaces to retail backed by investment as opposed to smaller, riskier players,” explains Parekh

The gradual upkeep of Kala Ghoda has made the government realise the similar potential that other districts in town hold—seen as a blessing in disguise for the city. For Miller, Kala Ghoda is “a place where you rub your shoulders with everyone, and that’s nice”. Expanding on Millers’ thoughts about the area’s heterogeneous nature, Stephens adds, “I will never set foot in any of the high-end clothing stores; that’s just not my thing. For this reason, I desperately hope more bookstores open here soon! But neighbourhoods are like this, no? Everything is not for everyone, but something will be for someone. And when we find something that brings us great joy in Kala Ghoda, we experience cultural freedom,” shares Stephens. 

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