21 A new Home, a new Address and a new School
And so in the summer of 1959, we moved from Krishna Sadan in Mahim to our new Home in the Reserve Bank Colony at Bombay Central. We shifted to the newly built M building and occupied flat no 576 on the 4th floor of the building – with a panoramic view of the Colony. Our Colony was strategically located on Club Road, where the famous Byculla Club was earlier situated; flanking the Colony was the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and further up the YMCA with its extensive playgrounds. On the main road as you entered Club Road was the newly-built air conditioned and opulent Maratha Mandir – I recall the movie running at that time was Paigham starring Dilip Kumar and Vyjayanthimala.
We entered our new Home with a Puja conducted by our family Konkani priest – I can still smell the aroma of the incense burnt during the ritual, and taste the celebratory lunch that followed. For us children it was a thrill going up and down in the elevator and to watch from my bedroom window, the expansive colony grounds where every evening cricket was played and in the monsoon, football too. Just outside the gate of our colony was the Aarey milk booth where one could buy bottled milk – both toned and full strength.
In June of 1959, I was admitted to the 2nd Standard of the Antonio De Souza High School, a venerable Catholic School founded in 1825 in the posh area of Byculla in the vicinity of which was the famous Byculla Club now alas extinct. There was a test which I had to undergo before my admission was secured but the test was a breeze! We had a school bus from our colony which transported kids to this school – the bus was owned by the Martis Family and Mr Martis used to come faithfully every month in his Morris Car to collect the bus charges. Later on when he died, Mrs Martis took on the Business and co-incidentally many years later when I joined another school, their son Brian became my classmate, but more about that later.
Antonio De Souza High School was also called Anzas and we had a very large playing field and adjoining to this field was the majestic Gloria Church built in the English Gothic Revival architectural style sometime in 1911. Anzas was a boys school and our sister school for girls was the Gloria Convent. So the school bus for the colony carried both boys and girls to our respective schools – I will never forget the incident where four Gloria Convent girls travelling in the bus targeted me and mercilessly teased me till I was almost in tears!
