‘11 Limited Colaba to Bombay’ by Paul Fernandes and Rahul Mehrotra: Indelible Illustrations of Life in India’s Greatest City

“I met Paul Fernandes in September,” I told Meera, my friend and partner in crime from my college and medical school days. I looked at her in delight, as she stirred two sugar cubes into her Darjeeling tea. The Arabian Sea shimmered outside our picture window at the Taj, cradling the boats just beyond the Sea Lounge windows.

 “At the SALA Festival in Menlo Park. California, not Bandra.”

Meera raised her eyebrow. “California? I’m so glad you make it a point to come back here so often.”

“He was signing this exact book,” I said, tapping the hardcover reverently. I admired the lifelike sketches of the Band Stand in Colaba, and the Mumbai police officer in that indigo uniform — right outside Flora Fountain. I asked him, ‘Paul, are you from Bombay?’ And he said, ‘No. But I love Bandra.’”

Meera laughed. “That’s such a Bandra thing to say. Everyone who’s from Bangalore but wants street credibility says that.”

We opened “11 Limited – Colaba to Bombay” together, like it was a childhood scrapbook. It isn’t a book you flip through casually. It’s a book you share. With a friend. Over a flavorful Bombay sandwich and warm nostalgia.

“Stop 266 — Mount Mary Church!” I practically squealed, pointing at the full-page sketch.

“Stop what?” Meera looked up from her sandwich, crumbs of nostalgia dusting her sleeve like old HSC report cards.

“Mount Mary. Our Mount Mary! Look how he’s drawn her — like a pearl-draped granny keeping the city in check. I passed anatomy because of her blessings.”

Meera smirked. “You mean the exam in which you told Ms Lokur that you knew everything, but you were very sleep-deprived?”

I gave her that look. The one that only someone who’s watched you cry over exam scores, ad nauseam, can understand.

“Stop 164 — Cusrow Baug,” she said, flipping the page. “God, look at those Parsi aunties on the verandah counting wedding invites. This sketch is basically every Navroz season in one frame.”

“I once crashed a lagan nu bhonu there,” Meera smiled with a wink.

“You weren’t invited!”

“Neither were you. But you showed up for the caramel custard.”

“Fair,” I said, sipping my tea. “And that custard was worth the gate-crashing.”

“Stop 144 — Jagdamba Tiffin House.” I didn’t even need to say it. She beat me to it.

“Eight puris. One samosa. Dissection class after. And your dramatic swoon outside the dissection hall.”

“You owe me a samosa still,” I said.

“I owe you a gym membership,” she replied.

We turned the page to Stop 128 — Flora Fountain. I loved this story about a man who missed his wife, who had planted the jasmine in a pot that had overtaken the living space.

“Do you remember Prajna,” I asked, “the girl who let her hair down and wore a jasmine in it so that all the boys would follow her around campus?”

“Yes, and now she runs a Gujarati meal prep business called ‘Dhoklas for Desis’.”

“Of course she does.”

We were in stitches, laughing by the time we reached Stop 100 — Eros Cinema. Fernandes drew it like a time machine in beige and black.

 We used to bunk classes here, watch matinees — “Satte Pe Satta,” “Shaan,” “Disco Dancer” — and smuggle in chocolate éclairs and samosas wrapped in biology notes.

“Remember that time you started crying during “Silsila”?

“It was a different time. I was still an incurable romantic, then.”Yeh kahaan aa gaye hum…”

Meera pointed at Stop 78 — Regal Cinema. “This is where you fell in love with Julie Andrews.”

Yes, we came here as a family, and my father bought me my first LP, that I played every day, all the time, and no one dared to complain. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens…

“And “My Fair Lady,” my first movie alone with another medical student. How I loved comparing him to Henry Higgins, and sang that out loud every time I saw him. I missed Bombay so much in a snowstorm, cooped up in my tiny flat on the Upper East Side in Manhattan. All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air…
And the idea that musical theatre should be mandatory medical curriculum.”

“You wanted to sing your viva answers.”

“Well, wouldn’t that have been loverly…?”

Then came Stop 62 — Colaba Causeway, painted like a carnival of commerce.

“I bargained this bag down from ₹900 to ₹250,” I said, pointing at a woman in the sketch who may have passed for any one of us in 1991.

“And then the color ran in the rain,” Meera reminded me.

“But it lives on — as a placeholder for amazing shopping sprees.
Now I know where the empty Calvin Klein Obsession, Drakkar Noir bottles ended up.”

We passed Stop 22 — Gateway of India, Fernandes capturing the birds, the bhutta walla, the sing-dana walla, and the swirl of tourists near Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’s statue. I reminded Meera about our boat excursion to Ajanta-Ellora Caves.

I still have the old black-and-white pic of the lovebirds praying in front of the 6th century monolithic temple dedicated to Lord Shiva. They did get married, no?
Khakhra carrying and thermos-wielding Gujarati families, talking nonstop. A French backpacker who wanted to take our photo. And the sea shimmering like a Bollywood dream around us.

Meera sighed. “Bombay’s greatest illusion: turning chaos into cinema, providing hope to all those who wanted to belong to a city whose roads were supposed to be paved in gold.”

We lingered on the spread showing Rhythm House. Fernandes drew it like a cathedral — windows, wooden shutters, cassette racks, and posters of legends.

“I bought my first Beatles album here,” I said. “Abbey Road. The cashier said it was ‘slightly scratched but very special.’”

“You quoted that line for weeks.”

“And it still applies to most of our class crushes,” I grinned.

We turned another page and reached Jehangir Art Gallery. I had once tried to impress a girl by pretending I understood postmodern brushwork. She thought I was an art buff!
You all made fun of me in the café opposite that served us very good filter coffee, and French fries we dipped in mustard and ketchup…

By the time we reached the pages near VT — Stop 18, if you’re counting — Fernandes had drawn a full brass baaraat band, and a sudden turn of events to a musician who had practised belting out Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture all his life, for a break that finally came. Remember we used to count how many we could spot in a day from our bus home during wedding season?

Meera chuckled. “Honestly, they were loud, and cheesy, and played Om Shanti Om and Raat Baaqi, Baat Baaqi songs.”

Next came Afghan Church — Stop 12, drawn in soft shadows and golden light.

I whispered, “Still there. An icon of days gone by.”

“And around the corner — Shireen and Rusi’s Irani Café!”

Fernandes captured the clink of beer bottles with openers perched on them, the brun maska my father bought when he received his first advance for a job as a sales rep.

Then finally — Stop 6, the magical mystery shop. Fernandes didn’t name names, but I know it’s him.

But I laughed out loud when P.K. Lahiri bought an antique typewriter with Russian keys for ₹20,000.

“He thought it was a bargain!” He did not even bother to check that he couldn’t type a screenplay in Russian!

“Of course he did. It’s Bombay. The lie was the souvenir.”

The bawas, the bhaiyas, the Bambaiyas, the character Venky Venkatesh who became a villain in many movies thanks to his white suit from Versova with a red Versace sewn to the lapel —  all riding along merrily in the 11 Limited bus, singing out loud or in their hearts: Doe, a deer, a female deer…

Meera shut the book gently, tracing the edge of the page like it was a photo album.

“I don’t know if this is a review or a reunion.”

“Why can’t it be both?” I said.

Because that’s exactly what Colaba to Bandra is — not just a book, but a memory lane of this great melting pot of Indian, Anglo-Indian, Muslim, and Parsi cultures living together portrayed beautifully as a bus route. Stop 266 to Stop 6.

Every sketch is a window. Every street corner is a revelation. Fernandes draws the breathing, living, great city sprawled across the western artery of Bombay, and Mehrotra writes compelling stories.  A book to be treasured, shared many times over.

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With one foot in Huntsville, Alabama, the other in her birth home, India, and a heart steeped in humanity, Monita Soni writes as a contemplative practice. She has published hundreds of poems, movie reviews, book critiques, and essays, and contributed to combined literary works. Her two books are My Light Reflections and Flow Through My Heart. You can hear her commentaries on Sundial Writers Corner, WLRH 89.3 FM.