Sermons On The Hill

“I began looking for the island on which I live and it wasn’t there.” So starts the long and dispiriting journey recorded in Once Upon a Hill.

The observation will strike a chord with most Bombayites who, since their childhood, have peered at the jumble of traffic jams, housing colonies and bazaars and tried to see the seven islands that make up their city. Readers will eagerly accompany Kalpish Ratna on this quest.

In this somewhat rambling book about Andheri, Kalpana Swaminathan and Ishrat Syed—who write together as Kalpish Ratna—set out to rediscover the forgotten landscape and history of our bulldozer-happy city. Along the way they meet various endearing magi—Hamid Bhai, the car mechanic who introduces them to the ancient, colourful Shaniwar Bazaar where the world could well have shopped since the time of emperor Ashoka; Cajetan Almeida, who points them to a terrifying gravevard and a dismal temple dedicated to Jari Mari, goddess of plague; the long-departed Stephen Babington, whose lively descriptions of 19th century Bombay and marble bust are buried in the Asiatic Library.

Although the writers waylay unhelpful librarians and visit various karyalayas with carefully completed application forms, although they wander through shanties and garbage dumps, they are unable to find what lies beneath this “overcrowded ghost town”. At which point, the ever-helpful Cajetan declares, “Perspective, you want height? Better go to Gilbert Hill”. Suddenly, their aimless investigations take on a new focus.

Gilbert Hill, for most Bombayites, is a huge shape on the horizon—“a perpendicular massif of stone” that can be seen from SV Road in Andheri. At the top is the temple of Gaodevi, but when the writers get to the pinnacle, they find no answers. Only an exorcism and more questions: how big was Gilbert Hill before it was blasted? What did the hill look like earlier? Who was Gilbert? Where is the gaon of Gaodevi? What about the other hills that once dotted the city?

Valid and fascinating questions, certainly. But somewhere along the way the book loses its readers in a sticky mass of details and verbosity. Once Upon a Hill seems to be entirely without structure, and wading through 236 pages of amorphous matter is daunting business.

There are too many self-indulgent asides—battles between the Plutonists and Neptunists; the nature of basalt; the lives of long-dead cartographers. And sentences that leave the reader open-mouthed. An example: “Andheri, in its prodigious slumber, betrays a punctate lucidity, not unlike the neuronal map of a dying brain”.

The writers believe that the destruction of Gilbert Hill is a symbol of the larger tragedy of our indifferent city. “The detritus of human urgencies, and the crumbling bones of this hill, define what we have done to the planet,” they state. “To flatten a hill is the very acme of arrogance, but to leave it rotting thus in its flayed layers is psychotic. It speaks of a city that has lost its connect with reality.”

Unfortunately, this key message is lost in a swamp of words and trivia. Which is a pity, because this book could so easily and valuably have helped us to reconnect with the city beneath our feet.