Lost in Juhu

My earliest memory of Juhu Beach is when I was age 3.
I was in a Montessori school, and we lived in Colaba. There was to be a school picnic to Juhu. I had no idea where Juhu was. In fact, I had no idea what a picnic was either.

My brother, who had passed out of the same school 4 years earlier, was sent along to chaperone me despite the bevy of teachers. He was warned to look after me.

I have no memories of what I did the whole day, what I ate or what games I was made to play. I just remember my brother doing all those things and having fun.

When it was time to go home and all the kids were in the school bus, they did the usual thing of counting heads to make sure everyone was there.

One was missing. Mine!!! And all hell broke loose, only after that.

And that’s all I remember:
Sitting on the beach all alone and bawling my head off because I could not find my shoes and no one around me looked the least bit familiar.

I still shudder to think what would have happened if they had not counted those heads!

My next memory of Juhu was a few years later, when we rented a cottage for a couple of months during summer vacations. My grandmother had come to Bombay for treatment of her varicose veins, and was asked to wade in salt water.

The beach was just across the road from our cottage. I don’t remember anything about that time either, just my grandmother telling me they had bought me from a fisherwoman. I never questioned that, and believed it till I was about 8 or 9. I think someone in school asked me my mother’s name, and I said I did not know, she was a fisherwoman. I came home and repeated this, and promptly got thrashed.

So I cannot really talk about how much Juhu has changed since then, I can only talk about how now, the entire Mumbai suburban population, as well as busloads of tourists land there on weekends and public holidays, in their Sunday clothes and wedding finery, for a walk on the fabled beach, a horse-ride and some bhel-puri.

Foreign tourists, from their 5-star hotel windows, take pictures of the natives.
And it is hell trying to drive past.