President’s Message
Fellow Rotarians,
Very Warm Greetings!!!
It’s February, and all roads led to the most happening place in Mumbai – ‘the Kala Ghoda festival’, which has just ended.
In mid-19th century, at the junction of D. N. Road, M.G. Road and Rampart Row, a sculpture of the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII) was installed, in military attire and astride a horse. This bronze sculpture has a black sheen due to polish, hence the name ‘Kala Ghoda’ (‘Black Horse’), and was sculpted by Sir Joseph Boehm, a noted London-based sculptor. It was gifted to the city by Sir Albert Sassoon, a scion of the Sassoon family of Baghdadi Jews and one of the founding families of Bombay. This family is known to have made great contribution to the development of Bombay and to creating iconic institutions like the ‘Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum’, the Gateway of India, ‘Sassoon Dock’, etc.
Post-Independence, it was felt that having a statue which is symbolic of British imperial power at such a prominent location in the financial capital of a newly Independent India was very inappropriate. In 1965, this sculpture was relocated to the ‘Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan’, the city’s zoo, where it now stands.
Although, physically, the statue of ‘Kala Ghoda’ had moved, it lingered in mind and spirit and gave its name to this precinct in Fort. Over the years, ‘Kala Ghoda’ became a pin code, a routine name for a locality that houses some of the Mumbai’s iconic landmarks – ‘The Esplanade Mansion’ (formerly known as Watson’s Hotel, India’s oldest surviving cast iron building), ‘Elphinstone College’, the now lost ‘Rhythm House’, the ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya’, the ‘Jehangir Art Gallery’ (with the loss of its iconic restaurant ‘Café Samovar’ after five decades and its charming conductor Usha Khanna), the ‘National Gallery of Modern Art’, the David Sassoon Library, the Bombay University, the City Civil Court, etc, several popular restaurants and apparel stores which are increasing in number each day marking the revival of this precinct. Finally, in 2017, a substituted ‘Kala Ghoda’ returned to the area as a similar-looking horse but without its ‘royal’ rider. The new statute titled ‘Spirit of Kala Ghoda’ was designed by architect Alfaz Miller, sculpted by Shreehari Bhosle and commissioned by the Kala Ghoda Association, the motivated organisers of the annual ‘Kala Ghoda Festival’.
The Kala Ghoda in its new avatar serves as a symbolic art installation against the backdrop of the ‘Kala Ghoda Arts Festival’ which, every year for a fortnight in February, turns the precinct into a pedestrian zone and becomes Mumbai’s go-to place. Over the last two decades, the Festival has livened up this historic south Mumbai district with some of the best cultural shows, heritage walks, panels on literature, stand-up comedy shows, art installations, plays, cinema screenings, music performances, workshops, rows of stalls with crafts from across India and the street food stalls. Hope many of you took advantage of and enjoyed our city’s much acclaimed festival, and if you didn’t, there always is the next year.
Preeti Mehta
President