Shanta Gokhale’s Shivaji Park – Dadar 28 — A Reader’s Reflection by Sameer Gudhate

We often think we know a place because we know its address.

We know the roads. We know the buildings. We know where to get tea. We know which corner is crowded in the evening. We know where people walk, where children play and where politicians once stood behind microphones.

But knowing a place is not the same as knowing its memory.

That distinction is at the heart of Shanta Gokhale’s Shivaji Park – Dadar 28: History, Places, People.

And perhaps that is why this book works so well.

Shivaji Park is one of those Mumbai names that carries several identities at once. For some, it is cricket. For others, politics. For some, Marathi cultural life. For others, Art Deco buildings, the sea breeze, morning walks, childhood memories or simply a familiar route home.

Gokhale understands this multiplicity.

Instead of writing a conventional history of a neighbourhood, she creates something far more intimate: a portrait assembled from chroniclers, residents, conquerors, memoirs, novels, anecdotes, conversations and her own memories as a long-time resident.

The result feels less like reading about a neighbourhood and more like sitting with someone who has lived there long enough to remember what existed before the present version of the place arrived.

That is an important difference.

Because cities are usually remembered through their monuments.

People remember gateways, stations, skyscrapers and famous roads.

Gokhale reminds us that cities are also remembered through ordinary domestic details.

The movement from chawls to flats.

The arrival of piped gas.

The changing idea of privacy.

The small social arrangements that once seemed completely normal.

The people who lived next door.

The conversations that happened while walking.

The trees that provided shade.

These details may appear insignificant when they happen. Decades later, they become history.

And this is where I found the book particularly compelling.

History is often presented as something that happens to people.

Gokhale shows that history also happens inside people's homes.

The political history of Shivaji Park is equally fascinating. The grounds have witnessed the charged atmosphere of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, the resonant voice of P. K. Atre, and the emergence of Bal Thackeray and the Shiv Sena.

But the book does something subtle here.

It doesn't allow Shivaji Park to become merely a political symbol.

That matters.

A neighbourhood can be associated with a political movement without being reducible to that movement.

It can be predominantly Marathi without being culturally uniform.

It can carry strong political memories while simultaneously producing artists, musicians, actors, sportsmen, intellectuals and ordinary families whose lives have nothing to do with political power.

Gokhale's Shivaji Park is therefore much larger than the stereotype attached to it.

The roll call of people connected to the neighbourhood makes that diversity visible: Senapati Bapat, town planner N. V. Modak, classical musician Sharadchandra Arolkar, actress Sulabha Deshpande, and cricketers such as Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli.

But the real protagonist is neither Sachin Tendulkar nor Bal Thackeray.

It is the neighbourhood itself.

And perhaps even more specifically, it is the idea of community.

The maidan becomes important because it is one of the few spaces where different kinds of people can occupy the same physical space without necessarily having anything else in common.

People walk there.

Children play there.

Old friends meet.

Politics is discussed.

Relationships begin.

Arguments happen.

Memories are created.

That democratic quality of a public space feels increasingly precious in today's Mumbai.

We have become very good at building.

We are perhaps less good at preserving what cannot be measured in square feet.

A building can be reconstructed.

A road can be widened.

A shop can be replaced.

But what happens when the invisible network of familiarity disappears?

That is where Gokhale's concern about redevelopment becomes more than an architectural complaint.

It becomes a question about what exactly we mean when we say a city is developing.

If redevelopment gives us newer buildings but takes away the relationships, routines, trees, public spaces and shared memories that made a neighbourhood distinctive, have we really preserved the neighbourhood?

Or have we simply preserved its name?

I don't think Gokhale offers a neat answer.

And I am glad she doesn't.

Because this is not a book about freezing Shivaji Park in some romantic version of the past.

The past had its own inequalities, limitations and prejudices. Nostalgia can be selective. Every generation tends to remember what it loved and conveniently forget what it endured.

That is perhaps one limitation of writing about a beloved neighbourhood through memory: memory is powerful, but memory is never neutral.

Yet Gokhale's personal intimacy is also the book's greatest strength.

She doesn't pretend to be an invisible historian.

She is a participant.

She remembers.

She talks to people.

She observes.

She reconstructs.

And through that process, the neighbourhood acquires a human pulse.

What I liked most about Shivaji Park – Dadar 28 is that it made me think about the word "place."

We use it casually.

We say, "I am from this place."

But what does that actually mean?

Is a place the land beneath our feet?

The buildings around us?

The people we know?

The memories we carry?

Or is it the combination of all these things?

Perhaps a place survives only as long as its people continue to recognise something of themselves in it.

That makes Gokhale's book quietly relevant beyond Shivaji Park.

Every city has neighbourhoods that are changing faster than their memories can keep up.

Every generation inherits a place, modifies it and eventually hands over something different.

The uncomfortable question is what we choose to carry forward.

Shivaji Park – Dadar 28 doesn't give us a simple answer.

It gives us something better: a way of looking.

After reading it, I suspect I would never again see Shivaji Park merely as a maidan.

I would see the morning walkers.

The cricketing dreams.

The political history.

The old buildings.

The conversations.

The people who stayed.

The people who left.

And the memories that remain even after the physical city begins to change.

Perhaps that is what a good book about a place should do.

It should make a familiar place unfamiliar again.

And make us realise that the places we think we know may contain entire histories we have simply been walking past.

Who should read it?

Anyone interested in Mumbai, urban history, architecture, Marathi culture, cricket, politics or the evolution of neighbourhoods will find plenty here. But you don't have to be a Shivaji Park resident — or even a Mumbaikar — to appreciate what Gokhale is doing.

Because ultimately, this is not only a book about Shivaji Park.

It is about what happens when a city starts forgetting the people who gave its places meaning.

And that is a question worth asking in every city.

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