With each passing year, come Navratri, and it’s almost mandatory for Mulund West to up its celebratory game. Its roads and lanes are plastered with even bigger banners, announcing and inviting the faithful to nine nights of festivities. Most of these eyesores are large enough to block the view of the last surviving two-three storeyed residential buildings, and the trees that were once common across the suburb. Many of these quaint residences were built in the bungalow-style. They had traditional façades, similar to homes in Gujarat — a fact I learnt about years later; some had courtyards with wells in the centre. These homes boasted of wooden chhajas (awnings), balustrades and long, curvilinear balconies and sprawling porches with swings, and patches of green.

These precious observations were part and parcel of a game I would play as a schoolkid. My school bus would crisscross most of the heart of the suburb, en route school and back home. With  no class friends along the same route, I preferred to stare out of the window. Soon, I got fascinated with the names of the streets — Zaver Road, Rattanshi Hirji Bhojraj Road, Sevaram Lalwani Road, Dr Ambedkar Road, Goshala Road and Walji Ladha Road. I took it upon myself to memorise these street names. Slowly, this became a game I would play to challenge myself to remember these street names. It worked like a charm, and over time, I had memorised all the street names along the school bus route. While this game helped me learn about the geography of the suburb, it also made me realise that my well-planned suburb, which builders have been declaring as the ‘Prince of Suburbs’ for a while now, was way ahead of its time, and was a true-blue example of a resident-friendly, well-planned suburb. I recall boasting to friends from other suburbs that they’d never get lost [in the pre-Google Maps era] here, and would somehow find their way to the railway station, thanks to this grid road network.