Bombay unmoved: When 5,000 watched a play a day after 1944 explosion

In 1944, Marathi theatre completed a 100 years and a huge theatre festival was organised in Sangli by the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh (MMSS). Mama Warerkar and Dr AN Bhalerao of the MMSS took the lead in getting it together.

In February, there was also a large festival at Mumbai. The playground at the Robert Money High School in Grant Road would play host to a week of plays, a different one each day. Pendharkar put on Satteche Ghulam, Rangnekar’s Natya Niketan presented Kanyadan. On that very day Kasturba Gandhi died and the show was cancelled.

The festival also featured Saraswat and Acharya Atre’s Udyacha Sansar (The World of Tomorrow). Both plays were much appreciated.

After two months, Dr Bhalerao decided to organise a grand festival of theatre. As a great aficionado of theatre it was not inconceivable for him to take charge of such a huge event and to spend so much money on it.

Dr Bhalerao had a large stage erected on the sands of Chowpatty. Arrangements were made for four to five thousand people to watch the plays. Saraswat was also chosen as one of the plays.

The production went well and the audience was enthusiastic. As children we had sometimes come to the beach with Aai and played with shells. Acting there now in Saraswat I thought about those shell playthings. Actors in some ways are also like playthings or dolls.  

The Mumbai Theatre Festival was supposed to start on April 12, 1944. Everything was ready. But on that very day, at around 4.30 or 5pm, there was an explosion in the SS Stikine which was lying at harbour in the docks.

The city was fraught with rumour and tension. That day’s show was cancelled but the next day, the house was full. Every seat was taken. The audience seemed totally involved in the play. The festival lasted for ten days.

Mama Warerkar told us that the producers had made a profit of one and a half lakh rupees on the whole.

When the explosion took place in the docks, I was acting in a Gujarati play at the Bhangwadi Theatre. We felt a huge thump. We had no idea what had happened. The audience was terrified and the show had to be brought to an end rapidly.

Qasimbhai, the producer, sent someone to accompany me home. All down the road, there were clouds of smoke and a feeling of terror. It was only when I got home that Aai relaxed.

"Gosh, Babi, the vessels I had placed on the shelf fell off on their own. I don’t know what’s going on," she said.

Some people thought that Germany or Japan had attacked India. Slowly the news filtered out that there had been an explosion on board a ship. The areas around Mandvi and Masjid Bunder had taken a direct hit. Many ships had been totally destroyed.

We heard that the cause was that the ship had been carrying explosives and cotton. By night, the sky was red.

It did not seem odd then, that even while one area of the city had been levelled, the next day 5,000 Marathi people should come to Chowpatty to see a play.

But today, this does seem like something extraordinary. Should one say that it is a big city’s ability to overcome whatever calamity happens? Or could one say that it is simply an insensitive response?

Do we simply not care as long as it has happened to someone else? Do we say to ourselves, "Let’s bother when it turns up on our doorstep?"

Wadi Bunder and Mandvi were struggling desperately with the fire. Did that mean that Girgaon, Parel, Grant Road and Worli should stop whatever they were doing? There seems to be no sense in expecting that. One cannot stop the business of living. But must the show go on? When a calamity hits the city, is it right to have film shows or theatrical performances?

When we were young we were taught that even a death next door was reason enough to cancel a celebration or a happy event like a Satyanarayan Pooja. But Mumbaikars seem to have slowly begun to forget their obligations to others

In 1993, a series of explosions rocked the city but the very next day, Mumbai went back to work, seemingly forgetting everything. We seem to be running hard to stay in the same place. People say that this is the love of life you see in Mumbai. But it does seem to have a kind of callousness about it too.

The average Mumbaikar lives a life of extraordinary difficulty. When people live like that, humanity begins to seep away. Perhaps it is difficult to say when one changes from being tough-minded to being hard-hearted. Perhaps one does not even know when that happens.

Is that what happened to Mumbai? We need a public debate on the issue.

But I have wandered away again. I was telling you about the explosion in the docks. When something like that happens, many stories are spun around it. Some of them are quite incredible.

For instance, one of the stories that became famous at the time was that after the explosion, many of the people living nearby had gold bricks fall into their homes. It was said that one of the ships in the harbour had had gold bars aboard and these had flown out into the air after the explosion.

It was said that many people in Mohammed Ali Road, Masjid Bunder, Mandvi and areas around became wealthy overnight. How we wished for a shower of gold in Ramji Purushottam Chawl!

Nothing so spectacular ever happened to us. We would continue to live our lives, it seemed, victims of the common certainties of pain and endurance.

(Reprinted with the publisher's permission.)