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Decades before the air-conditioned video-blaring coaches started bringing day trippers to Udvada, pilgrims journeyed by trains hauled by coal-fired steam locomotives. Passengers would make a beeline for the stalls at each station en route to partake of the delicacies that characterised that place — Palghar for vadas, Dahanu for dar (lentils) and nariel (coconut), Gholvad (and Dahanu) for chikoo and safed kanda (rose apples), and every station for its cutting chai. Today, idli sambhar and dosa have homogenized all stations. And before bottled mineral water made its advent, little tribal girls would besiege passengers at stations, cradling narrow-necked pots containing well-water that they would peddle calling out in their teeny voices "Paani (water)!”

Passengers seated by the windows (which had no bars then) could crane their necks out and were consequently spotted easily by their sooty and grimy faces as they stepped off the train.

Those alighting at Udvada station would be greeted by eager touts from  various hotels of the town and ushered to the waiting outsized wooden-framed DeSoto, Dodge and Plymouth cars. Hotel staffers would ride on the wide footboards after stashing the luggage in the boot. 

  Photo: Manaz Pouradehi

While helming the Youth Wing of the World Zoroastrian Organisation (WZO) decades ago, this writer, his wife Ketayun and their team’s Project Udvada sought to sustain the town’s heritage by creating facilities for resident and visiting Parsis. The Seth Damanwala Dispensary was upgraded and an affordable stopover lodge was created in the late Ervad Ratanshah Katila’s centrally-located house. Through the auspices of then Vada Dastur Dastur Hormazdyar Mirza, a museum on Udvada and Iranshah was set up in his family’s Kayoji Mirza Hall adjoining the three-storey Mirza House. 

Today, both the Hall and the museum have succumbed to row houses, while the stopover lodge remains inexplicably locked up.

The Udvada of the past resonated in the mornings and evenings with the sonorous prayers of priests. Imposing personages sat on armchairs on the otlas (verandas) of their houses, clad in sudreh-lengha, while the fragrance of frankincense on smoldering sandalwood wafted onto the streets as their mathabanu (headscarf)-clad wives carried the afarganyu (censer) from room to room.

These are just memories today. There are never enough mobeds now to perform the myriad liturgies for Parsis. Even the most exalted among the Zoroastrian priesthood — the nav-kutumbi, or nine-family grouping, ordained to tend the sacred Iranshah fire — is coming apart at the seams. The intricate rotation system of this venerable lineage of Sanjana priests has been impaired due to fragmenting families. 

In earlier times, some Parsi residents went to the seaside Parsi gymkhana at the northern edge of the village to play cards, or just lounge around and gossip. Others went with their families to the seashore where they sat on the black gravelly sands and chatted with visitors till the sun slipped below the horizon. They would occasionally be joined by local children who sang in their lilting voices, "Dariya ni machhli, samudra na pet par, ramti hati, bhai, ramti hati (the fish were frolicking in the sea).”

An institution by himself was Marazban Biscuitwalo who operated a cavernous wood-fired oven in his family home at Zanda Chowk which produced the most delicious buttery biscuits and breads. Clad in his distinctive frayed dagli and black topi, also frayed, this aging man with sunken cheeks and a permanent wheeze had his Man Friday ferry a biscuit laden trunk on his bicycle. The person would sound the bicycle bell on approaching the hotels to announce his arrival.

Another brother ran a rival bakery in the village and the third one would always be found in his cramped "soda-lemon” kiosk outside the Kayoji Mirza Hall where he offered a range of refreshments to beat the heat on a sultry day. He wasn’t always successful; often his icebox would thaw in the heat. The village locals made delightful doodh na puff, bhakra, hand-churned ice-creams, vasanu and umbaryu, all Parsi delicacies.

There was also the token "village idiot,” a derelict Parsi who sported the grimiest sudreh and had made the porch of a disused shed his home, his life’s possessions bundled up in a ragged cloth that hung from a nail. My father Homi had narrated to me an incident when this middle-aged man was beaten up by the local Parsi women for selling them what he claimed was a hair conditioner, but which actually caused their hair to fall out. For weeks thereafter, he was seen moving around swathed in bandages stained with mercurochrome.

The Parsis-only hotels bustled with visitors; few came to Udvada only for a day or overnight, apart from the devout ones who would make a monthly day-trip by train on Bahram roz. All these hotels were renowned for their cuisine, hospitality, rustic charm and location, and often, for their proprietors. The hotels justifiably had royal names — Majestic, Globe, King, Regal. Of them, only Globe survives, Majestic and King having yielded to time. Regal still stands, but not as a hotel. Minoo and Perin Patel were a legendary couple who ran Majestic, Kekobad Sidhwa and his son Homi were hands-on with the Globe, and Pesi Patel was synonymous with King.   

  

Not known for political correctness, the proprietors, wearing immaculate sudreh-lengha, would be stationed at their vast teakwood counters calling out to their attendants — "aay béhra (deaf), aay mugha (mute), aay bobra (stutterer), aay langra (lame).” These workers would have probably been surprised had anyone asked for their real names. Even as a child, I wondered how béhra could respond when called.

Three dharamshalas still survive — Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy, Sohrabji Jamshedji Sodawaterwala and Dastur Baug, all efficiently run.

The hotels, hostels and houses then had what old-timers call topli na vara (basket toilets) that entailed manual scavenging. The unfortunate scavengers toiled unseen and unheard, living and dying in their own shadows. Though topli na vara have long become obsolete in India, manual scavenging continues even in metropolises like Bombay, though banned by not only one but two legislations, enacted in 1993 and 2013.   

Along with Udvada’s beachside abodes, the beach too has vanished, partly through erosion but largely on account of the sand mafia that illegally mines tons of sand daily for the construction industry. This brazenness poses a real and imminent threat and if the community does not awaken to it soon, it will be too late to prevent a catastrophe. 

Already, the sea-facing bungalows, together with their courtyards and kitchen gardens, have been swallowed up by the relentless sea. This writer has seen the tidal seawaters spurting up through the floor tiles of the Katila stopover lodge located in the lane leading to Iranshah.

Heeding protests by villagers, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) had two years ago halted illegal sand mining in the Maharashtra villages of Tondavali and Talashil that were being eroded because of illegal sand mining in the Gad River and intrusion from the rising seas. The NGT’s decision was guided by its recognition of the impact of the rising sea level and sand mining that had whittled parts of the village to 50-70 m at some places, destroying an embankment made to protect the village. These are foreboding similarities to Udvada. The sand mining was also ruining the aquatic and marine environs, and causing salt water to contaminate village water sources.

One notable casualty of the shore degradation was the exquisite boat-shaped bungalow of well-known actor-director-producer of yesteryears, Sohrab Modi, whose films include Khoon Ka Khoon, Sikandar, Jhansi ki Rani and Mirza Ghalib. Another crumbling bungalow across the street too had a cement boat in its yard, "rowed” by a ghostly figure with a glazed gaze.

The level of the beach has plummeted so drastically that stone steps have been hewn into the retaining wall for access. Earlier, Parsis could swim in the clean sea, but today even walking on the beach is treacherous, encumbered as it is with remnants of the stone bunding for checking erosion created by the now-defunct Save Udvada Committee chaired by late Congress politician Homi Taleyarkhan and of which this writer was a managing committee member. The embankment fell to the lashing waves during the monsoon. A toilet has also been built on the beach.

The earlier dirt roads that did not radiate heat and allowed rainwater to drain away have in recent years been paved over from edge to edge, leaving no room for drainage. Consequently, parts of Udvada now get flooded during the monsoons, restricting all activity in the village, while in summer the paver blocks bake in the sun, scorching pedestrians.  

The picturesque Kolak river, which separates Udvada from Kolak village to the south, has been smothered by chemical wastes released into it by the textile plants on its southern bank. This has ruined the livelihood of fisherfolk who predominate in the village, as the lobsters (not crayfish that are palmed off as lobsters in Bombay restaurants and hotels), prawns and mudskippers (levta) have been destroyed by the toxic effluents that drain into the sea.

Kolak itself has transmogrified. In earlier, more innocent times, conscientious Parsi visitors avoided Udvada’s bootleggers (Gujarat has prohibition), but went to nearby Kolak where the spirits flowed as it bordered the more liberal Union territory of Daman and Diu. For my parents, Gool and Homi, the favorite haunt for their evening tipple was Ashok Bar whose open grounds abutted Kolak river and where lyrical songs of Hindi films of those days were played. My sisters Dilnawaz and Aban and I accompanied our parents to Kolak where the toddy-tapper brought us toddy as we lounged below the shading canopy on handmade mats. Everything was natural, the mats fashioned out of palm fronds, the earthen pot that held the toddy, the grass ring through which the toddy was poured, and the food that came out of the fields around. Today, Ashok Bar and the palm groves and greenery around have become vast swathes of concrete, a showpiece of the Gujarat Model that has paved over history and nature.   

Another outing was to the former Portuguese colony of Daman for the smugglers’ market for rayon shirts, watches and cigarette-lighters. One went to these places by leisurely tonga rides, where the rhythmic clip-clop of the hooves was the only sound as we passed by farms, ponds and hamlets, where the route mattered as much as the destination.

A relatively recent phenomenon witnessed over the past decade or so has been the advent of builders who have constructed residential complexes and four and even nine-storeyed blocks after razing some of the most exquisite houses that had imbued Udvada with its quaint and distinctive character. Almost all these developers are from out of town and most of these buildings that have sprouted all over Udvada have flats purchased by Parsis from Bombay. Few flats have permanent occupants; most are locked up most of the time, with their owners arriving occasionally for weekend trips or holidays.

Flats are also deemed to be convenient, particularly when they are visited infrequently, as they require less maintenance and security than houses. This trend has adversely affected the local hoteliers, who also lament that the package tour vogue has further impacted the hotel industry, and that prohibition, apart from discouraging tourism, has effectively wrecked the liquor trade of the Parsis.

There is dire need to revive this moribund village. For a community so intent on sustaining its traditions and Parsipanu there needs to be at least one settlement identifiable with its faith.