Behind the Colourful Glimpses of Ranwar Village; a New Instagram Aesthetic!

In the narrow streets of Ranwar lies this first village square—as old as 400 years—where we stand on a summer evening while Samantha Lewis says, “These are vintage structures.” It is reminiscent of typical village squares; however, it is surrounded from three sides by the houses of the Christian community.

The road leading to the Ranwar village is surely not a cakewalk. Just like many areas in the Mumbai suburbs, it follows a dusty path, with the roads dug up and the workers ready to call it a day by the time we arrive. We follow 52-year-old Lewis, one of the tour guides working with Khaki Tours. Being a Portuguese descendant and a Bandra resident, where her family has lived for generations, every part of Ranwar feels like home to her. 

The first village square includes a home constructed in 1937, while other similar houses, Lewis says, must have been built around the same time. But this is also one of the vibrant scenes going popular on social media, where people have started exploring and showcasing the light on this hidden corner.

“The staircase used to be outside in these constructions because the residents wanted to save the space it would take if built inside,” she says – ironically, on a construction the congested city of Mumbai cannot afford anymore. The houses are built in the Indo-Portuguese style. “Initially, they would build the houses with mud and thatched roof, but later, they used bricks and Mangalore tiles,” Lewis says.

However, the current construction is comparatively new. “The house would follow a one-storey structure, and people would build the attic to store grains,” Lewis informs, adding that the attic was converted to extra space as the families grew with time, and now, the top floors are used by the tenants in many of these houses. 

These village squares make up a common spot for the villagers to gather during festivals of which Christmas sees a huge celebration among the East Indian community here. While it is easy to come across the Instagram reels of the colourful and vibrant houses of Ranwar, its origins still remain unknown for many; including the other natives of Mumbai.

The erstwhile Bombay would inhabit four major communities, Lewis tells us. While the common understanding of the original community might be that of the Kolis – the fishing community – Lewis informs that the bygone era also had the cultivators who cultivated rice and were called the ‘Kunbis’, along with the ‘Agarias’, or the salt pan workers, and the ‘Bhandari’ community, who would be involved in the toddy tapping, drawing the sap from palm trees to make a fermented beverage. 

These four communities would also live in the villages of Bandra. “These villages were a perfect ecosystem. The protein existed in the form of fish; people had carbs in the form of rice, salt for taste and the nice gazal of toddy to wash it all down!” Lewis laughs as she says this. Continuing the story, as we stand at the entrance of the present-day Ranwar, Lewis shares, “Portuguese came here and started converting people to Christianity. They also built a lot of schools along with the churches. They encouraged people to educate.”

Even while the British took Bombay from Portuguese control in 1661, they were not very interested in Bandra, which was a separate island from Bombay at that time, Lewis mentions. That kept the identity of Ranwar as it is. “The villagers turned towards westernisation, and the communities started getting the English influence and started wearing western clothes while men started getting jobs in the clerical positions in British firms like the East India Company,” says Lewis.

While the earliest mentions of the Ranwar village date back to 1716, the time changed for these villagers when, in the 1860s, steamships started coming into Bombay. “A lot of catholic immigrants started coming from Goa and Mangalore. They also had Portuguese surnames,” she says, adding that the locals feared losing jobs to the immigrants and also their identity and, hence, aiming to keep the same, they decided to give themselves a distinct identity. “They petitioned for the name ‘East Indians’ to Queen Victoria for the same.

While the British bought the farmlands, they did not touch the villages, Lewis says. ‘Ranwar’ literally means, ‘settlement by the forest’ because the forests were on the slopes of hills, and this settlement was at the edge of the forest, Samantha Lewis says as we proceed further into the village.

A seclusion within the jampacked Bandra

With the Indo-Portugese-Anglo architecture, the houses have large wooden porches, spiraling staircases, gabled roofs, and colours—a smaller version of the Kotachiwadi at the southern tip of Bombay. But Ranwar has its identity, some of which is visible in the house structures made of a Chapel.

As we move through a narrower lane inside, Lewis brings to our notice a small corner with big, old trees. Pointing at them, Lewis says, “Cottages in Bandra would have their backyard and people would grow fruit trees like this. For the residents, there was no need to buy the fruits from the fruit vendors.” We spot drumsticks, bananas, mangoes and even a Jamun tree. 

The current urban village of Ranwar has an oratory where villagers would come and offer prayers, and nearby lies the oldest house of the village. “It was built not from mud but from the rubble, where stones of different sizes would be put together,” says Lewis, pointing to what is currently in ruins.

Peculiarity with the food

Inside this secluded community space lies another such space for various communities to thrive for livelihood – this is ‘Angana’, ‘Aangan’ in Hindi. “During the summer months, this space is covered with spices, varities of chillis including the sea leeches which are dried under the sun and roasted in the wood fire by the women,” Lewis informs while the space remains vacant as we stand there. 

Showing the photograph of such a time, she says, “The women of this village hire other women to pound it into a very fine powder and then pack it into bottles. The masala is the popular Bottle masala because it is packed like in the bottle, and no East-Indian food is complete without the dash of bottle masala in it,” she says, adding that for Maharashtrians, it is ‘Goda Masala’.

“But East Indians are also very secretive, so they all have the secret recipes of this masala that they do not share with anybody,” Lewis says as we cross the house of one of the women who sells the masalas from her home. 

Coming out of the 400-year-old gives a direct peek at the contemporary settings in Warora Road, full of restaurants and graffiti on the walls – a testimony to the current landscape of Bandra. 

But there is one more that unifies the old and the new, Lewis says. “One thing you find in the entire Bandra, other than churches, is the crosses,” she said, pointing at the one that was at the entrance of the village. “In the early 20th century, an epidemic hit Mumbai, and there was no cure. So, the villagers here built the crosses which they believed would keep the plague away,” she says. The ‘Plague cross’, as it is called, reads, ‘1897’.

Right after the village and on the Warora road lies another cross, but in a different shape. “This shows the merger of three roads here,” Lewis says, showing a triangle-shaped cross. 

Within seconds, we come out from the sound of the cuckoo that echoed in the village to the car horns on the road while the passersby kept busy “café-hopping”, completely unaware of the vintage silence that run just a few meters away.