The Mahalaxmi Temple Complex, nestled in a seaside nook at the intersection of Pedder Road, Warden Road, Tardeo Road, and Haji Ali Road, contains one of the most important temples in the city. Until the 1780s, the East India Company was unsuccessful at keeping the sea at bay from “breaching” the area known as the ‘Great Breach’, an intertidal zone between the northern end of Cumballa Hill (the Haji Ali junction, situated on the original ‘H-shaped’ Bombay island) and the southern end of Worli island (the location of Samudra Mahal, Shiv Sagar estate, etc.).
Legend has it that Ramji Shivji Prabhu, a contractor working on the reclamation project at the Great Breach, dreamt that the goddess Mahalaxmi would permit the East India Company to conquer the Arabian Sea by allowing a wall to withstand the water if her temple, previously destroyed, was reinstated. The wall stood, then dubbed the Hornby Vellard, and still stands as the Haji Ali Road (an alternative account attributes the dream to one Krishna More.)
During excavation, a broken statue of the goddess was indeed found embedded in the mud, and the government granted land on the hillock seen in this view here for the rebuilding of the temple, which was finally built into the form it is in today in 1831, almost half a century after the breach was blocked off. Built by Dhakji Dadaji, he also commissioned the Dhakleshwar Temple, his namesake, at around the same time in the temple complex, and that is the structure that we see prominently in the image. The original Mahalaxmi Temple is smaller and hidden from view here, and situated behind the Dhakleshwar Temple.
In the mid-19th century, all of the area seen here in the foreground, being sketched from a point presumably somewhere on either N. Gamadia Road or N. Gamadia Cross Road (Pedder Road didn’t exist yet), was owned by the Gamadia family. As per Mr. Kooverji Gamadia, a descendent of the patriarch Navroji Gamadia, N. Gamadia Road (then a rough path) was used as a carriage road to come out of Gamadia House (Heera Panna building today) in order to reach the sea past Warden Road (seen in an early form in the middle distance here) or to even inspect their other bungalows on the estate, as well as their numerous mango, coconut, and jackfruit groves.
Portraying a typical rural Konkan coastal scene, with fishing boats and fishing stakes just about visible in the Arabian Sea in the distance, this is a testament to the transformation (for better or for worse) of Bombay, utterly unrecognizable today. The only real giveaway of the location is the description of the breach area accompanying this view – “The sea advances upon the shore in the form of a little bay, which is enclosed on one side by the imposing- looking Hindoo Temple of Mahalaxmee standing proudly on it’s pedestal of black rock…”.
(Picture and article by Mrinal Kapadia, resident of Cumballa Hill, he is a collector and researcher, and can be reached on mrinal.kapadia@gmail.com or via Indtagram on @mrinal.kapadia
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