Before hipster cafes took over Kala Ghoda, its soul was a store that hosted giants like MF Husain

Kala Ghoda, the historic neighbourhood in the heart of South Mumbai, is famous for its artistic and bohemian spirit. Over the years, it has become the chosen address for hip stores, galleries, cafes and designer boutiques. The roots of this legacy lie in a staid restaurant named Chetana, which now sits cheek by jowl with trendy establishments on a wide arterial street.

Established by journalist Sudhakar Dikshit in 1946, Chetana was originally meant to cater to artists, thinkers and intellectuals. “After 1947 [when India was liberated] there was a curiosity in people, they wanted to know about our own culture, our music,” said Chhaya Arya, Dikshit’s daughter. “It was almost a revival of sorts and Chetana played an important part in that.” Arya, now in her eighties, has been running the establishment since her father’s death in 1995.

“In fact, I think Chetana is an institution that was much ahead of its time,” said Arya’s son Kavi. “It has been trying to represent Indian culture in a contemporary idiom. That’s what my grandfather was trying to do.”

Changing with time

Once a café that served snacks and many languorous cups of coffee, Chetana is now a thali restaurant that dishes out food with impressive rapidity. When it opened, the place was 2,500 square feet, which included a bookshop in one corner and a chess table in another. The space hosted cultural meetings, poetry readings, and discussions on Vedas and Vedanta. The café’s vast and open space has now been partitioned into three businesses – its restaurant, a bookstore and a craft centre that sells handlooms from various parts of the country.

The evolving décor at Chetana is almost a parable of changing times in the city. “We used to have big bay windows open to the road,” Arya said. “Earlier people could buy a book and read while they ate. But you can’t trust people these days, someone might just make away with the books they pick up.”

Arya is wistful about the modifications that were necessary for Chetana to evolve. “When we first changed the décor, we made interconnections,” she said. “People who were waiting could stroll in the bookshop, or walk into the craft centre, but that flexibility has gone now.”

As a cultural café, Chetana was frequented by celebrities like Ashok Kumar, Nalini Jaywant, RK Laxman, Raja Rao and Governor Raja Maharaj Singh. Arya recalled that the Bombay Progressive Artists’ Movement that was started by painters such as MF Hussain and Syed Haider began at Chetana, too. With strains of Cubism and Expressionism, the movement had hoped to distance itself from a nationalist aesthetic and establish a perspective that would resonate with a newly-formed nation.

Chetana now caters to an entirely different clientele: businesspeople working at the many offices around Kala Ghoda, lawyers working at the High Court, and political figures from Mantralaya. It does not serve as the beating heart of Bombay’s bohemian and artistic soul anymore.

Space for arts and literature

Chetana’s craft centre has its roots in the art gallery that Dikshit started in 1986. Arya, a painter who trained at the JJ School of Arts, assisted him. “Some really wonderful artists, like Hussain, KH Ara, Akbar Padamsee and FN Souza exhibited their work here for the first time,” she said. “We did quite well but it was not a money-making prospect. Most of the artists were my classmates or my acquaintances.” When the neighbouring Jehangir Art Gallery opened its space for artists, the prospects of Chetana’s smaller art gallery dwindled further.

The space was converted into a craft centre in 1989 with the assistance of art director Roshan Kalapesi, who was a patron of Paramparik Karigar, an association formed to preserve and promote traditional crafts and arts. Arya recalls that she travelled to several places in India to source her products directly from artisans and weavers. “Going to these places is like meeting a lover for me, it’s that exciting,” she said. “I will continue this for as long as I can.”

Arya’s son has a special affinity for the bookstore at Chetana. The store saw its best years when Kavi was in charge of its everyday operations, in the latter half of the 1990s. “I am the one who stopped the other businesses from encroaching on the bookshop because I feel like it is the heart of what we are trying to achieve at Chetana,” Kavi said. “It will eventually change its form, but Chetana will continue to make esoteric knowledge available to people.”

Chetana houses books on Hindu philosophy, religion and spirituality. Once a bustling spot, Chetana Bookstore also published several treatises, including Nisargadatta Maharaj’s I Am That in 1973, which has since been translated into 15 languages. Over time, the store has shrunk in size and the restaurant now primarily supports the other two businesses.

“My father loved books,” Arya said. “He was a philosopher and this place was his dream. As long as it remains sustainable, we will continue the bookshop. There are still a lot of people like to hold a book in their hand before they buy it and I keep hoping that the market will revive.”

The primary allure of Chetana is the sense of nostalgia it evokes for older residents, who know parts of its history, or have memories of their own interlinked with the space. “There’s a clientele here which I find particularly fascinating,” Arya said. “The girl who walked into this restaurant years ago with her hand clasped in her father’s, gets married and often moves abroad. But each time she returns to Mumbai, she makes sure that she brings her children here.”

Kavi, who will eventually take over the establishment, said that he hoped to recreate Chetana’s once-famous culturally vibrant atmosphere. He recently began the Chetana Literary Forum, which comprises people who are passionate about literature and hope to discuss it with like-minded people.

“I want to create a sort of satsang where you come away feeling refreshed and feeling like we learned something new,” he said. “In fact that is exactly what Chetana was in the old days. I remember Gerson da Cunha telling me, ‘When I was a young student at Elphinstone, I used to wonder if we were worthy of crossing the portals of Chetana.’ That’s how the place was then!”

Arya added, “Every place should evolve with time and we have done that. Chetana might be an island amongst all these modern cafes, but people always want to go back to their roots.”