Living: Parel; New Look

India Today
November 2, 1998

LIVING: PAREL
New Look

With glitzy offices and art galleries the seedy Mumbai suburb is the hottest address for the corporate world.

By Farah Baria

Aparajita flowers and the insects Phoenix Towers, Tulsi Pipe Road, Lower Parel. Odd address. Odd name. Until you shoot up to the 28th floor penthouse and look down on dilapidated old mills and sooty smokestacks, belching their noxious fumes into the air. For literary types, a scene straight out of Dickensian London.

This is Parel, Mumbai's embarrassing eyesore, once the nucleus of a flourishing textile industry that died in the early '80s. Today it is teeming with sweatshops, churning out garments for international fashion houses. And the mills are in ruins. Home to Mumbai's working class, Parel is grim, seedy, decidedly downmarket -- save for this swanky skyscraper, rising from its industrial graveyard like that fabulous, mythical bird.

Phoenix Towers is not the only oasis in this depressing district. Right next door is Phoenix Mills, a massive yarn spinning unit that closed down in the '70s. Today it has been restored into a trendy business centre that houses the who's who of Mumbai's corporate world. Great Eastern Shipping. HTA. Trikaya Grey. Sterling Holidays. Lintas. Most of them migrated from illustrious downtown addresses in the early '90s to carve their swish new empires in these derelict old mills. Others are still moving in.

Only this year, three departments of the Standard Chartered Bank shifted from its stately neoclassical headquarters on D.N. Road into the mill's rat-infested godown. "It was a dead place," says architect Yogesh Rao of Edifice Architects and Interiors. "The roof was smashed and there was fungus on the walls." But the resurrection is almost miraculous: black and white Italian marble offset by modern chrome and leather furniture, mellow wood panels and translucent glass partitions. "You don't usually get to convert a godown into a state of the art office," grins Rao. "It made things fun."

It also made sound business sense. "We had premises scattered all over town," explains Ajay Kapoor who heads Stanchart's facility management department. "And we were looking around for one consolidated office." But in Mumbai, 24,000 square feet is hardly chicken feed -- even for a fund-flushed foreign bank. Then someone suggested Parel. "It was only 8 km from the downtown business district and 70 per cent cheaper than the suburbs." Other usps: the brand new National Stock Exchange, barely a few blocks away on Tulsi Pipe Road. And that rare Mumbai luxury called space: yards and yards of mill land, just waiting to be devoured. "Locationally and financially, Parel was perfect," says Kapoor.

But the bank's employees were far from thrilled. "I guess we were upset at first," grins administration officer Sunita Gracias. "The walk from the station was filthy, there wasn't a decent restaurant in sight and the locality was downright crude." But one look at the 18,000 sq ft office and she was delighted. "It was about four times the size of our previous one."

Ajit Varghese, senior media planner at Lintas, was equally horrified when his department received marching orders in 1993. "It all seemed so terribly declasse," he recalls wryly. Then Alyque Padamsee, former chairman of Lintas and the man they call God in advertising circles, stepped in. He designed the office to look like something out of Harpers Bazaar and rechristened the area Upper Worli. "Somehow, that sounds more respectable than Lower Parel," chuckles Varghese. Especially when pronounced "Uppah Worrly" with that propah hint of corporate condescension. And Tulsi Pipe Road, Uppah Worli, is where the action is.

But the renaissance hasn't been easy, thanks to irrational government policies that prevent bankrupt mills from selling out. Although ailing units may lease their land to pay for workers' retirement schemes, the procedure is so trussed in union politics and bureaucratic red tape that only a handful have tried to commercialise their decaying properties. Yet things are changing. A few blocks away from Phoenix is Matulya Mills, recently converted into offices for Tata Telecom, and a luxurious residential building with a swimming pool. Further down the road is the new Brady Gladys Plaza, an old engineering shed that has been transformed by city architect Brinda Somaya into an extravagant 1 lakh sq ft complex for garment exporters.

Finally, at the south end of Tulsi Pipe Road is the Magnasound office in the decrepit Laxmi Mills Compound. It looks like something out of a hip music video: splashes of psychedelic paint, transparent glass partitions, slick modern furniture. Outside, a funky, bright mural on the old mill wall lends an appropriately bizarre touch. "Clients come here expecting to find a dungeon," grins Chairman Shashi Gopal. "It's not exactly Park Avenue, but it's a find."

Now like downmarket Dockland in London's East End, the unthinkable has happened: Parel is getting gentrified. Everywhere poky chawls are metamorphosing into haughty highrises, pinstriped shirts are replacing blue collars and old addas are turning into trendy little eateries. "This is the hottest district in town," says restaurateur Aditya Singh who owns the popular Soul Kadi at Phoenix Mills.

Designed like a rustic mediterranean cottage with a rickety wooden staircase, gleaming provincial furniture and cute terracotta bric-a-brac, it is Parel's Maxims, where corporate climbers talk shop over Bombil Fry and Fish Ambotic. Now Singh plans to open a little bohemian cafe "with wrought iron benches and poetry on the walls". Also in the pipeline is a recreation centre for stressed out executives.

Meanwhile, more erudite culture vultures can hop across to the Sakshi Art Gallery at Shree Ram Mills for an eyeful of Manjit Bawa and Anjolie Ela Menon. "We kept the original asbestos roof, old wooden floors and mezanine," says owner Geetha Mehra. Exposed airconditioning ducts and halogen lamps add to the industrial look, a rather unconventional setting for priceless art. Recently Mumbai's beau monde braved Parel's murky bylanes to attend a cocktail at Sakshi, hosted by sculptor Sudarshan Shetty. "It was marvellous," exclaims Amrita Jhaveri, local representative of Christie's, London. "I wonder why no one thought of this before."

Sushila Pinto, a confidential secretary at Lintas, agrees. "Parel grows on you," she admits wryly. So when there were rumours that the media department was moving back to Lintas' cramped downtown headquarters, no one was happy. Downtown? Thanks, but no thanks. Better a fashionable quarter in a hole than a hole in a fashionable quarter.

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