My Ode To Hamzoo Terrace

I was born in Hamzoo Terrace, Dadar. Hamzoo Terrace wasn’t just a building; it was a living, breathing carnival of cultures, where smells of overflowing common toilets and garbage harmonised with aromas of fish being fried or dal being tadka-fied, a miniature world where no religion, caste, or creed could ever outshine the sheer chaos of our community. It was a utopia packed into 39 houses stacked across two floors, a ground floor, and, most importantly, the terrace. 

The terrace divided in two parts wasn’t just a social space—it was a stadium, a stage, and a battleground. Football and cricket matches and tournaments on the terrace were legendary. Neighbours would remove their drying papads and kurdais, shaking off any lingering flour dust, to clear space for the games. The tournaments were grand affairs, with the umpire often doubling as the commentator and the scorekeeper. After the matches, the same terrace transformed into a cultural hub, hosting everything from Ganpati dance practices to Christmas carol rehearsals. By night, it became our escape. Post-midnight, it wasn’t unusual to find someone sprawled there, staring at the stars, maybe nursing a heartbreak or simply too full from the banana-leaf mutton.

Life at Hamzoo Terrace was a glorious medley of love, laughter, music, and the occasional neighborhood tiff about a missing slipper, rotting garbage in the building's centre space or time taken to fill water from common taps. 

Late at night, especially on feast days, the boys would gather at the bottom of the stairs, that hallowed spot which somehow became the stage. The wobbly meter- box doors became the drumkit. Someone always brought a guitar, someone else a base box that probably had more duct tape than wires, and, of course, the local hooch and chakna. Oh, the chakna! Peanuts and wafers were the default, but the real feast was banana-leaf-wrapped liver and mutton fry bought from a chap that sat next to the church with a open barbeque that seemed to disappear faster than a priest at confession.

The music started casually but always transformed into an epic concert for the ages. Paul Anka's Papa was belted out with enough passion to make grown men tear up. Rhinestone Cowboy would inevitably have the boys swaying dramatically, spilling their hooch and their emotions. And when CCR hits like Have You Ever Seen the Rain, Midnight Special or Bad Moon Rising came on, the entire building knew it. These weren’t just singers—they were performers. Sure, some of them missed notes or entire verses, some chewed lyrics but in the dim glow of a flickering bulb and rhe halogen street lamp light, they were rockstars.

Hamzoo Terrace had its own audience system. The priests from their quarters would “innocently” wander to the edges of their verandahs, their heads nodding subtly to the beat while pretending to inspect the weather. Aunties and aatyas in their floral nighties or sarees and hair tied in loose buns would park themselves on the long gallery railing that ran the full length of each floors. The young ladies? Oh, they were the audience. They stood by the stairs pretending they had someplace to be, but we all knew they were silently grading each performance. If one of the boys hit a particularly good note, there’d be an extra clink of bangles or a bashful smile 

Hamzoo Terrace was where we laughed, cried, and sang until our voices cracked. It was where religions melted away like the ice in our cheap rum. Where a stray cat or a scurrying rat often got better mutton fry than some of the boys. Where every guitar strum echoed with the sound of togetherness.

The Hamzoo Terrace lane was where the late Paddy Shivalkar lived, which Sanjay Manjrekar used to take a short cut to meet his future wife who lived in the next lane, where Charles Correa walked his poodles to inspect the centuries old Church walls before bring them down, through which Milind Soman used to walk down to fetch his trackmate Simon DSouza (later to become Seattle-based Swami Satyamayananda of the Ramakrishna Mission) for early morning practice, where Loy Mendonca used to stop by to hear us before he went on to join Shankar and Ehsan and become world famous, where one clean shaven English speaking James Hadley Chase reading Kirti College grad used to hang around before being gunned down in an encounter in Wadala in 1982, and from where a Rhinestone Cowboy singing Goan chokra-boy caught a cab on Dec 6 1987 for the airport and to Dubai for the best years of his life.

Life has moved on, but somewhere, I know the stairs of Hamzoo Terrace still hold the ghosts of those melodies, the laughter of our youth, and the occasional dropped peanut in a drink.

And maybe, just maybe, someone’s still singing Rhinestone Cowboy.