Mumbai locations that made childhood awesome
Childhood in the 90s was awesome! There, I said it. We are the generation that spent summer afternoons in the playground, patiently waited for gola-wale-bhaiya with his signature bell to show up with colorful bottles and rolled the cassette roll with a pen to listen to one single album (no shuffle!). We’re also the generation that witnessed the circular dial on phones to family landlines to personal smartphones. We seem to have all the superpowers except that we can’t go back in time!
As a grownup living in the same city I was born and raised in, I often pass by most places I visited during my golden childhood summers. I wondered what they look and feel like now. As my beloved city is set to morph into a new city in a few years, I yearned to visit the places that formed my staple childhood vacations one last time — and so I did.
- Nehru Planetarium and Science Center (Worli)
- Kamala Nehru Park (Malabar Hill)
- Rani Baug / Byculla zoo / Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (Byculla)
- Taraporewala Aquarium (Marine Drive)
- Esselworld/Water Kingdom (Gorai)
Nehru Planetarium and Science Center (Worli)
If your classmates and you didn’t have a class trip to Nehru Planetarium during school years, you essentially didn’t attend school in Mumbai. It has popular shows on the solar system in English, Hindi and Marathi, and events like stargazing and witnessing cosmic events like eclipses complete with a telescope. The Science Center has galleries and exhibitions on everything science ranging from dinosaurs to physics.
As school students, we couldn’t contain our excitement at the prospect of visiting the planetarium with our friends — it was nothing short of NASA for us. The welcoming sight of the planetarium’s dome and the Science Center’s cylindrical building didn’t help that thought either.
Timings: 11 am — 5 pm (Monday closed)
Cost: INR 100 per person
(In pictures: Nehru Science Center and inside Nehru Planetarium)
Kamala Nehru Park (Malabar Hill)
My earliest memory of visiting Kamala Nehru Park as a child with my cousins is having one look at the Old Woman’s Shoe and falling in love with it. We kids were delighted to have the Shoe House all to ourselves and spent hours playing there. I still remember what the staircase inside the house looked like.
It’s a peaceful park at the top of Malabar Hill and overlooks Girgaum Chowpatty and Marine Drive. Over the years it has undergone multiple renovations and remains child friendly as ever. It has ample greenery, manicured lawns, and colorful murals. As an adult, it has been my go-to place for a quiet sunset.
Timings: 6 am to 10 am and 4.30 pm to 8 pm
Cost: Free of cost
(In pictures: Old Women’s Shoe, View of Marine Drive from the park, murals and walls at Kamala Nehru Park)
Rani Baug / Byculla zoo / Veermata Jijabai Bhosale Udyan (Byculla)
Byculla zoo, as it is commonly called, is one of the oldest in the country. It houses animals like hippopotamus, bear, many species of deer, snakes, penguins and birds. As children, we loved visiting the zoo — it meant watching a tiger for real!
Personally, I’ve outgrown watching animals in cages, but it’s still a great place to have a picnic as it has countless beautiful trees, ponds, has birds chirping all afternoon and is child friendly.
Timings: 9 am to 5.30 pm (Wednesday closed)
Cost: INR 50 per person (extra fee for visiting the penguin section)
(In pictures: Entrance of the Byculla zoo/ Rani Baug, animals and birds at the zoo, childhood picture from the zoo)
Taraporewala Aquarium (Marine Drive)
Built in 1951, the Taraporewala Aquarium is believed to be the oldest aquarium in the country. It houses around 400 species of fish like puffer fish, catfish, jelly fish among others. It used to be a location we clubbed with the Marine Drive and Girgaum Chowpatty, and the sudden darkness inside it with bright lights illuminating the fish used to be mesmerizing! Once inside, tourists seemed to quietly soak in the experience.
On a recent visit, we noticed that the place seemed to be renovated (it underwent renovation and reopened in 2015). Yet, the aquarium feels timeless as ever.
Timings: 10 am to 1 pm and 2pm to 5 pm (Mondays closed)
Cost: INR 60 per person
(In pictures: Fish at Taraporewala Aquarium and the building of the aquarium (source: internet))
Esselworld/Water Kingdom (Gorai)
A summer vacation staple, a visit to Esselworld/Water Kingdom meant that it was going to be the best day of the year. As if the rides weren’t adventurous enough, watching idyllic East Indian villages on the way to the amusement park and spending the evening at Gorai beach made it the stuff of dreams.
I still prefer Esselworld to Adlabs Imagica as it has tree cover throughout the park, is peppered with food-and-drinks stalls and has an adorable old school vibe to it. I don’t think I’m outgrowing Esselworld in this lifetime!
(In pictures: View of Water Kingdom from Shot N Drop ride at Esselworld and childhood memory from Esselworld)
Some of the experiences had a sense of familiarity to them, some I’ve outgrown, and some brought the child in me to the fore. It felt oddly satisfying though, we became fully grown adults with full-fledged life stories and yet could come back to something so basic and homely. One day Mumbai will look and feel new and different, but I’m glad I could revisit childhood one last time.
Thank you for your time if you’ve read so far.
You can connect with me via email at nidhi.thehappychapter@gmail.com or on Instagram at @nidhigupta_
(All pictures are taken by me unless mentioned)
