Memories of Juhu Beach: Old Bombay
'If ever there were a people who have
everything needed to succeed, it's us. If ever there were a people who
need to be saved from themselves, it's us.'
From Priya Jha's speech in the Spellbinding India Novel, Dreams of One Country
(Amazon - Books) Love lights up an audacious young woman's united
youth campaign for Humane Values, inspiring India's real
modernization ...to Singapore's Heights!
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When we lived in Juhu near the beach I would go there at dawn for a run, come rain or sun. I would reach the main beach, then run back to where I could see Versova. There are descriptions of the beach in
Dreams of One Country - like one on the exhilaration of running against the strong monsoon wind when the rain felt as sharp as needles on my face
One beach memory was an annual pre-monsoon event, a phenomenon no one understood. One morning all kinds of sea creatures - including sharks, eels and small whales - would be thrown up on the beach and would lie there flopping, scattered all over. No one understood why. And no one would pick any of the fish to eat. They felt they could be unhealthy. So the sea creatures would lie there and rot on the beach and the beach would stink for days.
Another memory of Juhu beach is the Air India plane crash in the latter 70's - after taking off from Sahar Airport about six miles away. It crashed into the Arabian Sea just off the coast. The plane had gone to the sea-bed. All passengers and crew had died. The plane had then floated up, and it could be seen from the beach on the horizon. Crowds of spectators came every day to see it...till it was removed for investigations into the cause of the disaster.
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