Spice Boxes & Silverware: Show offers peek into city’s Pathare Prabhu legacy

A tiny silver spice box. Miniature cooking vessels blackened with age. A grandmother’s rangoli patterns recreated from memory. In a new exhibition at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (CSMVS), the story of one of Mumbai’s oldest communities unfolds not through grand monuments or political timelines but through intimate domestic objects that once sat inside Pathare Prabhu homes.

Opening on May 19, ‘Roots of a City: The Pathare Prabhus of Mumbai’ is the third in the museum’s Mumbai Gallery initiative, which tells the city’s history through its people rather than textbook narratives.

“The Pathare Prabhus arrived in Bombay from Devgiri around 1296, following Alauddin Khilji’s attack,” says Rajan Jaykar, solicitor, trustee of CSMVS and co-curator. “King Ramdeva is believed to have sent his second son, Bimb, towards the Konkan, accompanied by certain communities, including the Pathare Prabhus, who settled on Mahim Island, then known as Mahikawati.”

Over centuries, they rose to important administrative and civic roles. “They cleverly placed themselves in the service of the Portuguese, as they could speak and write Portuguese and were highly efficient in administrative roles,” he says. “They went on to serve as clerks, interpreters, translators and administrators. Some even rose to become judges in local courts.”

Despite being small in number — around 5,000 during the early British period — they left an outsized mark on the city’s social and cultural fabric.

Inside carefully recreated period rooms are heirloom furniture, ritual objects, textiles, photographs and kitchenware loaned by community families. A whole section is devoted to the community’s fascination with miniature art. Crafted from brass, silver, tin, wood, glass and porcelain, these miniatures — popularly known as bhatka — closely replicate everyday and ceremonial objects. The display draws from CSMVS’s own holdings, including a collection donated in 1994 by Sanat Senjeet, a community member, as well as objects on loan from the private collections of Dr Anita Rane-Kothare, Vishvas Ajinkya and Rajan Jaykar. “While many objects may not conform to traditional notions of artistic value, each is imbued with memories, emotions and untold stories,” says exhibition consultant Vandana Prapanna.

Among them, a sepia portrait of Nanu Narayan Kothare, circa 1911, stands out — three generations gathered in a studio, the older women in traditional drapes, the youngest already in a frock, a football at someone’s feet. The community response was overwhelming, says Prapanna. Families were so eager to contribute that curators had to stop accepting objects. “The Pathare Prabhus seem to be deeply aware of the value of family heirlooms in narrating history,” says Prapanna. Video interviews add another layer — affectionate, funny and occasionally emotional recollections about food, festivals, migration and neighbourhood life.

The exhibition pays special attention to women. Pathare Prabhu women sustained traditions through cuisine, festivals and especially rangoli, which became one of the community’s most recognisable cultural expressions. The shift is visible even in dress. A hand-coloured print titled ‘Progress of Fashion’ shows three women in profile: the first fully covered in a shawl, the second in a transitional drape, the third holding a furled umbrella, her saree pinned in the colonial manner. Another highlight is an iconic MV Dhurandhar oil portrait of his daughter-in-law Nalini — pearl necklace, black and gold Chandrakala saree, books open on the table before her — a woman who looks entirely at home in two worlds at once. One section revisits women’s exhibitions held in 1909, 1911, 1926 and culminating in the 1938 Pathare Prabhu Ladies’ Exhibition of Arts and Crafts. It is fitting, then, that the show will be inaugurated by five women from the community.

Once landed gentry owning property across Bombay Island and Salsette, the Pathare Prabhus gradually sold their holdings as others grew more commercially powerful, drifting from spacious South Bombay bungalows into smaller homes further north. “The sense of collective celebration has diminished, largely because there is no longer a specific locality where the community lives together,” says Jaykar.

Much of the community’s culinary knowledge now exists in memory — inside the hands of grandmothers who cook without measurements or written recipes. “Bombay demolishes physically first, then culturally,” says food writer Kunal Vijaykar, who will be part of the inauguration. He argues that Pathare Prabhu cuisine, layered with Marathi, Gujarati, colonial and coastal influences, is among the most sophisticated urban food traditions in India, yet remains largely unpromoted. “Preservation today cannot be passive. It has to be active, vocal and visible.”

As glass towers replace old buildings and their stories, Prapanna hopes to pursue that vanishing landscape. “Only a few families have resisted the pressures of redevelopment, choosing to preserve their ancestral homes. These old bungalows still resonate with the memories and blessings of earlier generations,” she says. What distinguishes the community, according to Prapanna, is its deep emotional connection to its roots and the care with which this heritage has been preserved. “In many ways, every Pathare Prabhu is an archivist at heart.”