famous physical culture home
1. From the age of 10 to 20, from 1950 to 1960, Sadanand Raikar stayed at his father’s gymnasium, sleeping outside in hot season, coming inside during the rainy season and going to school at Khetwadi from Famous Physical Culture Home at Parekh Street.
2. The family residence at Surya Mahal chawl in Thakurdwar was very small while the gymnasium was open and comfortable. So with 8 to 10 boys from the locality, Sadanand spent his nights at the facility.
3. He knew when his father was approaching – Kashinath Pehlwan’s Triumph motor bike had a very good firing. Father and son would ride to Khar, then a village, where a contact of theirs had a milk business. Mumbai was up to Mahim, Bandra was gram punchayet.
4. From a Triumph with a 5 horse power engine, Kashinath Pehlwan shifted to a BSA with 350 cc. Motor bikes were very much part of his gymnasium’s physical feats.
5. Pulling 5 horse power motor bikes with their hands and controlling them, taking thousands of pounds of load on the body, performing a one-hand balance on 8 chairs stacked on top of each other, the gymnasium’s members knew all the programmes.
6. They only lacked horses, elephants and lions, otherwise the arena would have been like a circus.
7. But the gymnasium had a higher purpose. In the 1940s, the decade of its opening, its 900 strong members served as a volunteer force for India’s independence movement. They evacuated nationalist leaders, agitators and volunteers from the hotbeds of activity to safety, before they could fall to police custody.
8. In that decade, the first of his life, Sadanand escaped another authority, the Portuguese. In Goa, it was compulsory for all students to learn Portuguese for 4 years. Sadanand had completed 2, but thought Portuguese would be of no use as one fine day they would go.
9. So he left Goa and came to Bombay and enrolled at Prabhu Seminary for upper primary, and then at Hind Vidhyalaya at Khetwadi. He stayed at Famous Physical Culture Home and went to school from here only.
FAMOUS PHYSICAL CULTURE HOME
1940
Govardhan Building No. 1, 2 Parekh Street, Girgaum.
12th October, 2022.
Supported by:
Photos by Philippe Calia.
GOANS, GIRGAUM & A GYMNASIUM
