Mumbai’s grand old members-only clubs are woven into the city’s social and sporting fabric, passing from one generation to the next. From CCI’s storied Brabourne Stadium and beloved libraries to Willingdon’s golf course and Eggs Kejriwal, these institutions blend history, food, sport and family rituals, revealing how Bombay’s elite leisure culture evolved along its waterfront and green spaces.
I learnt to love books at the Cricket Club of India. Growing up, CCI was simply one of those places that was always there. I spent hours in its children’s library, working my way through the shelves. In hindsight, those afternoons probably had something to do with the fact that I grew up to become a journalist and writer.
Radio Club, another one of members-only clubs, came into my life in much the same way. For those of us born and brought up in Bombay, the city’s old clubs have always been part of our landscape. “The club” could mean CCI, Willingdon, Bombay Gym, Radio Club or Breach Candy.
These legacy clubs are sporting institutions, social spaces and, for many Bombay families, places that passed from one generation to the next. Here are six of Bombay’s great old clubs, or, members-only clubs, and the stories that make each one worth knowing.
Brabourne Stadium gets top billing at CCI, understandably. The club was incorporated in 1933 and the stadium opened four years later on 90,000 square yards of reclaimed land at Churchgate. It has since hosted Tests, the ICC Champions Trophy and India’s first T20 International. But CCI has always been more than just a cricket club. There is tennis, badminton, squash, swimming, billiards, cards and, increasingly, newer sports like padel and pickleball too. On sunny days, the cricket field, known as The Lawns, transforms into a large playground with kids cavorting on the greens, while adults enjoy mint tea and chaat on the club’s iconic gingham covered tables.
At Chinaman, the club’s erstwhile Chinese restaurant, Nelson Wang (who later went on to open the popular China Garden) invented chicken manchurian, when a member asked for something different. And the orange nougat remains both a dessert unique to CCI and a firm favourite with the old-timers. CCI’s libraries have fed books — and the love of reading — to thousands of members. The AA Jasdenvala Library holds more than 35,000 books, while the Vijay Merchant Children’s Library has over 25,000.
In a city fighting for every inch of space, Willingdon has an 18-hole golf course in the heart of South Mumbai. Ask someone who grew up going to ‘Willi’s’ about the Cabbage Patch, and chances are that a childhood birthday party will feature somewhere in the answer — it’s a space where children disappear across the lawn while parents settle in for the afternoon with the club’s ubiquitous finger food.
And then there is Eggs Kejriwal. The dish was born here in the 1960s when Willingdon regular Devi Prasad Kejriwal, who came from a vegetarian household but liked eggs, would order a fried egg on toast with cheese and green chillies after golf. Other members began asking for “what Kejriwal is eating” and the name stuck. Eggs Kejriwal went from Willingdon to club menus around Bombay and then much further. Floyd Cardoz served a version in New York; The Bombay Canteen gave it its own spin in Mumbai.
Bombay Gymkhana’s most important space may well be its verandah. The Swiss-chalet-style clubhouse has sat at the edge of Azad Maidan since 1876. Out front, sport carries on much as it always has. Inside, the verandah has its own rhythm: fresh lime sodas arrive, members drift in after squash, rugby or tennis, children move between sport and food, and conversations stretch longer than intended.
India played its first Test match at home here in 1933, with Lala Amarnath scoring the country’s first Test century. Even the menu comes with lore. Steak Maneckji, one of the club’s old favourites, was named for Jean Maneckji, a rugby-playing member remembered for doing Louis Armstrong impersonations at the bar. The steak was cut into cubes, supposedly to make it easier to eat while listening to the musict
At Breach Candy, everything starts with the pool. The vast outdoor saltwater pool, constructed from 1928, is shaped like the map of undivided India; and Sri Lanka forms the children’s pool.
The ritual tends to involve food. Breach Candy’s mini Bombay cocktail naans — small, cheese-filled naans served hot — have a cult following of their own. The pool has its stories too. A long-serving member of staff once recalled a Christmas tradition in which Father Christmas and a fairy were paraded around the water on floats propelled by swimmers. One year, the float toppled and Santa went in. There was once even a “bikini bar,” where swimmers could come straight over from the pool for a drink.
Founded in 1846, Royal Bombay Yacht Club was already more than 60 years old when work began on the Gateway of India. It gained the “Royal” prefix under Queen Victoria in 1876, and its seafront clubhouse was built in 1881.
More importantly, it remains a yacht club in more than name. Sailing is still central to RBYC, with Seabirds, Lightnings, Optimists and Lasers in its fleet and junior programmes that send new generations out onto the harbour. Inside is the Dolphin Bar, still gloriously old-school. Club lore is equally colourful. A young Bernard Montgomery — decades before becoming Field Marshal Montgomery — once got into trouble here after a noisy evening involving shouting and banging on brass-topped tables; the retelling eventually became the more entertaining story that he had been thrown out for dancing on them. At RBYC, the harbour isn't a pretty backdrop to lunch - it’s why the club exists.
The Bombay Presidency Radio Club dates back to 1928 and began, as the name suggests, as a centre for radio enthusiasts, with radio hamming and sailing among its early interests. The story reaches back even further: in June 1923, the Radio Club of Bombay was responsible for one of India’s earliest organised radio broadcasts, years before All India Radio came into being.
A century later, the technology may have dated, but not the club. Radio Club still revolves around sport, food and, above all, its position on the harbour. There is badminton and swimming; the Patio and Harbour View; and Gin Chicken — chicken marinated with ginger, garlic and gin — a long-standing club dish that inspires disproportionate loyalty. But the pier remains its defining space. Members use it for walks, parties, weddings, even a car park; boats move across the harbour beyond it; and in the monsoon, when the tide is high enough, the Arabian Sea shows you exactly how close it is to you.