MUMBAI: On any weekday, scores of people, mainly cabbies, line up on the lane along the over 150-year-old Esplanade Mansion, Kalaghoda. Thus it is hard to imagine the consequences had yesterday been any other day of the week. Shortly after 7pm, balconies on the second, third and fourth floors of the heritage building crashed.One kaali-peeli taxi was crushed. Its driver, Mahendra Meher Yadav, had the narrowest of escapes. "I had just come out of my vehicle to quench my thirst. As I started gulping water from my mug, I heard an earsplitting noise," he told TOI a couple of hours later. "My car had been reduced to rubble. It took a while to sink in that I had escaped by the skin of my teeth."Esplanade Mansion, which started life as Watson's Hotel, is the country's oldest surviving cast iron building. Fabricated in England, it was constructed on site in the early 1860s. It is now crumbling and is a strange mix of decayed blocks of wood and bricks set within lithe and elegant metal outlines. The most significant aspect of its heritage is that it was the first place in India to screen the Lumiere Brothers' Cinematographe in 1896.The building, which has residential quarters as well as commercial units, is right across the street from the city civil court. As such, several lawyers have their chambers on Esplanade Mansion's first floor.After the balconies crashed, the fire brigade reached the spot and told the building's occupants to vacate it immediately. With the help of the BEST undertaking, the building's power supply was then cut.A preliminary inquiry suggested that the balconies caved in and gave way as the steel beams on which their slabs were placed had rusted. Heavy rains in the last few days did the remaining damage.According to eyewitnesses, first a small portion of a fourth floor balcony fell on a third floor balcony, following which a large chunk of the third floor balcony crashed onto a second floor balcony, bringing it down.Mehmood Golaftab, a 67-year-old resident of the building, said his family has been living there since 1934. According to him, except for its balconies, the building was strong. "Balcony repairs were recommended by heritage committee experts and Mhada a few months ago. But litigation between the residents and the authorities delayed the work," he said. "Incidentally, 16 years ago, a balcony had fallen, again, without causing injuries."A Mhada officer said that had the BMC and the heritage panel allowed Mhada to renovate the building after it was given heritage status a couple of decades ago, things would have been different today.