mumbai darshan (again)

it was better than expected, the two days rupali, rohit and me spent tripping across the city doing one of our many mumbai darshans. it must be admitted first of all that it had been a long time since we last had taken this tour since the school had consciously decided to forego ‘exchange’ programmes that are mere fronts for foreign exotic india tourists where the idea of exchange is to have cheap reliable tour guides in maximum city. this is much better. our kids also are going to switzerland later this year and the swiss are very nice.

dadar parsi colony

five gardens

old tdr extensions as cages above buildings

a mansion in the city

so monday and tuesday were spent driving around. every time you go around the city you discover something new. driving through dharavi (no stop this time) our first stop was dadar parsi colony- five gardens, where the old fabric is being replaced with high rises but the gardens are still some of the most accessible and beautiful in the city. bawa men stand and peer curiously from first floor windows as we trooped past and children sang old english songs from a school.

perpetual construction around phoenix

chawls below the flyover

community based women's organization making and selling marathi snacks below flyover

the beedi making chawl

opposite peninsula

we had lunch at phoenix- gorging ourselves in the very spaces that we decry very happily and then to banganga. but before that we took a walk to one of the chawls still left in the mill district. directly opposite the blue glass cube of the peninsula center a line of shops opens out into the courtyard filled with a low rise community. women sat on the thresholds making beedis and a passing local commented “now these are only interesting to foreigners”. a simmering discontent. but moving on to more tourist friendly waters – banganga.

the first time we took one of our foreign tourists there always avoiding it to steer clear of the sepia tint with naked children in water cliché. this time was nice though and the flirting between the krvia girls and the swiss boys started there on and continued to zaveri bazaar where blue and pink transparent pichkaris were bought and squirting and giggling followed.

steps to banganga

the tank

a temple

around the tank

fluorescent temple

at zaveri bazaar we walked through an old megastructure market- rem koolhaas pay attention. the lk market and the cloth market. woven deep into the city, they are both sprawling interior cities complete with courtyards, avenues and alleyways. with a roof that soars there is always a cool breeze within. white cotton sheets line both sides as heavy mattresses invite you to sit. warehouses are accessed by narrow stairs within each shop. incredible.

crawford market

pretty plastic things

shiny furry things

the street of toys and things

mosque and mangaldas market

mangaldas market





streets and shops in lk and mangaldas market

right behind mumbadevi was another incredible street. parathas were being roasted in a stall and chai sold across it. religious knickknacks and garlands along with plastic toys on a pedestrian street.

mumbadevi and the street behind it

we ended the day at the gateway of india where the new plaza is almost complete. it si a relief to see the ridiculously gated garden removed. i think his might be the first example of the decordoning off of public space. the seats on the opposite side are nice enough but badly made. shivaji still stands surrounded by green though. in the proposal i had worked o for the udri this garden was also removed and a pedestrian street led up to it.

the gateway plaza and the seats opposite

horniman circle from the bus

evening at juhu beach. street children like pebbles

the second day was navi mumbai day but not before a stop at mankhurd to look at some crimes against humanity committed by the state. rehousing for project affected people. slabs of 8 storied buildings crowd against one another with slivers of space in between. slightly better but not by much are the buildings further down the street where verandah run the length of the buildings- a little more friendly- and overlook vast tracts of barren land. shops have been allocated away from all of this in a plaza where no one seems to have moved. why would anyone come to this god forsaken end to buy anything. disastrous and frightening.







housing and the market - mankhurd

right beside that monstrosity is the older avatar of low income housing- pleasant single storied buildings around a courtyard.

in navi mumbai, the cbd is slightly less desolate than it used to be when i was surveying it almost 9 years back. with the city slowly filling up, a few luxury stores and offices seem to have finally moved into the skeleton like behemoths in that ghost town. even now, though, the upper floors still seem abandoned and dusty.

palm beach drive

belapur station, cbd

rohit rupali framed in bus door

the experience of driving in new bombay is strange. while in mumbai the scale and speed never seems to change that much in mew bombay it seems like the distance between the intimate and the vast is always too quick. from racing along the relatively empty streets, barren and desolate to plunging suddenly into the dense fabrics imagined as places to live by the architects chosen to design the ideal way of life in the new city. the obsession of the 80s to create and ‘inidan’ way of living through learning from the traditional villages and towns has so many avatars here- most notably at the artists village- correa’s ideal of living for the city he was part of proposing- and raj rewals horrific red stone monstrosity in nerul. while correas fractal organisaion leading from court to court seems to have worked with the inhabitants completely taking over the architecture itself- someties to a point where the original core is no longer visible (thankfully- i was never one for the annoyingly cloy cuteness of the original buildings) rewals project lies almost completely abandoned. while one part of it has been occupied after the residents have completely ridden themselves of the rough red plaster and the agra stone cladding that is ‘inspired from north indian desert towns’, the other part of the site is overrun with cobwebs and dust. i doubt anyone would want to live in what when new looked like a ruin. and like a ruin it photographs well, but walk into the apartments and the hovel like rooms are incredibly oppressive. the narrow openings that make the tasteful proportions of the exterior don’t help at all.


artists village - how did the right house become the left house?

the nallah in artists village. the original home is almost unseen

artists village - a play area

artists village - old home

rewal at nerul - red rough plaster and stone around cute courtyards
to live in it one has to completely plaster and repaint the whole building

subodh and hema’s housing at sanpada is thankfully miles away from all that romanticism. with interesting apartment typologies around a street and a eccentric little play pavilion in a garden at least it acknowledges the urban. to the rear the low rise low income housing still evokes the rural like the correa project, but while correas project weaves the fabric tight the project leaves many loose ends.

mig housing at sanpada. a street and buildings on both sides. the rear is a green swath of land.



lig housing where the courtyards are informal meeting places and two wheeler parking

sleeping in front of the play pavillion in the garden at sanpada
the road back- at govandi