Dismayed by the news that the city may be about to loose yet another heritage property, some 300 people gathered in Khotachiwadi on November 28 to try to stop the demolition of one of the neighborhood’s beautiful heritage cottages and sign a petition calling for the preservation of Khotachiwadi – one of the most charming neighborhoods of Mumbai, with its small pedestrian streets, its typical Portuguese bungalows, and its untouched communal and village-like atmosphere in the heart of South Bombay.

A few days ago, residents of Khotachiwadi learned that No. 35, a 150-year-old Portuguese-style bungalow acquired four years ago by Deekay builders, was about to be taken down to be replaced by a 18-story concrete tower building.

The movement that was started by the Khotachiwadi Welfare and Heritage Trust seems to be gathering steam.

On 29th of November, a meeting was held in Khotachiwadi, during which BJP Member of Legislative Assembly Mangal Lodha, Shiv Sena local municipal cooperator Mrinal Gobatkar and 150 residents of the neighborhood decided that all the 26 remaining buildings are now protected and that nobody would be allowed to destroy heritage buildings. However, some of the most dilapidated chawls, which are on the verge of falling down, can be re-developed, as long as all the norms and regulations are respected.

During the last session of the legislative assembly, the case of Khotachiwadi, which was declared a grade III heritage precinct in 1995, was brought up and a case was made for the protection of all heritage buildings.

Therefore, the demolition of No. 35 is illegal and a probe will look into the construction of No. 29B as well, where a seven-story building being constructed may violate construction rules and regulations.

Yesterday, Mr. Lodha and members of the Khotachiwadi Welfare and Heritage Trust delivered a letter to the municipal commissioner calling for a heritage law to be enacted.

On Saturday December 4, 30 NGOs will meet to discuss the way forward to preserve Khotachiwadi.

Read the Hindustan Times Article

The bustle of traffic and people on the Jagannath Shankar Sheth Road,near Charni Road station, dies as soon as you enter the by-lane towards Khotachi Wadi. The lane leads one along colourful graffiti-lined walls to several charming Portugese-style bungalows.

Khotachi Wadi residents, most of whom have lived there for generations, speak with great nostalgia about the friendly and open culture of the locality, which they fear will fade away as the bungalows make way for highrise building.

The latest bungalow being demolished is 35 Khotachi Wadi, aquaint one-storey structurewith adouble balcony and wooden railings. Residents claimed that Deekay Builders, which bought the bungalow, is constructing an 18-storey building in its place. “Not only will that building affect the water supply and sanitation and traffic issues in the locality more importantly it will ruin its culture and ambience,” said Phillip Felizardo, 45.

Born and brought up in the locality with his five siblings, Felizardo is extremely upset about the demolition, like other residents. “We used to walk in and out of peoples houses at our will and it felt like our own. In the high rises, people don’t even know their neighbours,” he added, as the neighbourhood children made themselves at home in his colourful patio.

While the older residents of the area have stayed on in their ancestral homes, the younger generation has migrated to other countries, leaving an aging group of inhabitants to preserve the heritage. Vivienne Mendes, 67,was active in that role until her by-pass surgery three years ago. “My children want us to sell our house and move to Singapore with them, but I want to die in this house and refuse to move,” said Mendes, who fears her children will sell off the property after her death.

Mendes’s case sums up the problem plaguing the area, which was designated as a grade III heritage precinct by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation in 1995.

“Since the old owners of the bungalows can’t afford the maintenance costs, their children insist on selling them. This issue can be addressed by starting economic activities in some of the bungalows that ensure that the character of the place is maintained and a small revenue is generated,” said Matias Echanove, 33, an urban planner who moved to the city from Switzerland four years ago and lived in Khotachi Wadi for two years.

“While we don’t want to commercialise the locality, we want to create a cultural space for Mumbaikars, who don’t have many neighborhoods such as this,” added Echanove, who feels that people perceive Mumbai either as slums or high-rises but have no imagination of places such as Khotachi Wadi which have a diverse and historical character.

“Khotachi Wadi has the quality of a village and its bungalows and lanes are in perfect balance with the number of people living in the area,” said architect and planner Charles Correa. “It would be barbaric to bring down such a bungalow for the greed of some people,” he added.

(Residents of Khotachi Wadi have organized a heritage walk and candlelight tribute to Bungalow No.35 at 5pm on Sunday to create awareness about the heritage area.)

By HT Correspondent

Read Times of India Article

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Read DNA article

Come in Khotachiwadi tomorrow, Sunday 28th from 5 to 7pm.

Can the combination of art and academia nudge citizens into being more aware of their immediate environments? Certainly, this was the hope behind two recent exhibitions, Informal Cities and Mumbai Mashup, the latter part of an international urban research project called Urbz Mashup in Mumbai.

Curated by independent, multidisciplinary teams of international academics, urban planners and artists, the goal in both cases was to probe urban development issues through photographs, drawings, video art and narrative text, making these accessible for the citizen.

Partho Mukhopadhyay, senior fellow, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and an urbanization expert, endorses this approach: “The really nice thing about Urbz was that it mobilized the energy of young architects who are still trying to apply the techniques they’ve learnt to the city around them. Consequently, you get a much more multi-angular perspective, where each individual sees the strengths and the weaknesses of the city. By contrast, (the) government sees only the form of the city, looking at the city as static putty clay models, not as living organisms.”

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The URBZ MASHUP Mumbai was automated by an enthusiastic bunch of creative urbanists from Mumbai and around the world. They mixed and matched their experiences to re-locate these old neighbourhoods within a contemporary context through their own histories and experiences.

They decoded the by-lanes of Chor Bazaar and re-arranged them in an alternative map that respected the flea-market’s self-made rules. They connected its grammar to markets from Goa and elsewhere.

They  suggested signposts and made new maps that gave legitimacy to the informality of Abdul Rehman Street.

They made toys inspired by roadside knick-knack sellers and hawked them for older images, photographs and memories.

They cast creative projections beneath the JJ Flyover that snakes through the neighbourhood like a gigantic beast and opened up possibilities inspired from New York – possibilities that included performance and alternative uses.

They transformed the walls of Khotachiwadi into canvases for painting dreamscapes inflected by Byzantine, Mexican and popular art.

They walked through the labyrinthine Bhuleshwar  and coined words, phrases and narratives to describe the experience that coalesced into new meanings by different users.

They documented the existential crisis of Crawford market that is trying to reinvent itself and suggested alternative ways of doing so – by mashing up the internal logic of the market with its new aspirations.

They figured out that ‘Bazaarchitecure’ was the main motif of the formal-informal market-dense neighbourhood such as the Municipal C and D wards which incorporates the ‘Mashup Area’ and suggested new policy frameworks for their future.

They were invited to walk into a living heritage of ‘Old Bombaye’ – Edward Talkies and managed to capture a World-War II-style cinematic experience that co-exists in a perfect Mashup moment with a contemporary multiplex down the road.

They focused on the patterns made by the shadows of the thousand odd users of the lanes and captured the busy street-life through a refracted photographic gaze.

Some of the output was exhibited at the Girgaum Catholic Club in Khotachiwadi on November 1st – the final day of the Mashup.

We are grateful to Art India Magazine for having sponsored the printing of the output for the exhibition.

The press covered the event with pithy one-liners. ‘Whose City is it anyway?’, ‘Heritage Hunt’, ‘The Great Mumbai Mashup’, ‘How to Make your own Mumbai’ and ‘Mumbai – Tailor Made’.

A full report of the workshop will soon be available on the site. Meanwhile, you can start browsing the mashup’s output here. More images on the URBZOO Flickr page.