City: Mumbai

During the day, they look like black plastic garbage bags blown onto trees by a strong gust of wind. As darkness falls, their arms unfold and they take off, flying between the multi-storied buildings in our Lokhandwala Township in Kandivali East. As you might have gathered, I've spent quite a few hours over the last few years watching bats, amazed at how similar they are to vampires in movies. Or maybe it's the other way round, vampires in movies are inspired by the wide black wings of bats. Hundreds of bats hanging like plastic bags. Photo: Arathi Manay Since the…

In India, a road accident happens every minute. Yes, you read that right, every single minute. Road accidents and India aren’t strangers. In fact, they are better acquainted than they should be. Sometime mid-July in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand six people were killed in two separate road accidents. Around the same time seven people died in five separate accidents in Gujarat. In Nashik, Maharashtra, five people were killed in two separate accidents in June. These are just a few instances from recent weeks of the thousands of road accidents that occur in India every year. Of course, since lockdown was enforced across…

Fountain Heights is a 187-flat apartment block, located in Lokhandwala Township, Kandivali East, in the Western Suburbs of North Mumbai. Like most residential complexes in our neighbourhood, we were totally dependent on municipal water to meet our daily requirement of approximately 140 kilo litres. The society has two borewells that were provided by the builder, but they provided no water during the summer and very little during the monsoon. With no alternative to municipal supply, buying water through water tankers was the only option left with us during times of water cuts. The costs were often exorbitant, given the high…

Mumbai, they say, is the city that never sleeps. A good reason for that are the local train lines that connect distant places within the city and certain neighbouring districts as well. From 30 July, entry to the Mumbai suburban rail network will be regulated by a QR-based Electronic-pass system.Local trains were shut for 84-days until 15 June, owing to the lockdown to curtail the spread of COVID-19. After which, they began to function in some measure. Currently, the Central Railways and Western Railways of the Mumbai suburban rail network operate only 350 services each daily. These were allowed to…

An interview with Kiran Dighavkar, Assistant Municipal Commissioner of G-North Ward. He received acclaim from the WHO which cited Dharavi as an example in how to manage the fight against the virus. By the end of March, three positive COVID-19 cases were reported in a two day period in Dharavi, one of the largest slum clusters in Mumbai. Soon after, on April 1, the first death from the virus was reported when a 56-year-old resident of Baliga Nagar in Dharavi died. The person had no travel  history. Within eight days of the first death, as the city reported 320 positive…

We often see people in apartment complexes and neighbourhood shops putting out a whole lot of food (or grains) for the birds - usually pigeons and crows are the recipients. Ask any of them why they feed the birds and the answers almost always point towards redemption - doing a good deed, reserving a place in heaven, overcoming personal difficulties and the like. Urban wild animals such as pigeons and crows are meant to fend for themselves! There is something called ‘natural selection’ which allows only for the fittest individuals to survive, getting rid of weak animals and those prone…

The Maharashtra Government and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation have bolstered health infrastructure in Mumbai to tackle COVID-19, but insufficient healthcare facilities in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) are affecting the COVID-19 response in bordering districts. MMR is the country’s largest urban agglomeration with eight municipal corporati­ons: Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Kalyan-Dombivli, Mira-Bhayandar, Ulhasnagar, Bhiwandi-Nizampur, and Vasai-Virar, according to MMRDA. MMR is spread over 4,354 sqkm, while the Greater Mumbai region, comprising of Mumbai city and Mumbai suburb, has a geographical area of 437.71 sqkm, about a 10th of MMR. There are currently 92,864 confirmed cases in MMR, almost as much as…

Dharavi, often termed Asia's largest slum cluster occupies 525 acres of prime land in the heard of Mumbai. Photo: YUVA When you walk the streets of Dharavi today, it’s hard to imagine that its crooked but solid houses, informal but sophisticated business networks and heterogenous but distinct culture have been built over the remnants of a Koli fishing village. At the end of the nineteenth century, when industries like leather, waste-recycling, etc. were deemed too hazardous for colonial South Bombay, the peri-urban, swamp land which was home to the Koli fishing community became the saving grace for the displaced industries.…

Unlike other cities in the country, Mumbai has a complex structure of electricity distribution. To begin with, there are multiple electricity distributors. There is the state owned Bruhanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) and a Public Sector Undertaking, Mahavitaran (MSEDCL). The two major private players are Tata Power and Adani Electricity. In the Western suburbs of the city, customers can choose between the private distributors. So if you are living in an apartment complex, it’s quite possible that you and your next door neighbour receive power from different companies. When customers received their bills in June, they were in for…

Ayesha is a 7th standard student at a Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) school at Chembur Naka. While earlier, she used to dress up and rush to school, these days, she begins her day with unread WhatsApp messages. Typically, the messages contain educational video links, homework assignments, and activities sent by her teachers in subject-wise WhatsApp groups. Ayesha watches the videos to understand a concept, completes assignments in her notebook, and uploads pictures on the appropriate WhatsApp group. The messaging app, previously used by her mother to stay in touch with friends and family, is a substitute for Ayesha's…