In this essay, Khalid Mohamed examines Bombay’s relentless transformation through redevelopment, disappearing heritage, soaring skyscrapers, environmental loss, and widening inequalities, revealing a metropolis caught between nostalgia, ambition, memory, and modernity. 

Although the virus of ‘redevelopment’ continues unchecked, heritage homes are demolished, slums are steamrollered, property and rental prices become prohibitive, migrant workers return in droves to their homeland amidst the fuel and cooking gas crises, the city’s ecosystem persists in opting for a ‘plastic surgery’-like upgrade.  

“Cities, like dreams are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.”
― Italo Calvino (1923-1985), Italian novelist, Invisible Cities

Call it by any name Mumbai, Bambai or Bombay – the current population being modestly projected at 27.7 million people -- here’s a megapolis that is typically redolent of our desires and fears. The current epidemic of Bombay is  redevelopment.

Well before the start-off of the new millennium, Mumbai city, and now Navi Mumbai too, with its brand-new International Airport – have been undergoing cataclysmic changes, arguably some for the better like the metro trains and expressways, and others inevitably for the worse. It shifts from day to day in fashion, trend and bigotry, and yet it is constant in its fascination and excitement of the present.

Change is a constant, trope the aye aye sayers. Of course it is, but with a measured sense of preservation and dare one say aesthetics, and certainly not by shrinking the green cover – grand clusters of trees by the truckloads – to make way for the verticals, high-rises competing to be the tallest. In the last five years, according to official statistics, Mumbai has lost at least 21,028 mature urban trees alongside the ongoing clearance of nearly 45,675 coastal mangrove trees approved for mega-infrastructure developments.

More discernible than in any other Indian city, is its adherence to traditions and centuries-old festivals and celebrations while contradictorily, its face and personality is altering rapidly in sync with globalisation. A cosmpolitan and maximum city it certainly is. On the flipside, it can be guileless and minimum, what with exclusivity and a cut-throat business ethos conjoining the Seven Islands which had  once comprised it.  

In effect, it is fast becoming a dreamworld of the ever-visible contradictions. These have always existed in every city in the world –  avaricious wealth versus abject poverty, the have-plenty versus the have nothing-at-all – co-existing in an unsigned pact. The major point of difference is that the contradictions have never been to the galloping degree it is today.

Mega-skyscrapers dwarf hutment colonies, high-end cars zip by handcarts,  designerwear shame the rags, and street food stalls buzz right below the domes of multi-star hotels’ fusion cuisines which happen to be the flavour of the day.

The knee-jerk response would be to point accusing fingers at the administration of the city, marinate the law-keepers and clerical officers swimming in the sauce of corruption. While not holding a brief for them, suffice it to say a people makes its own city, currently expanding to satellite townships like Panvel, Khargar, Neral and beyond. The sky isn’t the only limit, the land is, governed by its own codas and lifestyles. 

It is a Mumbaikar’s critical eye which makes for its most passionate lover. I would like to think of myself as someone who was born here, nurtured by the city, and ever since then have been unable to shake off its lifelong, fatal attraction. I’m rooted in Bombay, therefore I am.  However, ‘I Love Bombay’ goes the by-now debatable slogan.

There are great edifices, monuments, landmarks, nooks and crannies, specific professions and yet-to-be-discovered spots which could vanish with the vagaries of time and change. Art Deco Mumbai, with its Instagram posts, keeps you updated on the gorgeously-architected residential building which have survived or have been swallowed by the jaws of the real-estate sharks of corporate firms led by high-profile billionaires.  

Currently the tallest completed or structurally topped towers which rule the skyline include: Lokhandwala Minerva (Mahalaxmi), completed at 301 metres, featuring 78 floors of ‘ultra-luxury’ residential spaces; The Prestige Sky Tower (Mulund), topped out at 307.7 metres, serving as a new height landmark for the central suburbs; Palais Royale (Worli), structurally topped out at 320 metres (88 floors), though final interior and facade completions are still progressing. World One & World View (Lower Parel), scale up to 280+ metres as a part of a multi-tower World Towers complex. Being taller than the other was a typical component of America’s in-bred muscle flexing – New York’s The Empire Estate Building, eventually being dwarfed by seven others led by the One World Trade Center. Height matters. 

Back in Mumbai and its suburbs, there are over 300 skyscrapers exceeding 150 metres in height) and thousands of high-rise buildings currently under construction across Mumbai and its suburbs. Indeed, at present Mumbai leads the world in the sheer volume of active skyscraper construction projects.  

As I scan the skyline from my over 50-year-old six-storey building’s terrace, at least four mega-high rises have been under redevelopment for over a decade now, and yet far from completion. As for another one fringing Hanging Gardens, it has been abandoned halfway through because of internecine differences between the charitable trust it was being developed for, and appears to have been ghosted. Result: interminable litigation between families, and stalemates.  

In Malabar Hill, once rated as the No. 1 real estate property, sold the 120-year-old Laxmi Nivas Bungalow for ₹276 crore. Incidentally,  this  heritage property had once served as a secret hideout for freedom fighters during the Quit India Movement.

Ajantha Bungalow, the government-owned colonial bungalow on Narayan Dabholkar Marg (Malabar Hill), traditionally used as the council chairperson's official residence, is being demolished to be replaced by luxury condominiums to house state ministers and VIPs.

Apart from Malabar Hill, the most expensive real estate areas in Mumbai today for luxury high-rise towers are Altamount Road, Worli, Bandra and Juhu with premium property rates peaking between ₹1,25,000 and ₹1,80,000 per square foot. Plus there are staggering monthly maintenance costs for the in-built club, restaurants, mini film auditoria, swimming pool and gymnasium whether you use them or not. Driven by scarce land availability, panoramic Arabian Sea views, and unmatched status symbols, these skyscrapers cater exclusively to billionaires, corporate tycoons, and the Bollywood star elite. 

Altamount Road (Billionaires' Row), home to Mukesh Ambani’s Antilia and (Mangal Prabhat) Lodha’s Altamount, commands the highest rates in India, ranging from ₹1,25,000 to ₹1,80,000 per square foot. Business tycoon Anand Mahindra and the Dubash Brothers have made it clear that they will not part with their ancestral homes, both situated on Napean Sea Road. To date, the nearby Yash Birla bungalow has also survived bids for takeover.

It won’t be long before Tardeo, Breach Candy, Worli Seaface, Prabhadevi, Mahalaxmi, Bandra west, Bandra Bandstand and Pali Hill – as we have known them – will be unrecognisable. If brokers cannot show you a sea view apartment, hilariously they ask, “Will a tree view do?” 

On a personal note, at  a broker’s recommendation I once checked out a high-rise property Kanakia Paris, at BKC, Bandra east, themed around the French capital. It featured  European-style façades, an Arc de Triomphe-style entrance, lamp-lit pathways, landscaped French-style gardens, and a signature 40-foot replica of the Eiffel Tower. It has to be seen to be disbelieved. Add to that the swarm of autorickshaws in adjoining lanes blowing their horns till ‘deafdom’ come.

To be sure, there have been public protests and the clear rejection to offers which could not be refused, by owners and tenants of the beyond-beautiful cottages in Mathapacardy (Mazgaon),  Ranwal and  Chuim ‘villages’ (Bandra) , Kotachiwadi (Girgaum), and the ‘gaothans’ of Chembur.

By contrast, a photo-journalist pen-named matungawallah has been expressing his concern over the rapid ‘make-over’ of the once tranquil Matunga east. Even as the sky stormers alter the neighbourhood, he points out the rare instance of a century-old roof-tiled Lohana Niwas, occupying half an acre, on Laxmi Narayan Road, a brave survivor. Feeding stray cats is the favourite pastime of its senior residents. In addition, women and children of Matunga and Dadar have revived the ‘chipko’ movement whenever its ancient trees have been under threat for development.

As a perceptive analysis by Aastha Pandey in Navi, suggests in the context of the simultaneous slum demolitions, as in Dharavi and Garib Nagar Bandra (East), the resettlement and future of its dwellers is extremely iffy. Hundreds of self-appointed commentators on social media, however, point out that many of the ‘slumdogs’ were Bangladeshi refugees and assorted chisellers, without sparing a humanitarian thought for the Dharavi potters or Garib Nagar’s  hawkers, street food vendors and labour force in search of eking out an everyday livelihood. 

Surprisingly, there hasn’t been an  estimable number of detractors. Fortuitously perhaps images posted on the social media – some notable chroniclers whom I have been familiar with on Instagram are Prashant Nakwe, Hashim Badani, Chirodeep Chaudhari, Bimal Maskara, mumbaipaused,  bombay.noir, Karl Kolah, Mukesh Parpiani and Dev Dodia will be the only evidence of Bombay/Mumbai as it once was.

Chances are that the upcoming generations will glimpse vignettes of the metropolis before and during its vertical Kafkaesque metamorphosis at a retrospective exhibition at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), if it’s still there that is.