User-generated enclaves
The neighbourhood of Khotachiwadi is the most striking example of Mumbais historical ability of allowing citizens to shape, control and build their environment
Mumbais landscape is rapidly changing. But one knows that this change should not be mourned. After all, change is inevitable. Mumbai has always been morphing and transforming all through its history. Yet, there are times when reminder alarms have to be set. Like everybody involved with the hamlet of Khotachiwadi in any capacity, one gets very attached to this little urban contradiction. Knowing that it has been much written about, documented and archived, it feels noble to desist adding to the pointless piles of paper produced on it. Yet, walking through its lanes the other day was an experience depressing enough to set the alarm.
After the recent problematic permission granted to South Mumbais builders, it does not look as if Khotachiwadi will survive at all. It has become a small cavity that is sure to be filled up once its valiant remaining residents eventually buckle under pressure. It is now acutely apparent that those few who are still fighting it out like the fabled unyielding comic Gaulish village deserve all the support they can get from the city. Not for any nostalgia or the sake of preserving the past, but for the importance of recognising its real strengths.
The fact that Khotachiwadi represents a different logic of Mumbais past became apparent to me from a very unexpected perspective. Far away in Tokyo, walking through the streets of Shimokitzawa, I had a conversation with my friend and fellow urbanologist Matias Echanove. I was still fresh with my engagements in Khotachiwadi and pointed out how more conventionally beautiful it was in comparison to the exciting, dense, but relatively more aesthetically adventurous Tokyo street. He pointed out that there was more in common between Khotachiwadi and Shimokitazawa than the question of beauty. What connect the two are the systems of control that their inhabitants had over the shape of their respective neighbourhoods. They were truly user-generated urban enclaves, and just like user-generated software and web tools, these spontaneous examples of selfdevelopment needed to be understood as the basic principles that made large parts of cities like Mumbai and Tokyo so special. Even within Mumbai, he pointed out, places like Khotachiwadi and Koliwada in Dharavi are actually first cousins of sorts and have dozens of relatives all around the world.
It is the intimate involvement of the residents in their emergence that makes Khotachiwadi so special. The neighbourhood is the most striking example of Mumbais historical ability of allowing its citizens to shape, control and build their environment. Every home in this neighbourhood tells its story with pride and involvement. That is what makes it so special. It is limited indeed to talk of it only in terms of its architectural and historical uniqueness.
Just the other day we took another walk this time in Khotachiwadi and reminicised about Shimokitazawa. As an urbanologist, Matias wants to understand these urban spaces even more intimately. He and his fiancé Celine have moved to the city to experience its special logic at close quarters. Not surprisingly, they connected with Khotachiwadi at once, through the structures of a similar urban life they had experienced in other usergenerated enclaves elsewhere.
It is not the glitter of the new Mumbai rising up rapidly on the horizon that attracts them, as much as the dusty by-lanes of the citys real urban legacy the participation of ordinary residents in its amazing growth. They hope that the lane seemingly on the verge of oblivion actually wins the battle, thanks to the brave efforts of the handful of guerrillas urban hackers of sorts who are still fighting on!
Rahul Srivastava, a PUKAR associate, specialises in urban issues, and writes on traffic, trains, illegal construction, Mithi, monsoon… in short all things that make Mumbai go grrr
Khotachiwadi, a tranquil residential enclave, is one of the last vestiges of Mumbais original inhabitants, the East Indians