‘Mazgaon on the cusp of getting recycled for the third time’

“Mumbai has a way of erasing its past,” said Captain Ramesh Babu, dialling in on a call from Kochi. Babu was speaking about a pocket of the city he called home for 15 years; a place so dear to his heart that when it was time for him to leave on his retirement in 2021, he penned it a book as a parting gift.
The book called ‘My Own Mazgaon’ is an ode to the centuries-old charming and quaint precinct, now under threat from builders and the redevelopment mania. On September 19, Babu, Zeenat Kulavoor, the design director at Bombay Duck Designs, and Rahul Reddy, the founder of artisanal café Subko, will discuss its history in a panel moderated by architect Nikhil Mahashur at Coomaraswamy Hall.
Babu’s book was written at the end of his stint at the Naval Docks during the Covid-19 pandemic. “Mazgaon is relatively overlooked compared to South Mumbai so I set out to dig out its history through my historian friend, Rafique Baghdadi, and the many archives that opened their vaults online during the pandemic,” he said.
A village develops
Over two centuries ago, Mazgaon was a sleepy village where agriculture and fishing formed the backbone of the community. Some part of that history is still retained, albeit only in names such as Anjeer wadi, Tad wadi, Sitafal wadi and Nariyal wadi. The turning point of the precinct came with the dry docks, set up in 1774, offering ships a safe port to land and attracting workers and businesses galore. The East Indians followed from Virar and Vasai, setting up the village of Matharpacady. From much further came the Chinese, who arrived due to their knack for ship-building. Business boomed, opening up industries of timber, textiles, cotton, a dairy farm, carpenters, coppersmiths and more.
Sometime in the early 19th century, Mazgaon became Mumbai’s first suburb that was home to sprawling weekend residences of the wealthy. “Different communities set themselves up thus, leading to a confluence of small homes and architectural styles, making it a quaint village,” said Babu. “But now, all of that is being taken over by tall ugly buildings.”
Mahashur, who conducts heritage walks in the area, said that only the religious places were now left to show tourists. “The residential homes, whether two-storey buildings or bungalows, are all slowly being acquired by builders,” he said. “But many godowns and warehouses survive due to the still-booming businesses of car-washing, ship-breaking printing presses and the government-owned Mazgaon dock.”
Mahashur’s route includes several churches and temples, including the sole Chinese temple in Mumbai, a Parsi agiary, Hasnabad, the laying place of the late Aga Khan, and St Mary’s school, built in 1884, where Mahashur did his entire schooling. “When I looked out from my school’s two football grounds, there would be no tall buildings in sight,” he said. “Today, that’s all one can see.”
Mahashur and Babu attribute the loss to the deaths and moving away of older generations and their replacement by younger people less concerned about the jewels of history in the mix. They have their reasons too: the rent control act de-incentivises landlords to maintain the old buildings, reducing them to a crumbling and dilapidated space that residents have little choice but to trade in for redeveloped buildings. Many residents require more space as families grow and divide, making the builders’ offers a fair exchange for them.
Babu is particularly mournful of the East Indian village Matharpacady being almost entirely acquired by a builder, indicating its near-razing. “Mazgaon has now become a spot for the nouveau rich—those who can’t afford South Bombay but nevertheless want the proximity to it,” he said.
New players
The new players acquiring space here reflect the social milieu of the newer Mazgaon. Two warehouses of Jack Printing, an old printing press, now house Craftery by Subko, an artisanal coffee house and bakery. “What attracted me to the place was the space it offers as a warehouse with tall ceilings and the sense of history surrounding it,” said founder Rahul Reddy. Reddy and other similar upscale businesses are bringing in a new and affluent demographic but are also helping the old structures to be preserved. “It is a way to readapt and reuse the space, which helps preserve it,” said Reddy.
Along with Zeenat Kulavoor from Bombay Duck Designs and others, Reddy worked on a map of the area, highlighting the traditional and newer spots to be at in Mazgaon, including the Bombay Sweet Shop next door to Subko. “I had my studio here from 2008 to 2020 and loved the place,” said Kulavoor. “It was a space that’s out of the way, which prompted the map so that we could give visitors more reasons to come to the area.”
Bharat Gothoskar, founder of Khaki Tours, harked back to the time when Bombay was limited to the smallish Fort area. “The extended portion from present-day Crawford Market to Dongri was a native congested town,” he said. “Mazgaon was a suburb, Byculla was akin to Malabar Hill and Madanpura was a racecourse.” The British also started to build their own abodes, and places for social and religious gatherings. Gradually, churches such as St Anne’s and St Peter’s came up alongside existing Catholic churches like Gloria Church. Love Lane, a road connecting Mazgaon and Byculla, with its century-old bungalows inhabited by European and Anglo-Indian couples, continues to be a reflection of the bygone British era.
Gothoskar said the “development” of Mazgaon was directly linked to domestic and global economic shifts. While the opium trade lasted for a brief duration, three factors led to the significant progress of Mazgaon: India’s first railway line, the cotton boom and the opening of the Suez Canal. The development of Mumbai Port on the eastern shores brought migrants with it.
Industrialisation within Mumbai, starting in the 1850s, began the downfall of this tony suburb. Given the westerly winds Mumbai gets, polluted air blowing to the east made it “unliveable”. The working class, as per their income, found housing space ranging from 160 square feet to 1,200 square feet or more, located in close proximity to the factories and mills.
Housing post-independence
A few decades after India’s independence, the Bombay textile strike of 1982 led to a gradual de-industrialisation of the metropolis, and the wealthy turned their eyes towards the Mazgaon-Byculla belt.
Today, a colonial-era bungalow near the Veermata Jijamata Bhosle Zoo, Byculla, has made way for three under-construction skyscrapers of over 70 floors. The wealthy have begun to enter Mazgaon’s landscape wherever there are bigger land parcels, said urban planning expert Vidyadhar Phatak. “The scope of upscale residences gets enabled on such larger tracts of land,” he said. “Otherwise, the buildings and plots are cheek by jowl.”
The changes in policies, particularly the Development Control Regulations (DCR), had a huge impact on the changing landscape of Mumbai. The decision to introduce cluster redevelopment, which allows the merging of multiple smaller plots, paved the way for newer buildings in place of weaker and dilapidated structures.
Matharpacady village, dotted with one-storey colourful bungalows, was chosen for cluster redevelopment, and builders offered original inhabitants new apartments 50% bigger in size. Locals, predominantly the East Indian community residing here for decades, launched a protest to protect their neighbourhood, which, with changing times, includes a mix of Bohra Muslims and Marwaris as well.
“Changes in the DCR in the island city permitting unlimited FSI, essentially to enable builders to grab prime lands, was responsible for the changes. The original inhabitants were forced to quit what was their shelter for generations,” said architect Chandrashekhar Prabhu. Currently, Mazagaon is dotted with about 15 to 18 multi-storey projects in different stages of construction.
Urban planners say that going forward, the Mazgaon-Byculla belt will be dominated by the wealthy. “Those who cannot afford the lifestyle and high maintenance fees that such communities and apartments bring along will eventually have to move to Mumbai’s peripheral areas,” said Prabhu. “Poor and middle-class original residents will not get admission to schools, colleges and hospitals and will start getting ousted.”
Currently, Mazgaon-Byculla is on the cusp of transformation, the third time in the last three centuries, said Pankaj Kapoor, Managing Director of Liases Foras, a real estate research and rating agency. “This time around, it isn’t by reclamation but an attempt to touch the sky,” he said. “A recycling phase is underway—one in which redevelopment is essential but also brings in gentrification.”