N for National Park

N for National Park

For today’s #GreenSpacesDictionary and @mumbaismagic I want to revive your memories of visiting the National Park - SGNP.

Very few cities are blessed with a dense forest within its limits. While mangroves are the kidneys of the city, the national park is the lungs. Home to flora, fauna and tribal communities.

The boundary of the National Park was expanded recently to include parts of Aarey Colony

River Mithi inside SGNP and where it flows out from Vihar Lake

SGNP is home to adivasi communities. Those baskets are used for fishing.

Dry river bed of Dahisar River. Adivasis use this flower to make colours for painting.

Go be a Mowgli once in a while and see the Greener side of the city. (When the national park opens)

Do you have ideas for Mumbai that you think everyone should know? Make your voice heard at the Ministry of Mumbai's Magic.

I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki

I am listening to I am a Cat, the Japanese classic by Natsume Soseki. It’s a beautiful slow memoir of a cat that lives in the home of a teacher in the first years of the 20th Century. I said listening because that’s something I do when I walk or cycle. The memoir should be on everyone’s reading list and here are a few images of cats that I saw on the streets I stalk.

Urban gods

In a crowded lane of the Ulsoor or Halasur Bazar in Bangalore is a temple where a goddess known as Plague Devi is still worshipped. Like the Sitala and Mari devis temples dedicated to the small-pox goddess across cities in India, thousands of such temples remember our past. Mumbai is no different, we have our fair share of Sitala devi temples and crosses that remember past plagues across the city and our region. Many of the gaon devis or village goddesses were probably dedicated to past epidemics and pandemics. But most of them could have been related to fertility too, agrarian or for humanity.

Mumbai on a leash

Many years ago, when the internet was slow but our patience was infinite for information that was not easily available, I stumbled upon the website of The Dawn, the English newspaper from Pakistan. While scrolling through, I happened to see some illustrations from an artist whose name I no longer remember. It was that of tumblers, cups and things attached to a string. I saw it nearly two decades ago but the image remained in my mind and much later in life when I discovered photography as a hobby, I would often stumble upon similar things on Mumbai streets.

Book-wish

I recently read S Hareesh's Moustache, a Malayalam book set in the Kuttanad region of Kerala. A land reclaimed by lakes and most importantly on the labour distribution, caste, toxic masculinity in late-colonial India. While I was reading the book, I could not stop comparing it to Mumbai. The landscape of both places are not the same but we were also a city defined by a landscape surrounded by water and 'peopled' by communities who live off the natural resources and maintaining a balance between over-extraction and sustainability - before the city grew and ate up the whole region.

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Low tide smells from the Island City

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River in the Sky

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#NewGlossary 01: Plastic Thumb

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Mumbai Turmeric - Digital Photobook

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Mumbaicars : Car spotting in the city

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Maps in Mumbai

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East Side Story

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Playgrounds of Mumbai

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I am a Cat by Natsume Soseki

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Urban gods

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Mumbai on a leash

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Book-wish

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Z for Zoo

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Y for Yuva

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X for Xerox

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