Not so long ago, one of the great pleasures of living in Bombay was to be able to walk from one area to another a distance away, without being pushed and elbowed and without stepping on dung or charting a course through a multitude of vendors. On a mild December day, in the early 1970s when I was a student, you could enjoy a walk from St Xavier's College to the coffee shops at Churchgate or from the JJ School of Art to the Jehangir Art Gallery unhindered by traffic and people. Often we walked to Chowpatty to eat bhel puri and savour the surf.The simple pleasure of walking that constitutes one of the most enriching ingredients of city life is slowly becoming a hazardous obstacle course in Mumbai, as untrained and unrestrained automobile drivers, dug up and badly restored pavements, sinister electrical cables, and inefficient street lighting conspire to prevent pedestrian use of the streets.Consider for a moment what attribute of a city most enables us to enjoy its ambience, to discover itssecrets, to recall its history and remember its heroes. The famous cities of the world - Paris, New York, London, Istanbul, Hong Kong, to name just a few, beckon you on to their streets and pavements. Pedestrian plazas, cafes, trees, well-maintained benches, encourage citizens and visitors to use the pavements.When one walks one engages immediately with the extraordinary sensory stimuli that characterises the dynamism of city life everywhere but more particularly so in India. Enabling people to walk stimulates commercial activity in the area, eases the traffic flow, reduces levels of pollution and encourages the use of public transportation.All over the world, down-town areas are pedestrianising, opening up spaces for the public to relax, restricting the inflow of traffic, augmenting public transportation services and restoring heritage buildings to enhance the visual experience and identity of the city. In Mumbai, however, it seems that we have forgotten the pedestrian.One of the most glaringexamples of the authorities' callousness towards the pedestrian is the constant digging up of pavements for various repair works and the disgraceful way in which they are subsequently restored. One has only to glance at our premier promenades at the Gateway of India and Marine Drive to see what I am talking about.Most of the flagstones that cover the city's older pavements and which are so carelessly being demolished, were laid over 100 years ago. The British were so particular about the shaping of these flagstones that they discouraged the stone cutters from working faster to ensure straight lines and an even surface. It would take a stone-cutter up to one week to cut and shape a flagstone. We should be proud of these stones and make every effort to conserve them.Perhaps it is time for us to consider pedestrianising parts of the Fort which in a sense is our down-town area. Dadabhai Naoroji Road is the most significant heritage spine of the city. It is a tragedy that one cannot properly enjoy thegraciousness and grandeur of these buildings because hawkers have completely obstructed the view from the arcades, and the BMC has dug up parts of the pavements for laying electrical cables.Can you imagine the pleasure of walking down a pedestrianised D N Road, from the BMC building to Flora Fountain, with organised hawkers nodes, building facades cleared of brash hoardings and restored to their former elegance, street cafes that allow you to admire the buildings at leisure and watch the world go by; and perhaps the chance to watch street performers and street theatre and relax during lunch hour from the burdens of office work. The buildings could be lit at night as some already are, and it would create a wonderful area where people could go to enjoy evening entertainment.We could do something similar at the Gateway of India by opening up the plaza which has unfortunately been converted into a garden that blocks access to the public and is incongruous in such a historic setting. In fact one needs littleimagination to visualise the old Taj Hotel and the Yatch Club lit up and framing a restored plaza that enables people to enjoy one of the most beautiful spots in Mumbai.Marine Drive, the last bastion that has somehow held out against encroachments and inappropriate beautification drives that seem to be the fashion among today's politicians, is being threatened by neglect and disrepair. And the little repair work that is taking place is systematically destroying the neat and serene beauty of the earlier pavement.I am appalled when the authorities talk of turning Mumbai into a Singapore and of building expressways and flyovers over prime heritage areas. Have we so little respect for the wonderful gifts that history has bequeathed us? Of course we must modernise; but must we also forget who we are and where we come from in the process?(Tasneem Mehta is convener of the Indian National Trust for Art & Cultural Heritage in Mumbai)
