300-year-old Bandra village to get facelift to conserve glorious past

While Bandra developed rapidly and became location to Bollywood’s elite and a burgeoning thoroughfare buying hub, residents of Ranwar maintained their aged bungalows. The coexistence, however, has travel astatine a price, causing postulation issues and crowding.

And now, plans are afoot to springiness the 300-year-old colony a facelift portion preserving the past.

Talking to PTI, Johan Dharmai, BJP caput and a subordinate of the East Indian community, said, “Locals privation to sphere the heritage. One of the steps successful the facelift program is to adjacent conveyance question and physique a walkway truthful that tourists tin instrumentality a stroll and bask the architecture.” Though galore houses successful Ranwar are present being redeveloped, Veronica Street has maintained its old-world charm. It has a quadrate erected successful 1866. However, honking rents the aerial connected this street, arsenic motorists spot it arsenic a shortcut to Bandra Reclamation and different areas.

Mehboob Studio is conscionable a stone’s propulsion away, and elder citizens surviving connected Veronica Street callback seeing actors Helen and Zeenat Aman astir Ranwar.

A beautification, restoration and conservation task is being initiated to amended safety, modulate postulation and make consciousness astir the centuries-old village.

Mumbai BJP president and Bandra West MLA Ashish Shelar precocious met locals to sermon ways to determination the task forward.

“The quality of Bandra West is its ‘gaothans’. The practice needs to beryllium protected and showcased. I person asked the authorities to allocate funds from the District Planning Development Committee (DPDC). Ranwar colony volition get a facelift. The enactment has begun connected roads, CCTV cameras, thoroughfare airy illumination, parking and postulation program volition beryllium successful spot with the assistance of locals and architects,” Shelar told PTI.

Architect Samir D’Monte has been moving with the Ranwar Veronica Street Residents’ Association since 2009, and they identified a scope of problems that the country faced.

D’Monte said improvements were made to unfastened spaces and communal areas, roads, sewage and drainage systems, thoroughfare signage, thoroughfare lighting and postulation and parking management.

Apart from this, idiosyncratic houses were restored, and an innovative occurrence strategy was besides introduced.

Locals accidental astir residents are elder citizens and privation to unrecorded peacefully without disturbances by motorists.

Kaevan Umrigar of Khaki Tours, who works to make consciousness astir Mumbai’s heritage, said Bandra comprised 23 gaothans that housed fisher folk, Kunbis (a farming community) and the agris assemblage who had brackish pans. “Ranwar was a farming village, and the country had paddy fields. Later, these paddy fields made mode for municipality settlements. These small villages are present trapped successful the city. Now, lone 10 to 15 gaothans successful Bandra person survived,” helium said.

But preserving practice comes astatine a cost, and if a ‘gaothan’ comes nether practice guidelines, it becomes hard to upgrade a location successful the country oregon unrecorded a modern life, Umigar said, adding that practice should beryllium made charismatic by tapping the tourism imaginable of these areas.

‘Gaothans’ successful Mumbai and the larger Mumbai metropolitan portion (MMR) are municipality villages that location the city’s archetypal inhabitants.

The Mumbai suburban territory collector and Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) person been roped successful for Ranwar’s facelift plan.

Umigar calls onshore scarcity a menace to ‘gaothans’, with lone 100 near successful the city. “When idiosyncratic wants to make gaothans, they privation to bash it vertically. There is simply a changeless conflict betwixt practice and development. They (villages) past due to the fact that the houses are tightly packed and connected constrictive lanes. So idiosyncratic houses are not charismatic for redevelopment, and parking becomes an issue,” helium said.