Not very long ago — in 2005, to be precise — if you wanted to catch a glimpse of the sprawling mangroves of Dahisar West, you could do so, from the top floors of one of the buildings on the gentrified stretch of New Link Road in Kanderpada. Ganpat Patil Nagar slum, which overlooked this neighbourhood and which had, at the time, already made inroads into the wetland, was yet to cover enough ground. But slowly and steadily, as the slum mushroomed and grew thicker — from 1,000 hutments in 2000 to over 15,000 in 2018 — and the Metro 2A project reared its ugly head, piles of rubble that came from redevelopment, construction and digging, grew. Where did it go?

Environment activist Harish Pandey, who has lived in the area for nearly two decades, takes us to his terrace, which was once privy to the green spectacle. The view today is jarring and disconcerting, to the say the least. But, beyond the elevated Metro and the expansive slum, there is a vacant plot of land — once a mangrove patch — that Pandey revealed is "where for the last one decade debris has been dumped and levelled". Satellite images are unfortunately the only proof of this cruel and unlikely transformation. While hutments from Ganpat Patil Nagar will very soon expand their way into this "new land", a similar ruthless narrative is unfolding in several parts of Mumbai-s suburbs. What-s shocking is that, until very recently, it was all going unchecked.