Mumbai Konachi? How the city's first engineers, architects and urban planners envisioned it

When British gentlemen met in the 17th and 18th century the air would be thick with fervent talk of projectsmdashdrainage lines how to optimise the docks create more efficient transport lines how to intrude the sea line Letters were sent to newspapers and civil servants with drawings of an imagined central sewage line a quarantine island a necropolis for all faiths Between 1845 and 1865 engineer William Walker wrote over 100 letters to various newspaper editors in Bombay with ideas for civic improvement and urban growth He would selfpublish a book containing them just before his departure from the city Everyone had a planldquoThe interest in transforming Bombayrsquos physical form in the 1800s must have been how 21stcentury techies and investors excitedly speculate on the upcoming gadgets todayrdquo says architect and civic historian Robert Stephens ldquoEvery foreign citizen was uptodate with the latest sanitation docks infrastructure and reclamation schemes At dinner parties conversations circled around these for as Executive Engineer Colonel Walter Ducat opined in 1867 lsquoSo much has been written lately about wet docks in Bombay that most people must be quite tired of the subjectrsquordquoFlushing engine cleaning infected houses from the album Plague Visitation Bombay 18961897 by FB Stewart and Captain Moss PicSarmaya Arts FoundationLeased by the East India Company from the British Crown the archipelago was run more as a corporate enterprise And corporate value systems and processes that ensure efficiency economy and growth The capital of British India was in far off Calcutta moving towards Delhi by the turn of the 20th century Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens was rolling up his sleeves by the drawing board The seven islands of Bombaymdashwith growing trade due to the docksmdashwere already showing their potential to become a financial centreThe plan was to make Bombay Urbs Prima in Indis first city of India and everyone wanted to helpldquoA vast majority of the public works projects built in the 19th century were designed by foreign architects and engineers some of whom never set foot in Indiardquo says Stephens whose book Bombay Imagined is a collection of 200 unrealised urban visions of the city For example William Burgess prepared awardwinning designs for the JJ School of Art without setting foot in Bombay his student William Emerson carried dozens of drawings to India The plan fell through when a squabble arose over the feesmdashwith Burgess expecting 5 per cent of the project cost but being offered a mere 25 per cent Emerson emerged victoriousmdashhe would eventually design Crawford Market across the street from the JJ School of ArtEngineer William Walker wrote several letters to various editors of newspapers with ideas for urban projects Later he gathered them in a selfpublished book PicPersonal collection Robert StephensThe second governor of Bombay Gerald Aungier had negotiated acquisition of the islands of Colaba and Old Woman from the Portuguese in 1675 bringing all seven islands under the Companyrsquos jurisdiction As the docks grew busier there rose a need for more housingThe eyes turned towards the sea Receding tides left shallow swamps between the islands which became nurseries for mosquito larvae Bouts of malaria brought an Englishmanrsquos average lifespan in the city down to three years The answer was reclamation that closed these breeding grounds and created more space by joining the islandsArthur Crawford Bombayrsquos first municipal commissioner was passionate about evolving all aspects of the citymdashthere was hardly an urban topic or issue that he had not thought and written about ldquoHe envisioned the city beautiful with public parks greater than those in Londonrdquo says StephensCivic historian and architect Robert Stephens book Bombay Imagined encapsulates 200 projects envisioned for Bombay between 1670 to 2020 that remained on paper PicAshish RajeldquoMany of the men who proposed various schemes were not trained in the sense that we understand the engineering and planning todayrdquo says Stephens ldquoMany were selftaught while others were architects civil engineers hydrologists Some like William Walker were soldiers of fortune After leaving his home in England before the age of 20 he boarded a ship that briefly halted in Bombay in 1820 and was back in 1845rdquoWalker was a selftaught engineer and worked for the Railways supervising the stores of train equipment He was possibly Bombayrsquos first environmentallyminded foreign citizenactivist passionate about using natural resources as efficiently as possible These included one radical scheme to use gas generated during cremation to illuminate Bombayrsquos street lightsHenry Conybeare a Welsh hydraulic engineer envisioned sinking filtering wells into dozens of tanks across the citymdashmaking access to clean water within walking distance of every resident The scheme was rejected A few years later while gazing upon the skeleton and sewagestrewn sands of Backbay Conybeare had a vision This gentle sweep of sand and sea would make for a great ldquoMarine Paraderdquo It would be decades before Marine Drive came along the edge of Backbay by which time Conybeare was long forgottenArchitect Sir George Gilbert Scott who designed the Rajabai Clock Tower for Mumbai University prepared the earliest designs for the Afghan Church which Sir Bartle Frere described as ldquoa very beautiful design but one too elaborate for the money availablerdquoThe government of Bombay suggested a sanatorium on Butcher Island now Jawahar Deep to isolate those suffering from infectious diseases ldquoThe project suggested upgrading the existing buildings and raising a hospital The cost was projected at Rs 100000 but the authorities in Calcutta turned it downrdquo says Stephens ldquoTwenty years later the bubonic plague came to Bombay on ships from Hong Kong and created the need for quarantine areasrdquo Two decades of the plague changed the cityOpen sewage lines were among the largest contributors to the spread of the plague After it receded narrow serpentine streets weaving through chawls that housed workers were dug up and sewage pipes were laid under them Urban planners began drawing out selfcontained suburbs such as Bandra rather than one city centre in Fort These suburbs were connected by public transport and had underground drainage pipesAnother missed opportunity was for subterranean railway lines much before the city would be brought to a halt in the 21 century by the laying of an underground metro ldquoHector Tulloch envisioned a subway line in Bombay decades before New York City would open her subwayrdquo says Stephens There were many plans around the railwaysmdashincluding a line to a necropolis for all faiths in the centre of the city ldquoIt would have been the ultimate deadlinerdquo he jokes