Ye tha Bambai meri jaan: Take a look back at how Mumbai was in the past through this new ebook

There is a particular kind of Mumbai that lives almost suspended in time It is not the Mumbai of traffic updates or skyline ambitions but one made of forgotten footnotes buried objects and stories that linger like humidity in the air This is the Bombay that Kunal Tripathi has been patiently piecing together for over a decade through his digital archive mumbaiheritage And now with his newly released ebook mdash a collection of 25 lesserknown stories from the cityrsquos past at Rs 99 mdash he offers readers not just history but a way to feel the city differentlyLong before Ballard Pier existed all passengers arriving by sea came ashore at Apollo Bunder A small pavilion offered shelter to weary travellers in the late 19th centuryAn engineer by profession working with the Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport BEST Undertaking Tripathirsquos relationship with the city is both functional and deeply personal His journey into archiving the cityrsquos memory did not begin in an academic institution or a museum but online in 2013 with a simple impulse to document Over 12 years that impulse has grown into a vast living repository followed by lakhs across platforms ldquoToday mumbaiheritage has 4 lakh followers on X over 45000 on Instagram and is fairly active on Facebook toordquo he saysOver the years he has conducted heritage walks written articles and even put out postcards and calendars The ebook feels like a natural culmination of this journeyA photograph of the Maharashtra Police Headquarters after its construction on what was once Mendhamrsquos Point Cemetary During construction work in 1928 workers discovered human bones from the Portugueseera burial groundInterestingly the seed for it was sown in a fleeting moment online ldquoIt started with a tweet I asked people whatrsquos the craziest Mumbai history fact they knew It got 57 million views and thousands of replies Thatrsquos when I realised people are genuinely hungry for thisrdquo he recallsWhat could have remained a transient digital exchange instead became something lasting ldquoThe ebook felt like the right way to package it something complete curated worth reading Good stories good photographs accessible to anyone who loves the cityrdquo he explainsWhat makes Tripathirsquos work compelling is not just the stories he tells but the way he finds them His process is slow layered almost archival in temperament ldquoItrsquos built on years of collecting mdash old Gazettes Britishera records archive collections books most people havenrsquot touched in decadesrdquo he saysIn 1962 India imported 12 Skoda electric trolleybuses all the way from Czechoslovakia Pics courtesyKunal TripathildquoCities that forget their past lose something essentialrdquo he says ldquoMumbai is changing fast buildings disappear overnight neighbourhoods transform When the physical traces go the stories go too unless someone writes them downrdquoBuy the book from mumbaiheritageHis favourite findsldquoThe most surprising discovery was the petrified forest beneath Mumbairsquos soilrdquo says Kunal Tripathi ldquoIn the 1870s workers digging Princersquos Dock found nearly 380 ancient tree trunks buried under clay An entire submerged forest thousands of years old lying beneath one of Indiarsquos busiest port areas Irsquod been researching Mumbai for over a decade and had no ideardquo It is the kind of revelation that makes the ground beneath your feet feel heavier with timeKunal TripathildquoThe time capsule beneath Bombay Central Station todayrsquos Mumbai Centralrdquo he says when asked about what impacted him personally ldquoWhen the station was being built a brass cylinder was placed under the foundation stone sealed with the names of the officers who built it and coins from that era Millions of people pass through that station every day completely unaware that therersquos a little piece of history buried beneath their feetrdquo18531970Period from which the photos in the booklethave been sourced