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Preserve our heritage, give us better infrastructure: Kurla village

The area’s roads are running to seed, its civic infrastructure absent, and unique heritage withering. All while the village gets dense with people.

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A British-era office building, later turned into a residence; (r) the artifical well constructed by East Indians to preserve their culture
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Till the early ’70s, advocate Vivian D’Souza recollects, he was addressed as “seth cha porga”,  or the owner’s son, by the workers at his farm in Kurla village. Back then, expanses of the locality were carpeted with farms of rice, cashew and vegetables owned by a handful of East Indian families, like his. 

Decades later, the epithet is gone, so are the farms and the farmhands. The entire community feels left out of Mumbai’s relentless march to modernity. 

The area’s roads are running to seed, its civic infrastructure absent, and unique heritage withering. All while the village gets dense with people. 

There’s no space for growing families to be housed comfortably, or for their children to play. The narrow streets would not even allow a fire engine or ambulance to go through. Parking space is out of the question. 

“There was a time when we had some open space, where spices could be dried before women got together to crush and bottle them,” said Anita Almeida Shetty, president of Old Kurla Christian Village Citizens Forum. The organisation, like some others, organises community events, like carnivals and novenas, to keep the culture, and its rites, alive. Like the tradition of a five-day pre-wedding celebration when a musical band goes around the village serenading the residents. 

The village itself has four sub-areas  — Big village, Hul village, Culbavour and Navpada. Hul and Culbavour got their names from the farming and kulbi (tillers) community that inhabited them.  

“We made an artificial well for the umbra cha pani ritual for married couples, who are required to draw well water the night they are wedded. We want the government to help us revive our traditions,” said D’Souza, also president of Bombay East Indian Association. 

Zepherinus Rodrigues, who has a traditional East Indian bungalow in Big village with stone carvings, an otla (verandah), and a staircase to the first floor, says, “BMC doesn’t let us make alterations in our houses but is blind to the illegal constructions here.” 

“The earlier DP gave us more for the land it took from us. Now, they want a setback from by bungalow. Even if I give that, the road is not going to be 9m wide, so I will not get a high FSI,” he said. 

The residents feel the government should come up with a special plan for the area which is more conducive to community engagement. 

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