Mr Pereira is the last man standing

Picture this. Quaint little cottages, Portuguese-style made from Burma teak wood, with Mangalore tiled roofs and verandas on which to relax, all lining a cobblestone pathway. You could be excused for thinking this picturesque postcard village lies in a far flung country, but it's actually right here in Mumbai.

Welcome to the gaothans of Bandra, where the predominantly East-Indian populace were the original inhabitants of the city.

Not surprising then, that every cottage here is more than 100 years old.

But all's not well within these tranquil surroundings. For those old enough to remember the good times gone by, today seems like a nightmare.

As concrete towers encroach on the beauty of these pristine surroundings, the locals feel that the builders have robbed them more of their peace, than their property. The word 'development' has come with an unhealthy load of fear.

"Under the guise of repair permission, builders are constructing an RCC-structure. The sewage lines are more than 100 years old. With the new high rises they are overflowing at various places, as the old lines cannot take the load.

It also gets flooded during the monsoon," said Neil Pereira, a third-generation resident from Pali Village. The high-rises have also brought with them a water shortage problem.

"With high-rises come car owners who park their cars on the narrow roads. In case of an emergency, neither an ambulance nor the fire brigade can enter," said Pereira.

"There has to be a planned development supported by infrastructure. Today there is development, but no infrastructure. We are not against development, but it has to be done in a planned manner," said Coleman Pereira, a resident of Pali Village.

Pereira feels that gaothans should be promoted as a tourist attraction, like they are in Goa. Locals also feel that heavy machinery shouldn't be allowed inside the village every time new construction takes place. "We have load bearing brick walls and our house starts rumbling with the vibrations," said W Drego.

Now, a seven-storied structure, ironically called Heritage, has come up along with other high rises. This has forced the residents of Pali Village, along with other suburban gaothans, to move Court, and they have filed a PIL against the BMC. "The new high-rise has a storm water drain on somebody else's property. There are ramps built over roads, and 14 trees been hacked down," said Pereira.

BJP spokesperson Shaina NC, one of the petitioners, said, "Why don't we just maintain, and retain gaothans as part of Mumbai's history?

Why is permission to build these high-rises being granted by the building proposal department of the BMC? This is not an issue being faced by one specific gaothan, it's the same case in many others across the city, too," said Shaina NC. So are the Gaothan locals fighting for a lost cause? "We don't know. But we will not give up," said Pereira.

b_linah@dnaindia.net