The word ‘Landscape’ generally evokes the picturesque, or the sublime—especially, rivers, seashores, mountains, and forests—mostly scenarios depicting nature that we have been drawing as children. In contrast, landscapes that are not conventionally
appealing are relegated to wastelands, with typically, moors and marshes occupying prime space in the imagination. Such wastelands become sites where other unappealing lives [and narratives about these lives] emerge. They become slums and forbidden zones, made neither of firm earth nor flowing water—but something in between.
In Mumbai, the story of Dharavi is connected to a depiction of such a landscape, at once ambiguous, and amphibious connected to such uncertain spaces of watery land and marshy water. Since 2008, urbz has worked with two communities in Dharavi—the Kolis, an indigenous fishing community of a Koliwada [fishing village] who traditionally occupied the estuarine landscape of the Mithi River, and migrant workers who helped produce Dharavi out of a need for an affordable base in the city from which they could make a living, a place for practicing their traditional livelihood or simply an escape from exclusionary tactics, motivated by casteism or wilful discriminatory policy. Urbz team in Mumbai is currently working on a project called the Garden of Festivities, led by the Kolis of Dharavi Koliwada. The site is a small parcel of land along the Mithi River still owned by the community. Presently it is being used as an auto garage and an illegal dumping ground for construction debris. Occasionally, the community clears out and cleans up the ground to celebrate festivals, especially Narali Purnima.

The Garden of Festivities project is where livelihood, leisure, and ritual celebration intersect. The fishermen’s association needs a ramp for easy access to the water and a dock to park their boats which are otherwise left in the ponds with a constant fear of
being stolen or washed away. The community has unanimously expressed the need for large open space which is slowly dwindling in the urban village. Kolis are keen to conduct boat tours for the larger public. They want to share their knowledge and hope it can become a building block for awareness and advocacy towards a positive relationship between Mumbai and its stressed coastal landscape. It still has the potential to offer the city both social and environmental resilience in the face of climate change.
This project unfolds on a conflicted terrain in the city in which the shared experiences of residents have shaped the landscape. The emergence of land in Mumbai through large-scale reclamation projects is well documented, but little is known about the parallel micro-reclamation projects undertaken by the migrant workforce in the city. Older residents recount tales describing how Dharavi’s marshy landscape was reclaimed. A process that enlisted the mangroves as part of the reclamation process. By throwing mud and other organic debris into the roots of the existing mangroves, people encouraged them to spread their roots, expanding the mangrove network that
helped stabilize the marshy ground. Through this ingenious organic process, they incrementally reclaimed the marshes. The now stable soil could support shacks and other temporary dwellings.

Today, the dominant imagination of the urban - the high-rise, low-density model, standing on firm, industrially reclaimed land, continues to question the validity of these habitats built by the direct participation of its inhabitants, often by physically producing the ground beneath their feet, incrementally, over several years, which itself was laid, bit by bit over watery foundations.
Kolis, who knew the terrain well, understood this co-dependent relationship between land and water. They navigated the estuaries of this region even before Dharavi’s story began to be told. They traveled by boat across the sea and the backwaters to reach their kith and kin, spread over the numerous island hamlets, eventually becoming a gigantic metropolis. They remember the sandy banks of the Mithi River, with water as clear as glass. During low tide, they could walk to the opposite bank, foraging for clams and prawns. Now we see water saturated with sewage and garbage.
Despite this contaminated scenario, the community’s connection to water is not so easily severed. Hidden in the mangroves of the Mithi are around 50 fish farming ponds. Over 200 years old, these ponds are still in use. They are a legacy inherited from their ancestors who systematically practiced aquaculture through the network of man-made ponds. The ponds are connected to the surrounding waters via sluice gates that allow water to enter during the high tide and prevent garbage from entering when the tide recedes. The fish caught in these ponds are sold meters away in the fish market of Dharavi Koliwada.

For many Kolis, their neighborhood constitutes a watery terrain. It includes routes to their ponds, hideaways for their boats, and a shifting edge between land and water. Their idea of habitat is amphibious, and their connection to the water is both material and spiritual.
As the monsoons pause, on the full moon in July or August, fishing communities along the Konkan coast prepare to celebrate Narali Purnima and worship Lord Varuna—the Sea God. Dharavi Koliwada worships the Mithi River, its historically. On this day, the neighborhood is out on the streets in full festive form, slowly merging into the procession that sings and dances its way to the banks of the river, laden with offerings of coconuts and flowers.
Although the Koli’s are becoming occupationally diverse, they still live on ancestral land that is ecologically connected to their traditional habitats. Over the years, insensitive development has degraded the health and quality of this amphibious habitat. The impacts of unimaginative urbanization make it difficult for the community to use and maintain their natural environment.
Dharavi Koliwada has been described in many ways—fishing hamlet, urban village, and indigenous settlement. While all these are true, they evoke a land-based conception of place. In reality, the waters are part of the commons. Over the last decades, the Kolis have had to cede most of these watery commons to the city at large. The Garden of Festivities project tries to re-claim some of this by framing the ritual celebration of Narali Purnima as an event that celebrates this complex landscape.

This Article was published in LA Journal of Landscape Architecture, Issue.81, 2025.