Strangely enough, Ganapathy’s feelings are echoed in diverse locations by diverse people.

At Pali Village, off Ambedkar Road in Bandra, 60-year-old Joe Periera sits in the verandah of his old gaothan structure, Basil House. “We have fought to keep our little wadi intact so far, but all around us, we see high-rises mushrooming and that worries us. Builders are soon going to eye our area and we are concerned if we’d be able to stop the change then,” Periera says,

While Pali Village has still been preserved, areas like Chium Village, Hill Road have already seen a redevelopment boom. Periera also laments the end of an era in Bandra, where Christmas seemed like celebration in Goa and Sunday afternoons like a lazy vacation time.

From Dadar’s quaint Parsi Colony to other cultural ghettos like Mohammed Ali Road and Bhendi Bazar, change is quickly diluting an age-old ethos, the old Bombay’s flagship hangouts for intellectual stimulus are quickly making way for assembly line malls and multiplexes.

At Gamdevi, one of the oldest cultural hubs of South Mumbai, the redevelopment story is the same. Flanked by historic buildings like Mani Bhavan and the Bharatiya Vidyapeeth, the region holds a special place in the city’s history. Madhu Shetye, a former corporator from Gamdevi, says, “The area was once a mix of the intellectual population and the Maharashtrian middle-class. Today, it is seeing an ethnic cleansing with highrises coming up and only the rich being able to afford them.”