Marine Lines with Raghu Karnad

We’ve heard Mumbai began on seven islands, before the sea in between them was filled in, and the city spread on top of it. Not many of us know just how much of the Western half of Mumbai is built on reclamations—from Colaba right up to Andheri and Mira Bhayandar. But every year, the monsoon reminds us that a lot of what seems like Mumbai's solid ground was once water—a place where rainstorms met rivers meeting the sea.In this episode, Raghu is joined by writer Amitav Ghosh, whose books are known for being filled with historical perspective, discovery and insight. The duo discusses the history of cyclones in the city, the toll climate change will take (on the middle-class especially), and what happens when The Big One comes.

It’s been known for almost a century that life in a big, densely-populated city comes with higher risks of anxiety, depression, or even more serious psychological afflictions. Still our cities are growing – our world is becoming more and more an urban one. Only very few of us can afford to move away to greener pastures in Goa or Uttarakhand. For everyone else, it’s an urgent question – can cities like Mumbai grow, and stop damaging us? How can we put the ‘mental’ back into environmental health?In this episode, Ruchita Chandrashekar helps Raghu answer these questions. She’s a psychologist from Mumbai, with a special interest in trauma, violence and the ways we view – or hide psychological health in Indian society.

One of the easiest things to like about Mumbai is the way women are able to live here. Mumbai means a kind of liberation. It means feeling safe in public, feeling able to dress how you like – feeling welcome to go out, even after dark. But this isn’t just a natural quality the city was born with. It’s a legacy of working women – especially working-class women, most from oppressed castes or religious minorities.  In this episode, Raghu is joined by Ramya Ramanath to understand this story better — a development and policy scholar, teaching at DePaul University in Chicago. She’s also the author of A Place to Call Home: Women as Agents of Change in Mumbai for which she did an ethnography – she talked to women of all kinds about staying on their feet as they’re displaced from their homes in a slum and resettled in flats in a high-rise. For planners and policy-makers, but also for the rest of us, there’s a lot to be surprised by.

Perhaps the most delightful thing about exploring hidden worlds is that most of them are hidden in plain sight – right there, in front of our eyes. They might be the world of animal life, or coastal sea life, or human life – and there's nothing hidden in open view, in Mumbai, like human love and physical desire. It's tough. In fact, if there's anything that's more difficult for humans in Mumbai than it is for other animals, birds, or fish – it's probably making love. Most younger people who live in this city don't have the private space for it, so public space has to be used for the most private moments. In this episode, Raghu is joined by Mumbai’s most beloved columnist, Paromita Vohra – who's just a breath of fresh air when she talks about love, sex, desire and how they exist in the city.

How hard is it to see a city? Of course, it's pretty hard to not see a city – Mumbai especially, which has thousands of towers, dozens of flyovers, and an awesome number of people, and their homes, built at every scale and in every single available niche. But most of the time we spend in the city, we might be spending in our own heads, or focused on the traffic in front us, or just our phones. So to see the city around us might require more focus, or more creativity, than we assume. In this episode, Raghu is joined by artist Sameer Kulavoor, who has spent his life looking at Mumbai, and then finding ways to help us see it through his art. He's made giant murals the size of a building, but he also likes sketching in a notebook the size of his hand. He's a painter, an illustrator, he designs commercial products, and he loves making zines. He talks about the changes he’s seen over decades and exploring the city through the small places and people that make Mumbai what it is.

The city of Mumbai has been seen by a lot more people than have ever visited it. And Mumbai lives in the imagination of many more people than the number who live in Mumbai. The reason, of course, is Bollywood – the Hindi film industry – which isn’t just based in Mumbai, but is also in love with Mumbai. In this episode, Raghu is joined by Anupama Chopra, a film critic and writer who currently runs a major cinema portal, Film Companion – and chairs the MAMI film festival. Through this conversation, they explore the city through the world of cinema, the symbolism of the sea and the gangsters that rule(d) the city.

Mumbai is surrounded by the sea but its residents rarely go out into the water. When you look out at the open sea the only boats that meet the eye are fishing boats. The Kolis—the oldest inhabitants of Mumbai—are the people whose paths do not end where the waves begin. They net, clean and sell the fish that ends up on our thalis.In this episode, Raghu is joined by Ganesh Nakhawa, who belongs to the Koli community, and has been working to help Koli women to secure their livelihoods. He is also the founder of Blue Catch, which connects people who eat seafood to fresh, traceable and sustainable catch from Mumbai’s traditional fishermen. Nakhawa talks about growing up in a fishing family, the impact of commercial fishing and giving back to the community.

Mumbai is like every Indian city, in that it's full of humans, and it's also full of non-humans – we live and let live with street dogs, monkeys, stray cows, and rodents, and we're used to that. But we don't expect to see predatory big cats such as leopards prowling through our colonies or parking garages. In this episode, Raghu is joined by Nikit Surve, a wildlife ecologist who works at the Wildlife Conservation Society WCS India, and he studies the Sanjay Gandhi National Park and spends a lot of time in it. Surve sheds some light on Mumbai’s unique landscape, rescuing leopard cubs, coming face to face with the big cat and co-existing with the predator.

Mumbai is one of the busiest cities in the world. Some people are busy getting rich, and others are busy getting by; some are working hard to be famous, and others are working hard to make sure their names never end up in the news.In this episode, Raghu is joined by actor Dia Mirza, who has been on our screens for the past 20 years or so. But for equally long, she’s been busy supporting efforts to save natural biodiversity and wildlife, to fight animal cruelty, to promote sustainable alternatives and reduce pollution – especially from single-use plastics. They talk about the youth’s participation in conserving our environment, the ‘anthropause’ and the power of purpose.

Mumbai treats the sea like scenery – like a backdrop – not like a living world full of creatures that are our neighbours. We can't look into the deeps, but it's amazing how much life is ready to meet us on the coastline. In this episode, Raghu is joined by a marine wildlife photographer and the director of the Coastal Conservation Fund, Shaunak Modi to talk about the diversity in Mumbai’s shoreline and why we should stop treating the sea as a view, and start treating it as a world.

Welcome to ‘Marine Lines: Mumbai's Hidden Worlds, from Suburbs to the Sea'. A new 10-part series hosted by journalist and author Raghu Karnad. Every week, Raghu is joined by an insightful thinker to explore an aspect of the city's ecology, present and future. From the abundance of marine life to the leopards that roam the city, from the Mumbai depicted in cinema to the people who make the city what it is—come discover how much there is to love and protect about this city. Co-created by Ministry of Mumbai’s Magic and DeadAnt Studio.