Short stories about Mumbai: A woman is outraged when she sees a stark-naked sadhu on Marine Drive

It was an angry woman, Kitayun Alwa, who stepped onto Marine Drive, seeking relief from an issue that had played on her mind all day. Her beloved Mumbai was threatened by an underground metro which would strip it clean of five thousand trees. From flowering gulmohars to sturdy banyans, some of these were a hundred years old and as much a part of the city’s heritage as its Gothic and Art Deco structures. By removing the trees, the underground water table would be affected, the risk of floods would increase. Had the city planners gone mad? she wondered. Had they forgotten that terrible flood of 2005, when the city had received, over two days, 94 centimetres of rain? The highways had been flooded, the airports had been closed, and railway platforms and tracks had disappeared underwater. In parts of the city, the water level had risen to 15 feet. Trees had fallen, walls and fences had come crashing down, cars had turned turtle, and a landslide had swept away a hundred lives: slum-dwellers, living in shanties, at the foot of a hill. The city planners should know, when it came to floods, Mumbai had a history, or rather, a propensity....

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