Revision as of 15:49, 14 January 2018

Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli

Buddhist caves discovered in 2016

Caves discovered in Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivali, Mumbai; Graphic courtesy: The Times of India, Jan 17 2016

The Times of India, Jan 17 2016

Clara Lewis

Seven ancient Buddhist caves found in Mumbai

Seven caves have been discovered in the forests of the sprawling Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli, on the northern fringes of Mumbai. The caves are Buddhist `viharas' (residences for monks) with only one of them showing the remains of a `harmika' (the top railing of a stupa). They are believed to have been constructed before the Kanheri Caves nearby and probably served as a monsoon shelter for the monks.

While a formal approval from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) is awaited for detailed exploration and documentation of the new caves, the team that has discovered the caves date them between 1st century BCE (or BC) and 5th-6th century CE (or AD). The discovery was made by a threemember team last February under an excavation programme jointly conducted by the Centre for Archaeology, Mumbai University , and the department of ancient Indian culture, Sathaye College, Vile Parle; the head of the department, Suraj Pandit, led the team.

“The newly discovered caves may have been older than the Kanheri Caves as they were simpler in form and they lacked water cisterns, which are found in the more evolved architecture of Kanheri. Moreover, we found monolithic tools which were prevalent in the 1st century BC. The absence of water cisterns also indicate that monks lived there in the monsoon,“ said Pandit. Pandit said the seven new caves were not an accidental discovery , but rather the result of a systematic survey of the area. Before beginning actual field work, the team carried out documentary research for three months, which included a study of the area's topography and water resources as most viharas were constructed close to a water source. The Kanheri Caves, which date between 1st century BCE and 10th century CE, are famous for their water management and rain water harvesting systems.This helped to zero in on areas where they were most likely to find caves. The team also referred to Pali texts, which describe caves around Rajgir in Bihar as viharas (residences) of Buddhist monks. The team expected to find similar viharas, either natural or manmade, around Kanheri.They also studied 150-yearold reports of the ASI to understand how to conduct the exploration. “The reports narrate the discovery of pot shreds and microlithic tools, and we decided to look for these,“ said Pandit. With permission from the forest department to explore the park for new caves, the team, accompanied by two forest guards, began ground exploration towards the end of February in 2015.

Sahyadri 2

2017-18: Murals

Sharmila Ganesan, This colourful Mumbai slum now looks like Italy’s Positano, January 14, 2018: The Times of India

750 volunteers and artists got together to paint eye-catching murals on the walls of drab shanties

There is something wrong with the parrot drawn on a black wall in this uneven Ghatkopar slum. Its neck is missing and it seems to be inspecting its own back at an odd angle. The parrot, it turns out, used to be an owl. An artist had drawn the nocturnal bird first but then the rustic residents of Sahyadri 2 — one of the many slums perched like Lego blocks on this Asalpha hillock — decided that they didn’t want to wake up to “a bad omen”. So, his chalk hastily replaced the hawklike beak with a pouty, curved bill.

From the Mumbai Metro, however, you won’t be able to see this mutant bird. Nor the mural of a cat sitting inside a soapy bubble — inspired by a resident’s kitten — or the painting of a palm holding a turtle whose blueprint, Hari, lives nearby. All you can see from the air-conditioned train is a loud, multi-coloured installation of shanties that is likely to make filmmaker Rohit Shetty go: “Next song location.”

Last month, Dedeepya Reddy’s nonprofit initiative ‘Chal Rang De’ tied up with the Metro and paint manufacturer Snowcem Paints to give the drab vertical slum a postcard-like makeover reminiscent of Italy’s vibrant Positano village. As a Metro traveller, the artist in her would cringe at the morose sight of the grey hilltop houses. An eye-popping paint job could change the perception of Mumbai’s slums, decided Reddy, cofounder of creative agency Fruitbowl Digital.

After getting residents on board — “I even showed them Photoshopped ‘after’ renditions of the slum,” she says — Reddy got her team to create a website and found several hundred volunteers, including senior citizens, online who finished painting 175 walls in two weekends. The muralists came later. Reddy’s brief to them was: “Reflect the life of Asalpha’s locals or relate to them”. So, besides its many women home entrepreneurs and cats, you will also find an astronaut dangling from a planet on a wall here - -a reminder to local kids to dream big. “Many of my schoolfriends have come over after the paint job,” says seventh grader Siddhesh Jadhav of nearby Shivneri Vidya Mandir school who chipped in by painting three walls.

Doused in 400 litres of sponsored paint by around 750 people, the slum is now not only distracting Metro users but also seeing foreigners with SLR cameras ascend its stone stairs. Just ten days ago, a buzzing noise that sounded “like a giant fly”, made an elderly resident Krishnamma step outside her tiled 10ft-by-10ft home. Above, three drones circled her freshly coated neighbourhood. “Flying cameras with red and blue lights,” recalls Krishnamma as she engages in a mockbroom fight with her three-year-old neighbour Dev — one of the many happy, photogenic kids etched in the murals.

The day-long painting exercise stripped Reddy and her team, who had never stepped into a slum before, of their own grim stereotypes. Spontaneous lunch invitations from residents gave them a peek into the obsessive cleanliness of the one-room home dwellers. “They are now like family to us,” says Reddy, who bit into pooran poli at the one-room home of the affable Surekha Gade, a housewife whose son’s wedding invitation card bore the names of their deceased cats, ‘Lalu’ and ‘Prasad’. Reddy now calls her “billiwali aunty”.

Along with hospitality, though, came servings of mild hostility. One resident who had a protective black sheet on his outer wall refused to let it be painted at first but relented on seeing how good the neighbour’s wall looked. Last-minute compromises with colour palettes had to be made. “Some residents didn’t want the colour green,” recalls Reddy, who treasures such insights into India’s prejudices as “learnings”. Some requests for tweaks, though, were rooted in reason. Freelance IT entrepreneur Vinayak Gade (27) says his family asked for the wall near the passageway outside his home to be changed from dull greyishblue to a sunny yellow so it would reflect the light from the sole overhead tubelight onto the stairs better. Such changes didn’t really interfere with the view. Pan out and Asalpha now looks a lot like Positano. Baffled vegetable vendors who sit beyond videogame parlours and kirana stores here now find themselves directing tourists towards “colour”.

Next on Reddy’s radar is a Bandra slum known as Tabela. Team member Sumitro Sircar says they are also toying with the idea of revamping hospitals, jails and railway stations through artwork. Meanwhile, at Asalpha, the exteriors are becoming as clean as the interiors. ‘Billiwali aunty’ Surekha Gade has stopped mopping the floor outside her corner home for a month now. “Earlier, men used to routinely spit paan outside our door on their way up or down,” says Gade, who had grown tired of chastising them. “Now, they’ve stopped spitting because of the paint,” smiles Gade.