GRAPHIC SPECULATION

Pursuing my intentions to devise a system of mapping that finds its roots in not a selective view of the Versova Koliwada and the Malad Creek but in the relationships and adjacencies within the urban ‘edges’ at multiple scales, this chapter aims to highlight a speculative technique of mapping.

I began with a diagrammatic representation of the actor-network within this space. I do concede that my interpretation of these spaces might not be completely accurate but rather a speculation mainly produced from my experiences and the understanding of such urban conditions which I have developed through the course of this investigation. With this in mind, the diagram and the following mapping technique is an attempt based on certain parameters that I set for myself and what I wanted to achieve.

The experimental technique of hand drawing the mapping of the area in question is meant to be something teachable and repeatable amongst various demographies who want to be more involved in the re-imagination of the spaces that they live and work in. The fluidity of a physical process allows for the representation of a multiplicity of viewpoints and narratives which I believe would provide a holistic view of the spaces in question, as well as the evolving relationships amongst them.

Before the execution of my map, I will look into ways that similarly complex spaces have been mapped before as case studies to serve as examples and influences on the scale and level of detail that I aspire to achieve or surpass. My produced drawing will not replicate these case studies but rather use them as reference points in execution and ideology.

Mapping networks

Bheri Wastewater Aquaculture

The literature for this case study is mainly derived from Julia Watson’s Lo-TEK Design by Radical Indigenism. An example of an adaptive, symbiotic system in the bheris or lagoons of Kolkata— one of the most populous cities in India. Although this example isn’t based in the city that this thesis wants to focus on, what it does is that it shows a nexus formed between the indigenous communities, the government and the environment, one which is fair and sustainable.

Watson explains that the “system is synonymously a fishery, waste management, agricultural field, rice paddy network, community hub, grazing land, and heritage site.”68 The total area of this system of canals and wetlands is estimated to be twelve thousand, five hundred hectares, making it “the largest wastewater-fed aquaculture system in the world.”69

This practice of wastewater aquaculture began somewhere around the 1920s but expanded rapidly once the sewage system in the city changed in the 1940s due to the primary sewage canal of the city— the Bidhyadhari River, drying up due to over siltation. It was then that a new system of canals through the wetlands of East Kolkata was developed.

Fish production in the bheris began with a singular operation that used city sewage as fish food. Soon, “other local farmers followed suit, recognizing the profitability of using a constant supply of free waste to produce fish and vegetables.”70 Since then this practice has become one which is indigenous to the region and an integral part of the wetland ecosystem.

Six hundred and eighty million liters of raw sewage enter the wetlands every day. The sewage flows through the city’s sewer network and then an open canal system, going through pretreatment and oxidation ponds before arriving are the bheris where the fish are cultivated. “These fish farms produce thirteen thousand tons of fish every year, providing sixteen percent of the city’s fish, and utilizing five hundred and fifty thousand cubic meters of untreated wastewater per day as fish food.”71 Indian carp and tilapia are the staple fish produced, although the wetlands support at least fifty different varieties of fish.

Organic waste is removed through a process between algae and bacteria. Shallow bheris allow sunlight to reach their depths while winds oxygenate the waters. This creates an ideal condition for the growth of aqueous plants such as the water hyacinth, which are integral to the ecosystem, breaking surface waves, countering soil erosion and when they are removed due to

Process of wastewater treatment

their abundance, they act as fish food or raw materials for furniture and art. Algae on the other hand break down sewage waste and are food for fish as well.

The purification process involves “multiple steps of pretreatment; sedimentation, dilution, storage, and waste stabilization.”72 Sedimentation: Used to remove suspended solids from sewage. Water from narrow canals flows into large ponds causing siltation, followed by the addition of freshwater to maintain non-toxic levels of CO2, H2S and NH3. Oxygen in freshwater facilitates a reaction for the breakdown of fecal matter. This is followed by the breakdown of sewage by micro-organisms through a combination of anaerobic and aerobic

Lo-Tek by Julia Watson processes for approximately 25-30 days, at which time most of the organic matter is dissolved. The water is finally released into the bheris.

“The bheri aquaculture process involves several steps; the preparation of ponds, primary fertilization, fish stocking, then secondary fertilization and ongoing fish harvesting.”73

The pond is prepared byways of draining, tilling and drying them followed by the addition of lime to sewage water let in to balance the pH value of soil and neutralize pathogens. The sewage water is left to settle for about twenty days. The shallow depth of the bheris allows for sunlight penetration which is vital for the growth of phytoplankton.

Bheri aquaculture location in Kolkata

These play a vital role in the development of the fish by neutralizing toxins and pathogens, managing water temperature and acting as food for fish. The levels of the phytoplankton are monitored closely because it is the green color that the water appears to be when it is the optimal time for the bheris to be stocked with fish.

A secondary round of fertilization occurs after the fish have been stocked as pretreated sewage is fed into the bheris. A nursery pond is managed, separate from the pond with mature fish to ensure a year-round supply of fish to sell in the wet markets of Kolkata. Another level of interconnectivity between the processes of the wetlands comes through the integration of agriculture and livestock. The aqueous plants are fed to the livestock, whose excretion, in turn, is used as manure for plankton and in the soil for growing vegetables. This makes this system extremely resilient, through the interdependence of its various processes.

This practice is not merely environmentally and socially conscious, it also provides a great financial boost to the city. The city saves $22 million on sewage treatment costs and another $500,000 on water and fertilizer. The local production of fish and vegetables also saves the city a significant amount in transportation costs. The bheris also

Productive system of wetlands

Lo-Tek by Julia Watson

play a vital role in stormwater management. The system also allows preservation of economic equity and indigenous heritage through fishing cooperatives, which have serious barriers against entry for outsiders.

Despite the immensely positive input of the bheris and the communities that live within them, there is a lack of funding resulting in improper practice and loss of traditional livelihoods. The primary culprit is encroachment, much like Mumbai and its mangroves.

The research in this context, done by Julia Watson then brings to light the integral service to the city that the indigenous Bheri population provides through a mapping of the complex symbiotic relation of sewage treatment and fish production in the canals of Kolkata. The strategies of recording these layered processes by Julia Watson is something I intend to employ in my mapping strategy.

A member of the Bheri community fishing

Lo-Tek by Julia Watson

Kumbh Mela

“A Hindu festival that situates itself every twelve years as the confluence of the Ganga and Yamuna rivers in the state of Uttarakhand, since its inception early in the first millenium CE, the Kumbh Mela has become the largest public gathering in the world.”74 The first written account of this gathering can be traced back to the 634 CE writings of “the Chinese, Buddhist monk Tsuan Hsuang,”75 but is thought have taken its current formalized form during the British occupation of India around 1870.

This mass gathering every twelve years is not just one of spirituality, which is deeply ingrained through the deep religious connections of the Ganga, but also one of “commerce and entertainment.”76 However, in the context of my exploration of the practice of mapping what demands careful attention are the physical and systemic frameworks that accommodate this cultural, social, economic microcosm of India. An ephemeral framework which not only accommodates an immense population but also successfully makes critical infrastructures more accessible than most more permanent urban informal settlements. Diana Eck and Kalpesh Bhatt very eloquently state that “the Kumbh Mela pragmatically promotes pluralism inherent in Indian civilization by creating spatial and psychological conditions in which followers of disparate traditions live together, reflecting the spirit.”77

“Approximately five million people gather for fiftyfive days, with an additional flux of ten to twenty million people coming for twenty-four-hour cycles on the six main bathing dates.”78 These numbers might not seem overwhelming in comparison to some of India’s most populated cities but they are when one considers the fact that the location of this immense festival is submerged for four months annually and that the physical construct to house the festival’s population is built in a mere eightweek span. “The ephemeral city of the Kumbh Mela is not only framed by a strong cultural

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

ecology, but also located in a highly dynamic physical geography.”79

In this ecology of flux what makes this ephemeral megacity possible is not just an understanding of the context but a “choreographic process of temporal urbanization.”80 In simple terms, there is a large-scale collaboration between the government, religious and social orders or akharas, contractors of various expertise and scales to address issues of health, sanitation, accommodation, religious rituals, security, transportation. The repeated successful synchronization amongst these various public and private interests on a temporal landscape while preserving the expression of identity serves as a point of linkage to the evolving physical spaces of negotiation between informal settlement and ecologies which find themselves within similarly temporal ecologies, like in the case of the Versova Koliwada and the Malad Creek. The opportunities to learn from the Kumbh Mela extend out to “distribution of risk among infrastructural subcomponents,” or “spatial substructures” through “self-organized camps that form an interconnected network”81 to allow for resiliency in the unpredictable context.

There also exists a sense of incrementality in each version of the Kumbh Mela, whereby learning from its previous iterations, the organizing bodies develop highly efficient solutions to exist within “conditions that a more permanent settlement could collapse and become dysfunctional.”82

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

The consideration of this fleeting event’s potential to be a rich repository of knowledge highly relevant to issues that need to addressed in cities of today lead to questions such as, “How can we more flexibly accommodate things while providing the space for rapid transitions, frugality, and the increasing fluidity that cities require?” or “How can we move toward a more adjustable urbanism that is capable of anticipating and hosting the

impermanent?”83 The questions can be seen to have critical relevance in the spatial planning and future urbanism of Mumbai.

I believe that a major step in understanding propagating the practices of a phenomenon such as the Kumbh Mela is understanding not only the spatial structures and the systems at play during the festival, but the actor networks and ecological understanding that comes into play from planning to deployment to execution to deconstruction. One method in doing that I find particularly successful in the Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Megacity is the graphic mapping of these systems from the scale of the district to that of a singular bridge or tent, always in the context of the shifting ecology to represent “overlapping social and material flows that generate open metabolic processes.”84 In my exploration to understand similar processes and ways to represent them building on the practice could provide a detailed, scalar understanding.

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral MegaCity

THE WET SEASON (top left)

Increased water levels and decreased boating activity and the mangroves enjoy a period of seclusion. They meanwhile protect the coastline from storm surges.

THE DRY SEASON (top right)

Receded water levels with more fishing and boating activity in the due to calmer waters. Sewage treatment plant water reservoir at the bottom right shows a source of pollution seeping into the mangroves.

Intersection between Koli fishing practices, coastal ecology and urban sewage outlets. (bottom left)

Coastal ecology of mangrove roots, leaves that serve as a origin off the local food chain and dependents animals. (bottom right)

THE DRY SEASON (top left)

Receded water levels with more fishing and boating activity in the due to calmer waters. The shoreline is dotted by clusters of informal housing or racks for drying fish, which is used as food during the wet season. More permanent concrete buildings lie further away from the water.

THE WET SEASON (top right)

Increased water levels and decreased boating activity. The rise in water level changes the boundary of land and sea.

Informal edge of Koli settlement which is adapted to contend with the constantly changing creek water levels. (bottom left)

Formalized dock for larger fishing vessels. Accommodates a Koli fish market and serves as the connection to the city-wide fishing industry. (bottom right)

“Now that it was visible, it was no longer acceptable.”

David Attenborough, 202185

Observing that the root of the current ideologies of exclusionary and overt systems of mapping are in the historic hand-drawn mappings of Mumbai, I decided that any attempts to redefine these foundations of the practice must start there.

The hand-drawn nature of the map not only depicts a personal take on the observed area on a human level but also subverts the computerized nature of economized mapping practices of the day. The argument is not that digitally produced maps are inherently evil, but an attempt to establish personal connections to the representation of spaces with the citizen and ecologies.

Through the process of its construction, the drawing has not only been created but it has also taught me a great deal on how to read into these often-generalized segments of urbanity. It became a canvas for incremental thoughts and accompanied drawing. Through this, the importance of layering and individual voice in the pursuit of a more equitable representation of the city made themselves paramount.

The various scales reveal micro and macro conditions which are vital to address some of the issues that I have brought up through the course of this investigation. I have combined my architectural and artistic training in representation to show these scales and the complexities within them. The main intention of the drawing is to reveal what in the general discourse of the city today doesn’t receive explicit attention, as well as their inherent complexities.

The produced piece isn’t an end to my investigation in this vein but rather an exercise that I see a possibility to build on. This analog method of mapping and the produced artifacts could be studied and compiled into the more common methods of representing the city. Ultimately, the hope is that the visibility or the ephemeral and physical qualities of the ‘edges’ shifts the narrative of otherness in Mumbai and similar cities of today. A new form of detailed representation could arise from the compilation of various representations of his particular space in the city. On the other hand, the drawbacks of the alienation of the creator of the map from the spaces being mapped are evident. This in turn makes me believe in my approach of questioning the strict conventionality of mapping and the biases we hold towards the urban ‘edges’ of the city with their complex Peripheral Mechanisms.