Settler Urbanism

This post is an experiment in coining neologisms: Made-up words for half-buried truths + Photographs that prompted this neologisms.

The Settler Urbanist: I think I belong to a tribe called the Settler Urbanists. Newly awakened city people trying to tune into the land or city they live in. Not to rebuild it, not to mourn it, just to listen to a city we migrated to. Let’s call listening to the Subsurface Memory of a city, the idea that land remembers and sometimes reveals. And why do we do it? Maybe to feel less like settlers and more like listeners.

Subsurface Memory and Settler Urbanism

Geographically, Navi Mumbai is on the mainland of India, on the left (eastern) bank of Thane Creek, the southern distributary of the Ulhas River that forks at Thane. Salsette Island and the original seven islands form the right (western) bank of the creek, which contains Mumbai.

I am one among several friends from Navi Mumbai who are slowly trying to divine the city's 'Estuarial Memory'. Estuarial Memory may or may not be the right phrase to use to evoke the idea that memory of the places and people that used to inhabit what became Navi Mumbai pools and shifts like water in an estuary. What we want to see is if the place “remembers” its earlier form.

It's a kind of 'Silt World'. Under the many sectors and nodes that form Navi Mumbai are ecological, sociological, and other sediments (silt) that persist in the city that is poured over with tonnes of concrete and steel. Maybe we are seeking an earlier way of life, like silt, that keeps rising to the surface.

It's an ‘Interstitial Village’ or a way of life that lies between the concrete structures and the jam-packed highways, like connective tissue. The remains of a softer life between the hard grinds that is in better sync with nature.

We seek a 'TideMark': the visible things or lines left behind by the receding way of life. The fading but still visible presence of an older way of life.

Grama Lacuna.

Discovering the ‘Gramalacuna’: Grama (village) + lacuna (gap, absence, or hole). It's a journey filled with A-Ha! moments to stumble upon these layers that once made a place, and it is probably something missing in the modern city, but not entirely gone. If the planners with the stiff, straightening tools who planned this city had to give this a name, it would be something like 'Wetgrid Residue ', which combines the wetness of the estuarine ecology and the 'grid' of rationality, and residue that would mean what's leftover and escaped their pen or knife.

I wish that I could have coined names using Marathi or Agri toponymic logic. The original local dialect of Marathi, which people who had a close communion with the land used to name a place, was ‘Devkhadi’, or the sacred creek, or ‘Khekravli’, or the wetland or lowland filled with crabs.

Echoflow.

We want to seek out and see what exists or hides in plain sight. A 'Flow Print' of ways of life that could not be buried under blueprints, development plans, and the towers that rise from them. Let me also be honest: we are city dwellers, totally reliant on the march of concrete. We seek to steal ideas from the 'Under Flow,’ the quiet current beneath the surface. To distil the authentic, unfiltered movement of the 'True Flow' before city structures shaped it.

Anthropocenic Greed of Settler Urbanism.

Are we mere thieves of memory? We, the future residents of Navi Mumbai's ‘Lalachwadi’ (settlement of greed), Sector 420, English-speaking ‘memoryvores’ trying to mimic past aesthetics and knowledge for petty gain, not meaning. Will we become the flagbearers of 'Pastwash,' here to reuse the past as a decorative or greenwashed aesthetic?

Will we become 'Siltwashers,' rebranding the place's sedimentary, organic, and ecological realities into clean, palatable myth? Not with bombs or JCBs this time, but with hashtags, development plans, policy tweaks, and curated walks. We become the soft tools of settler urbanism, pouring concrete over living biospheres and the cultures of the first people of the creek.

We do not raze like the IDF, we aestheticise. We do not evict; we euphemise.

Viewfinder Gaze

After indulging, maybe perversely in the pleasure of coining neologisms while my friends and I tried to find new ways of seeing the city we live in, I think it’s time to turn to what started it all: the photographs. Let me turn on my ‘Viewfinder Gaze,’ a narrow, selective gaze of a person who edits reality for aesthetic coherence and tries to erase contradiction - the images that caught me off guard and made me write this.

Here is this week's photo essay.

Planks used to skate on the Vashi gaon wetlands to collect clams and other food.

Sevanti of Juhu gaon uses these planks to collect clams.

Nets used by artisanal/traditional fishermen of Vashi or Juhu gaon

This landing between the mangroves was made for hovercrafts, but the traditional fishermen have always used the space before and after hovercrafts.

Three generations of a fishing family.

On a Sunday morning, a father takes his young son out to experience the water and teh tides. They have left behind their traditional fishing and are now part of the city. Vashi Gaon’s other fishing jetty.

Alternate livelihoods.

These were the last fishing boats that were made in Vashi in 2009. They space has now been taken over by the toll booth of the Mumbai-Pune Highway.

Bombau Duck being dried on the busy mainroad of Sarsole village in Navi Mumbai.

Bombay Duck has disappeared from the waters around Mumbai. They are bought from Sassoon Dock, where fish from the Gujarat coast are brought. This practice of drying it continues.

That’s all, Folks.

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List:
1. Settler Urbanists – Newly awakened city dwellers who try to tune into the land or city they live in, especially as migrants.

2. Subsurface Memory – The idea that land or a city has a hidden, underlying memory that sometimes reveals itself.

3. Estuarial Memory – The memory of places and people that inhabited what became Navi Mumbai, which pools and shifts like water in an estuary.

4. Silt World – The metaphorical world of ecological, sociological, and other sediments (silt) persisting beneath the city’s concrete.

5. Interstitial Village – A way of life or community that exists in the spaces between urban structures, like connective tissue between the hard infrastructure.

6. TideMark – The visible traces or lines left behind by a receding way of life; the lingering presence of the past.

7. Grama Lacuna—From "Grama" (village) + "lacuna" (gap/absence), it refers to the missing but not entirely gone aspects of village life in the modern city.

8. Wetgrid Residue – Combines "wetness" of estuarine ecology, the "grid" of rational planning, and "residue" as what escapes or remains after planning.

9. Echoflow – The act or process of seeking out what exists or hides in plain sight; the echoing flow of memory or presence.

10. Flow Print – The trace or imprint of ways of life that survive beneath or despite urban planning and development.

11. Under Flow – The quiet, authentic current of life or memory beneath the visible surface of the city.

12. True Flow – The unfiltered, original movement or essence of a place before it was shaped by urban development.

13. Anthropocenic Greed of Settler Urbanism – The human-driven, epoch-defining greed that characterises the mindset of settler urbanists.

14. Lalachwadi – A coined toponym: "Lalach" (greed) + "wadi" (settlement); a fictional or symbolic place representing greed.

15. Memoryvores – People who consume or appropriate memories, especially of places, for their purposes.

16. Pastwash – The act of reusing or repurposing the past as a decorative or greenwashed aesthetic, similar to "whitewash" or "greenwash."

17. Siltwashers – Those who rebrand the organic, sedimentary realities of a place into sanitised, palatable myths.

Extras:

Sector 420 – While "Sector" is standard, "420" is a loaded number in Indian context (connoting fraud), used here for satirical effect.

Soft tools of settler urbanism – A phrase rather than a single word used in a novel way.