Like many of her neighbours, Vaishali Pachouri-Menon was drawn to live in Goregaon East partly because the area hosts one of the city’s few green lungs. From her highrise apartment in Sai Baba Colony next to the forests of Aarey, the film costume designer enjoys air that’s a little clearer and cooler than the rest of the city.

But over the years, she has seen the foliage around her thin. “Ever since construction began on the Ciba-Geigy plot, the number of trees has decreased,” she said.

For much of the past sixty years, the Aarey Milk Colony has been a source of nutrition and fresh air for Mumbaikars—with its milk plants, cowsheds, boating ponds, and thick forests. But as the dairy’s importance has shrunk, tourist facilities have become dilapidated and picnickers have dwindled.

Meanwhile, the city has been closing in. Slums have proliferated inside the colony over the years while malls and multiplexes—the new forms of leisure—have sprung up nearby. “When you think of Goregaon East today, you think of the Oberoi Mall and not Aarey,’’ said Padmaja Krishnan, a local resident and member of the Save Aarey Movement .

A slew of new urban projects now threatens the oasis. Authorities plan a four-lane elevated road through the colony as part of the Goregaon-Mulund Link project. Seventy-four acres of land has already been allocated for a car shed for the Metro-III project—this will entail felling of more than 2,000 trees. Another 190 acres of land has been earmarked for a zoo and 98 acres more for an Anti-Terrorism centre.

A dairy’s demise

It’s a far cry from the late 1940s when Aarey Colony was set up on land cleared from jungle as part of the Bombay Milk Scheme, introduced to ensure quality milk supply for the metropolis. Inaugurated by Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951, the dairy saw a parade of high-profile state guests in its early years including USSR’s Leonid Brezhnev and Yugoslavia’s Marshal Tito. Queen Elizabeth planted a sapling at the New Zealand Hostel, so called to honour the country’s gift of cows.

For decades, the dairy produced much of the city’s milk. But as private milk companies have grown in recent years, Aarey’s production has fallen—deliberately, allege local politicians like BJP’s Satish Upadhyay. “Aarey has been destroyed to promote dairies run by politicians in Western Maharashtra,’’ he said. The government reportedly plans to get out of the dairy sector.

Dairy officials seem indifferent. Aarey’s chief executive officer L Bhosale claimed to have no information on the dairy’s functioning and to be unaware of encroachments in Aarey colony. An estimated one lakh people officially live in Aarey—there are around 30,000 registered voters—with slums at 46 places, say local activists.

Authorities have also allowed Chhota Kashmir, once a popular tourist attraction and setting for Hindi film songs, to fall into disrepair. The operator, who has been served an eviction notice, claims irregular water supply makes it difficult to maintain the plants. The park no longer figures on the state tourism agency website.

Suburban boom

Even as Aarey has deteriorated, the surrounding areas have been developing rapidly. Traditionally home to low and middle-income housing —including Nagari Nivara, a low-cost housing complex built in the late nineties —Goregaon’s more recent projects have been upscale high-rises. The area is well-connected, within reach of Bandra Kurla Complex and Powai, and attracts homebuyers looking for one- and two-bedroom apartments below Rs 2 crore, says Sunil Mantri of Mantri Realty.

“Many of the families that are shifting here are from Juhu, Andheri and some from Ahmedabad who have business interests here,’’ he says. Offices have also sprung up in the area, including Kotak and BNP Paribas’s backend offices, an IT park, and a five-star hotel.

The boom is evident on the roads: Most evenings, there’s a jam for four kilometres from the Western Expressway to the IT park in the Dindoshi hills. The increased traffic and development drives the push for new road projects in the area. But more construction would also threaten the greenery that is a selling point for real estate projects here—Mantri touts its residential project as being “in the lap of nature’’.

This paradoxical situation could help the Save Aarey Movement, which is seeking to broaden its outreach among local residents. Volunteers currently comprise morning walkers and older residents like Gopal Poshar, 69, who has fond memories of spotting snakes in the neighbourhood. Newer residents seem to want more than nature in the raw. Sai Baba Complex’s Pachouri drives through Aarey everyday but has never taken her young daughter there because of the lack of facilities.

“Aarey is not maintained,” she said. “The farmer’s market at Mahim Nature Park and Bandra’s Equal Streets are so well-publicized and there’s so much to do that people actually make the effort to take their children there on a Sunday morning. There is no such effort for Aarey.”

