It is only when the rains debilitate Mumbai that we discover the possibility of navigating the crowded streets of our city on our feet. People have traveled huge distances wading through gutter water making them associate the act exclusively with civic breakdowns. However, several research findings indicate that a good many of Mumbai’s daily commuters actually walk to work everyday on a routine basis. That’s’ because most of them live in informal settlements and relatively close to work.

In fact Mumbai’s streets are a visual proof that people use their two feet all the time. Few roads or streets are free of walkers. The presence of roadside hawkers indicate the vibrancy of the streets in this regard only too well and most regular walkers adapt to their presence. One of the most successful infrastructure projects that civic authorities undertook in recent times are the walkways near Bandra and foot overbridges across roads and highways. The aim may have been to keep people out of the roads for the cars – but they have helped nevertheless.

Walking sometimes reveals how relative notions of distances can be. It was only after suffering through traffic jams that lasted two hours between Girgaum and Prabhadevi during evening rush hour that made me realize that the same distance could be traversed in precisely that much time by walking as well.  Of course that stretch included two great promenades – the Haji Ali  and Worli Sea Face roads.

Walks have been regularly incorporated in the city’s tourist – especially heritage trail – agendas. Rahul Mehrotra and Sharada Dwivedi’s Fort Walks is an excellent guide through the city’s colonial past. Enterprising guides have developed the ‘Slum tours” through Dharavi. PUKAR, Mumbai’s very own innovative urban research collective uses walks as a method of inquiry. Walks become part of the research process. Recently, members of the center held a special walk through the erstwhile Mill areas of Mumbai, providing participants a glimpse of the rapidly transforming neighbourhood. This was done as part of a global event in the memory of an American urbanist Jane Jacobs who used the idea of the walk as a way of reclaiming neighbourhoods for its residents.

It’s a sure fire way of making places safer without acts of surveillance if you simply learn to use the streets in a feet-on way. Of course, it may be impractical in terms of being a regular act in a Mumbaikar’s life. In many ways it sounds almost improbable.

But already the infamous traffic jams – especially in the suburbs have transformed several commuters from stations to their colonies into regular walkers. A bit more investment in the basic infrastructure for this activity will surely bring in several more and make it a pleasurable activity.

Walks have been overtly political acts as well, especially in the form of demonstrations and of course through Gandhi’s legendary marches. The political dimension of the walks merges with its cultural one – becoming often a ‘carnavalisque’ reclaiming of public spaces. And while most Mumbaikars would baulk at this idea, given how impatient they are with any act that slows them down, one time of the year they find themselves joining in is round the corner. When the elephant headed God makes his devotees (who love walking to him to Sidhivinayak temple anyway every Tuesday) dance along during the chaturthi celebrations.

For several years one has had mixed feelings about this great celebratory invasion of Mumbai’s streets. I have found myself walking through miles of static traffic in thunderous music and – after exorcising the bourgeois impatience of a regular commuter – even danced along – especially when a subversive techno parade joined in a procession in a true spirit of the carnival.

Maybe this Ganpathi festival – Mumbaikars can join in by politicizing the already politicized event a bit more – and make it a celebration of the act of walking as well –by everyone who has a political axe to grind – and reclaim the streets of the city in another way.