On 08 September 2019, over two thousand people formed a human chain in protest against the city’s planning authorities. The latter had granted permission to fell trees in SGNP’s Aarey forest, Mumbai’s “last green lungs,” to construct a metrorail car shed. SGNP, spread over 120 sq. km., is literally considered as a ‘forest in the city.’ In the polyphonic protest were adivasi youth, SGNP residents, who “raised their voices for the first time” alongside the city’s middle class and low income residents, academics, politicians, and Bollywood film fraternity. In reflecting on the gathering, one adivasi youth exhorted, “... We feel sad why” more “people from Mumbai are not coming here. Don't they breathe oxygen?” The adivasi call on Mumbai's majority presents a paradoxical alliance in its attempt to advance collective action by joining, at the hip, differently situated spatial imaginations and practices, which are split at their roots. It reminds us of the imaginary twin city of Valdrada formed by reflection in a lake; twins who “live for each other, eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them.” The reflected twin is actually a refraction of things and activities in the lake’s waters that increases or decreases their value. Analogically, the ‘forest / city’ refract as unequal twins when interlocked as a carbon sink making one pause to think about the political in adivasi traverses to veer over, experiment with collaboration and stir things without complete knowledge of where it might lead.
