“They’ve started dumping cement there. It results in smaller, less meaty oysters that take longer to form”

Seven hundred metres into the rocky intertidal zone near the fishing village of Chimbai in Bandra, Mumbai, cousins Ratna and Alka move steadily across slippery rocks, their feet gripping uneven, sharp surfaces.

At 2:30 pm, the November sun overhead, they scrape clusters of Tisrya (clams) and Kalwa (oysters) from the rocks with pointed tools called ‘kood’. The shore is littered with discarded beer bottles and plastic waste, but a few hundred metres further in, the cousins concentrate on collecting molluscs, and whatever else the season allows.

Residents of Mahim Koliwada, Ratna, 51, and Alka, 41, are the sole earners of their households. Widowed, Ratna supports herself and her mother by selling clams and oysters, as well as dried fish from her native village in Palghar district. On days when the tide is high and seafood can’t be harvested, she buys flowers from a wholesale market in Lower Parel and sells them near temples. Alka, with two children and an aging mother, supplements her income through domestic work.

On a good day, after over five hours of work, they collect barely three kilograms of clams and oysters, worth around ₹400. To get to Chimbai, inaccessible by bus, Ratna and Alka need to take a rickshaw, a relatively expensive commute. During the COVID-19 lockdowns, they continued to come here. “The sea doesn’t stop,” Alka says. “What else would we do?”

Their income has grown even more precarious since the Coastal Road project began. With the sea more polluted, debris from construction making the water murkier, clams and oysters are now less abundant. “They’ve started dumping cement there,” Ratna adds, pointing to a bridge under construction. “It results in smaller, less meaty oysters that take longer to form.”

From where they stand, the half-built Coastal Road looms like a scar across the horizon. Parts of the shore once accessible, like those near Haji Ali, are now permanently altered by ‘development’. As the sun begins to set, they rinse the clams and oysters in a puddle; wash their feet, before the long walk back across the rocks. By the time they reach the shore the moon has risen.