Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Mumbai’s Latest Suburb? – Hindustan Times

Over the years it’s come to be referred to as Mumbai’s ‘Hamptons’, an allusion to America’s Long Island beach resort, where tony New Yorkers spent their summers.

But Alibag, lying 120 km south of Mumbai has a rich history of its own, dating back to Kanhoji Angrey, the swashbuckling admiral of the Maratha Navy among others; including a thriving community of Bene Israel Jews and a local populace of fisher folk and farmers.

Legend has it that when Mumbai- based Cambridge educated executive Jay Watsa and his artsy wife Kiki decided to buy land in Alibag’s Nagaon, to build a weekend family home in 1967, they had proceeded from there in a convoy of bullock carts at 4am to collect supplies for its construction from Thal.

“It was un-spoilt, virgin territory; the villagers had never seen a car, and beach-touch land was selling at ₹3-5000 an acre,” says a member of the pioneering clan.

“Today it’s a minimum of 5/6 crore for the same.”

“My association with Alibag started in the mid-’80s. We used to race from Gateway to Mandwa on weekends. I fell in love with the place,” says Commodore Surinder Mongia, an Arjuna Award-winning sailor, who bought a piece of land about 3km from the jetty and took up residence there after retirement in ’94.

Though only a handful of Mumbaiites could follow Mongia’s example of taking up permanent residence in Alibag, from the 90s it seemed there was a whole swathe of city folk seeking accommodation there.

These consisted of budget inns and boutique hotels for day-trippers, company guest houses for executives, modest cottages for writers and artists, and sprawling hacienda-like weekend homes for HNI professionals, tycoons, and film stars.

Slowly, with easier accessibility, thanks to AC ferry services and later zippy speedboats between Apollo Bunder and Mandwa, Alibag became the go-to weekend destination for Mumbaiites in need of sunshine, space, and leisure.

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The pandemic changed all that.

To begin with, it was a small community of Mumbaiites with weekend villas who decided that it made more sense to live out the lockdown in Alibag. According to Mark Selwyn, one of the senior-most realtors of the area, this comprised around 100/120 families, “Because of food shortages, medical requirements, etc., very soon, a strong community feeling developed between these residents,” he says.

By August 2020, when things eased up and the RoRo began its service, this community had burgeoned. Now, it was not only those with legacy properties in Alibag who wanted in, but many others who were going crazy trying to cope with lockdowns, WFH, and housebound children, who saw moving there as a no-brainer.

That’s when the real boom began. “For six years, pre-pandemic, land prices had remained steady with the golden ‘10-minute radius around Mandwa jetty’ going for around ₹1.5/1.75 lakh per acre,” says Selwyn, adding, “After the pandemic, it’s now around ₹4 crore. The rental market has also increased four times. Earlier, you could rent a villa with a pool for ₹1.5 lakh per month, today, the same goes for around ₹6 lakh!.”

The upside to this was a thriving community that emerged. From the handful of pre-pandemic WA groups, sharing information about speedboats, ‘settlers’ compiled lists of every conceivable service available for the benefit of the community, with dozens of spinoff groups for organic produce, the care of strays, recipe exchanges, and online scrabble.

Other lifestyle enhancements in the form of well-conceived retail stores like Ten94, featuring home accessories and a coffee bar; a well-stocked Deli in Chondi, and Alibag designer Pinakin Patel’s museum-like furniture store, added to the attraction along with the fact that some of Mumbai’s top restaurateurs began delivery services and pop-ups to Alibag.

Leading F&B veteran Nilima Daruwala, one of the brains behind Ten94, says it was in the middle of the lockdown when 5 Alibag-based women, who had a common dream started the home store and that its reception was better than imagined.” Alibag was a sleepy town that had no activities or places to visit,” she says.

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Everyone concedes that the real game-changer was RoRo.

According to Aashim Mongia, son of Commodore Mongia, who, along with his business partner Devika Saigal Kapoor is joint owner of the venture, it had been a topic of discussion for over 25 years.

Mongia, whose first memories of getting to Alibag had been as a child arriving on a sailboat transferring, mid-sea to a row boat and wading through water with bags aloft, says the change began when the duo took over the management of the Mandwa Port and the introduced cafes, restrooms, stores which added considerable additional footfall.

“Pitching for the RoRo was a logical next step,” says Mongia, adding, “The government’s initiative in Sagarmala is driving growth and the RoRo is one the best public-private developments today.”

But given how much of a game-changer the RoRo’s been, few realise how shaky its start was. Officially opening on 14 March 2020, the government declared a nationwide lockdown on 20 March, which was a devastating setback for a new venture.

But since the resumption of its services in August that year, it has been running to full capacity, especially in the monsoons, when other means of transport are unavailable or fraught.

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Given this trajectory, it is not hard to see why many feel Alibag has outgrown the tag of being ‘Mumbai’s Hamptons.’

“We think of it as the ‘new Mumbai’, and with the completion of the MTHL and the Karanja to Rewas Bridge, Alibag will become the latest suburb of Mumbai,” says Mongia.

What will this bode for the area? Could there be a downside to the development and unprecedented accessibility to Mumbai for Alibag’s ecology, its local populace, and the quality of life for its residents?

It’s a thought that has occurred to many. “If properly planned with good broad roads, up-to-date waste management systems, water resources, and zero tolerance for unplanned construction and environmental damage, there’s no reason why Alibag cannot become a model town,” says one of Alibag’s leading realtors, Aamir Sayed, whose family traces its lineage to the area for 300 years.

“After all, some of the country’s most accomplished, successful, and famous people live here.”

Speak to Alibag ‘insiders’, and the consensus is that development should not come at the cost of the resort’s local charm.

As Rohit Watsa son of Jay and Kiki Watsa, among the earliest ‘settlers’ in Alibag says, “Alibag as an area is going to be more urban with the upcoming connectivity and infrastructure. And there is a need for planned garbage and sewage infrastructure. Given the number of city folks with houses here that include almost all leading industrialists, Alibag could be a model district for planned development if everyone got together.”