“Let’s face it. We call ourselves a coastal city but we take our coastline for granted. It’s bad enough that we’ve had to sacrifice vast tracts [including some truly stunning panoramas] of our shore to the highly contentious Coastal Road project on one side and the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link on the eastern front. We’ve been blinded by blinkers from both sides, from a geographic viewpoint.

Whenever I use the Eastern Express Highway, I gaze at the swathes of green that include the natural guardians of our ecosystem, the mangroves. I am grateful that they are still around. And every time I am able to catch a glimpse of the promenades at Bandra, Worli or Mahim, despite the efforts to ‘beautify’ it, the litter that washes up its shores, remains an eyesore. Over the weekend, I caught a segment in a travel documentary that focused on how a popular beach in Hong Kong was able to use citizen participation as an effective tool, as well as on a consistent and massive scale to help minimise the menace of littering along a popular beach which was a coastal tourist attraction.