I was looking for reasons to love my city,” says Pooja Barge, a marketing professional, when asked why she first started going for heritage walks. 

The Grant Road-resident has lived in the city all her life. But when friends began to move to other cities, her social life came to a stop. Her love-hate relationship with Mumbai began leaning towards hate owing to the rampant construction, heavy traffic, long commutes, and crowds. In an attempt to fix this, she pushed herself to step out for weekend activities. “That’s when I started attending heritage walks. And, it hit me like a tonne of bricks… I did not know my own city,” says Barge, “I didn’t even know my neighbourhood or what [historical events] took place 20 steps away from my house. Once I got all that information, I began to understand that there is so much history and there is logic and reasoning around why things are the way they are.”