Published February 17, 2025

Saline Intrusions

Nikhil Chaudhary

Salt pans are Mumbai's last line of defense against climate change-induced floods, but the government and developers want to build on them.

Page 1 of a 10-page comic. It is a splash page with a single large panel with several captions. The illustration shows the interior of a hut, unevenly propped up with several bamboo logs. In the background, the narrator – a man in his thirties with a goatee, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, and bag slung across his chest – is shown ducking and entering the hut’s makeshift door while lifting the low tarpaulin roof with one hand. The first caption reads, “On a sweltering summer afternoon, I meet the protagonist of this story.” The next caption reads, “In a cramped hut, working men await their next shift under a low thatched roof.” In the foreground, three young men dressed white undershirts and shorts sit cross-legged on the floor, huddled and playing cards, as they look at the narrator. A fourth man sleeps on a mat on the floor next to them. This part of the image has a few successive captions. The first one reads, “Some huddle to pass time.” The second one says: “Some pass out.” The third one says: “Some pass their lunches around” beside two large pots of steaming lentil soup and rice. Within the same panel, backpacks and shirts hang on a horizontal bamboo strut in the hut. The caption next to them says, “I spot hints of their frugal and ever-transient existence.” The lower third of the page contains the portrait of a skinny man with receding hairline, a long face with angular features, and sunken but piercing eyes. He is wearing a white tank top and looks directly at the us, the readers. The two captions next to him read, “One of them is unanimously chosen to speak. Gopi rises to the fore...”, and “...as I seek some answers about the human side of these:” At the bottom of the page, a big bold title reads, “SALINE INTRUSIONS,” followed by credits: “Words and Art: Nikhil Chaudhary.”

Page 2 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 begins with the caption “Here in Mumbai – a sprawling Indian megapolis of 20 million – the eastern seafront is dotted by vast arrays of glistening saltpans.” The second caption says, “A hotly contested frontier, forever caught amid the debate of how and where the city should build and expand.” The panel shows a vast and flat landscape subdivided into arrays of white saltpans with mud embankments. A factory building and a line of bushy vegetation are visible on the horizon. In the foreground, there is a row of thatched huts along a row of heaps of the salt produced here. The left side of the panel shows a simplified outline of Mumbai’s map, with multiple dots indicating the locations of saltpans along the eastern coast. The caption reads, “Even at reduced capacity, these uniquely urban pans still produce 150,000 tons of salt annually.” Panel 2 begins with the caption, “I settle in on a handwoven reed mat as Gopi nonchalantly begins to answer my queries.” Below the caption are the two main interlocutors of the story sitting on the floor. The narrator writes things down in his notebook as Gopi speaks. Panel 3 shows the narrator looking things up on his laptop surrounded by files, folders, and bookmarked printouts. The caption reads, “But as I dig deeper, a winding backstory unspools from this unassuming site.” Panel 4 shows a man with a thick droopy moustache and a turban holding a wooden rake, with the caption, “The colonial records talk of the Agari people – indigenous salt harvesters – who worked here before the Portuguese arrived (1600).” Panel 5 begins with the caption, “...Of a thriving salt export from right here to distant provinces, via the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (1872).” It includes the drawing of a vintage steam-powered train engine with salt being raked into the goods carriages. Panel 6 begins the caption, “...Of how these pans were once leased to wealthy Indian businessmen by the British – to extract immense local taxes (1908).” It shows an Indian man with a round face and a traditional Indian hat smilingly accepting a roll of official documents from a British officer from across his desk.

Page 3 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 begins with the caption, “At this spot, 15,000 protesters launched the civil disobedience movement led by Gandhi, by illegally claiming the costly salt (1930).” It shows a police constable hitting an injured protester with a baton. Panel 2 begins with a caption, “After India’s independence, the federal government centralised all salt production and granted licences to all past lessees (1950).” It shows a bald man with square glasses handing across his desk an official document towards us, the readers. Panel 3 begins with the caption, “Soon, all the saltpans came to be federally owned and monopolised. Denied a stake, the businessmen grew furious (1960s).” It shows the round-faced man from the previous page grimacing and begrudgingly accepting an official document. A circle of sweat beads emanates from his face. Panel 4 contains Gopi’s face in the background. The next caption reads, “Back in the hut, Gopi explains his seasonal migration in a rural dialect of Marathi.” Gopi’s explanation is illustrated by series of connected speech bubbles laid out in a circle. This loop encircles a drawing of Gopi with a salt harvesting rake running on a hamster’s wheel as a visual metaphor. There are five successive speech bubbles. First: “We’re all from a tribal village 200 kilometres away. We grow rice during the monsoon rains, until our river dries up every year.” Second: “We come here during winters. Our families stay back.” Third: “We pound these lands and build the earthen pans.” Fourth: “We then begin harvesting the salt in summer. We use saltwater from a nearby creek.” Fifth: “Around 80 of us live here until we go back after summer.” In the foreground we see a simplified diagram of a bus-route illustrated by a dotted line starting from Gopi’s village to the left side of the page, and ending on the right side at city of Mumbai. Panel 5 contains silhouettes of the narrator and Gopi as they continue their conversation. The narrator asks, “And how long have you been doing this? Gopi responds, “Twelve years at this location. Without power. Nobody cares.” In the foreground we see the two pairs of footwear on the floor: the narrator’s hiking shoes next to Gopi’s rubber flip-flops.

Page 4 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 begins with the caption, “Meanwhile, to retain ownership, desperate businessmen/lessees sue the federal Salt Department. Many pans remain locked into litigation for decades (1970s).” The image comprises two angry men boxing in a ring. In the background, judge dressed in court robes and seated on a towering desk tries to restore order. Panel 2 contains a caption which reads, “Later, the state government joins the dispute by claiming the defunct pans' ownership. The land records are swiftly changed. Legal battles ensue (1981).” The image shows the two men boxing in the previous panel now puzzled and looking at a third contestant who is smilingly entering the ring. Panel 3 begins with the caption, “Some businessmen collude with real estate developers to erect housing complexes on contested pans gradually “legalised” by corrupt zoning revisions (1970-80s).” The image contains a man accepting a suitcase full of valuables from another. In the background, there is a “FOR SALE” signboard plastered on a row of tall buildings. Panel 4 contains the caption, “On disused saltpans – like the ones across Gopi's hut – illegal slums spring up in the nineties. Today, they thrive with small businesses and permanent homes.” The illustration shows a row of uneven buildings with corrugated metal sheet roofs in the background and silhouettes of a group of men throwing a glass bottle. Next to the glass bottle, Gopi comments on this situation with a speech bubble that reads, “The slum-dwellers often hurl abuses and empty liquor bottles at us at night. They deny us electrical connection for even a single bulb.” A kerosene lamp hangs by his side. Beneath the panel, the second caption says, “It's strange how each wave of the city's migrants despises the next as a nuisance.” Panel 5 open with the caption. “Just then, an unexpected interviewee makes a sly entrance – as if to make a point.” It consists of the narrator sitting next to Gopi on a reed mat looking startled and worried, with two question marks emanating from his head. A small, dark gecko-like creature crawls right next to him. Panel 6 contains a speech bubble arising from the lizard’s close-up image. It says, “We condemn the unchecked onslaught of humans over our natural habitat. Don't you species ever learn??” A caption and an arrow point towards the reptile with the annotation, “A non-poisonous skink lizard.” The next caption concludes the page mentioning, “We decide to move outdoors.”

Page 5 of a 10-page comic. The splash page opens with the caption, “Spread over 71 acres, I see hundreds of pans spanning the horizon. Such vast openness feels like an unnoticed anomaly in this hyper-dense metropolis. Except it wasn't.” To the right, there is an inset panel with the caption, “During the nascent real estate boom, the city's Coastal Regulation Zone rule banned all construction between the coast and the high tide line (1991). All saltpans lie within this zone.” The panel shows a diagrammatical cross-section of the coast with a large STOP sign planted on the saltpans. The main full-page illustration shows the landscape full of saltpans, with pylons and industrial structures visible on the hazy horizon. Gopi and the narrator walk on the earthen embankments, with several speech bubbles tracking their movement across the page. Gopi’s first speech bubble reads, “Not all pans are the same. Depending on their distance from the creek, each one has a specific use.” Gopi’s second speech bubble says, “Khajina.” (The caption next to it reads, “The deep outermost pans fill naturally during high tides; The impurities settle down.”). Gopi’s third speech bubble says, “Tapavanee.” (The caption beside it reads, “Concentrated brine is then let into shallower pans for evaporation.”). Gopi’s fourth speech bubble says, “Agaar.” (The caption next to it reads, “Finally, in the innermost beds, purest brine is left to crystallise for six days.”). Gopi’s last speech bubble in the series says, “Water level is critical. We pump the excess out. It's a skilled job – no city slicker can ever do it!” The page concludes with two inset panels: The first one contains the caption, “Back in the ownership arena, volleys of appeals between the federal and the state government agencies, over who owns these lands, go on for a decade (1993-2003).” It shows the two characters from the previous page continuing to trade blows in the boxing ring. The last panel shows a flooded and waterlogged street with a group of people sitting atop a half-submerged bus’s roof trying to help a drowning person whose hand desperately rises from the flood waters. The caption reads: “During this limbo, a catastrophic flood hits Mumbai, causing over 500 deaths and 500m USD in losses. Hopefully, the sternest warning against haphazard urban policy (July 26, 2005).”

Page 6 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 opens with the caption, “Instead, the floods trigger unending negotiations to "unlock" the lucrative pans for "development purposes", with ever-shifting terms of division (2006-07).” The image shows three men (each representing the national government agency, the state government, and the real estate developers) distributing a cake cut three ways, with one of them saying, “Everyone will get an equal share.” A fourth man in the background representing the business community says, “What about me?” Panel 2 displays the caption, “Each time, some parties are left out. In a bid to transfer the saltpans from federal to state control, ambitious schemes are announced (2008-13).” The panel contains the same four men from the previous panel with the cake now cut two ways. They are arguing over the cake’s distribution. One of them says, “We will rehabilitate 100,000 slum-dwellers in affordable homes.” Two of them say, “What about us?!” Panel 3 begins with the caption, “But even as this indecision persists, one firm judgement comes through.” The next caption reads, “Responding to litigation by local NGOs and citizen action groups, Mumbai's High Court bans construction around mangrove wetlands (2014).” The panel shows the close up of a judge’s hand. Their gavel is coming down to smash a small metaphorical bulldozer placed on the desk. Panel 4 begins with the caption, “I speak with noted environmentalist Dayanand S., who has filed over twelve lawsuits in the past decade against rampant construction on wetland ecosystems.” Dayanand’s quotes are laid out in a series of speech bubbles around his portrait. In the background, there is a view of mangroves bushes in low waters of a creek, with under-water roots, fish and a crab visible. Dayanand’s first speech bubble reads, “The government-developers nexus is only concerned about money. Their claim of affordable housing is just a sham.” The second one reads, “Even the basic zoning of environmentally sensitive areas has been stalled deliberately.” The third one reads, “If everything is built up and a calamity hits the city, where will you go?” The final one reads, “Salt farming is a part of our heritage. It must continue. Even if it stops, mangroves will grow back on the saltpans because of tidal waters.”

Page 7 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 begins with the caption, “And indeed they have... which resulted in the state's Forest Department declaring the disused-saltpans- turned-marshlands as “protected forests”. But labels aside, in reality, a mosaic of natural features have always lined this island city, since its inception.” The image shows the stylized skyline of the island city of Mumbai comprising glass and steel skyscrapers, spires of temples and mosques, factory smokestacks, and tower cranes. It is surrounded by the turbulent sea with its waves splashing across the coast and its vegetation. The next caption reads, “Against climate change-induced floods and storm surges, they are the last line of defense for this offensive city. Within this patchwork of marshes and saltpans, as rain clouds loom overhead, Gopi's men gather at a nearby creek.” Panel 2 shows Gopi directing a team of seven workers, some of whom are collecting water from the mangrove creek in plastic containers and carrying them towards a few bales of straw on the ground. Two of the men are already pouring the water over the bales. Gopi’s speech bubble reads, “The owner gave us tarpaulin to cover the salt heaps. We sealed one. But others are too big for the sheets.” He continues, “No problem. We still have our hay. Water softens it.” Panel 3 shows a close-up of a worker’s muddy hands laying layers of straw over a salt heap, with the caption, “They neatly unroll straw over the heap, and "sew it shut" with the pans' silty clay.” The next panel 4 begins with the caption, “The putty works like magic in their deft hands. The 15-foot-tall heap is secured in an hour.” The panel contains four workers arranging straw over a pyramidal salt heap, with the narrator clicking their picture on his phone. A row of the workers’ thatch and tarpaulin huts is visible in the background. The page and the panel conclude with the caption, “A geometrically perfect mound next to the similarly thatched huts in shambles – the commodity trumps its makers.”

Page 8 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 begins with the caption, “On the far side, without any building restraints, a frenzied transformation is enshrined in glass, steel and concrete.” The upper half of the panel consists of an urban skyline in the making, with four giant hands placing a tower crane, an elevated freeway, a skyscraper, and a “FOR SALE” signboard over the skyline. The skyline is interspersed with three captions. The first one reads, “First, a freeway and a monorail line arrive for better connectivity.” The second: “This infrastructure spurts the launch of several high-end real estate projects...” The third: “...which soon turn the neighbourhood into an investment hotspot.” The fourth caption concludes, “Despite a sluggish economy, the built edge closes in.” Panel 2 contains a series of captions laid out into the white space of the saltpans, The first one says, “Early evening, the raking work begins.” A few workers could be seen raking the salt within the saltpans in small heaps. Some of them carry large plastic tubs heaped with salt on their head. The caption next to them reads, “Mud embankments are now heaped with the lustrous salt.” The next one says, “The raking quickens the evaporation and the salt's crystallization. It also causes blistered feet.” In the foreground, Gopi explains while continuing to rake the salt, “We do this early dawn or at this time because the glare hurts our eyes.” Panel 3 begins with the caption: “Gopi is unaware where the manufacturer's supply goes. He is content with his daily wage of 150 Rupees (about 1.50 USD).” The panel contains three workers loading a goods truck with large sacks. On the right side of the panel, the narrator is seen pointing towards a patch of land that contains rows of wooden sticks planted upright in the ground and propping up mosquito nets. The narrator asks, “What happens on these empty heaping pans?”. Gopi replies, “Oh, we sleep there.” The last caption concludes, “Come nightfall, the maker replaces his commodity.”

Page 9 of a 10-page comic. The entire page is one illustration of a conference room with multiple characters representing the diverse points of view on the situation. The page begins with the caption, “With every change of government, public agencies get busy making new proposals to seal the fate of all saltpans in the city (2015 to present).” In the background, four ornate pillars decorating the room frame three more captions. The first one says: “A new Master Plan proposes unlocking the "Non-Developable Zones" (NDZ) for "1 million affordable homes." The second: “Another one recommends "socially relevant uses" for the saltpans." The third: “Yet another envisions the area as a business district.” Below the captions, there are six speech bubbles each belonging to the six men with a seat at the table, each representing their organisation’s views. Each character is labelled with the names of their organisation. The first one from the municipality says, “It's “non” and not “never” developable. One-third of the NDZs will be designed as public amenities.” The second character from the High-level Committee says, “We've asked the federal agencies for building permits for all these lands.” The third character from the Regional Development Authority says, “We will maximize the monorail use with our Walk-to-Work concept!” The fourth character from the Urban Development Authority says, “We just cleared a mega office-residential-sports complex for our staff.” The fifth character from the Port Authority says, “We've planned an IT campus and a marina. We'll build cheap homes elsewhere.” The sixth character from the real estate developers’ lobby says, “Affordable homes won't give any returns on investment on these sea-facing properties.” On the other side of the conference table and at the bottom of the page, there are three characters representing the opposition to the plans and proposals presented. The first character representing the environmental activities says, “This is a land grab! Like past redevelopment of mill lands that only created luxury towers.” The second one in the centre – and the only woman in the room – says, “The reckless building will wreak havoc – these areas are ecologically sensitive.” The last character around the table representing the opposition political parties says, “We oppose this plan. It's anti-people and builder-Friendly.” In the centre of the conference room table and the page, there is a giant salt shaker in which we see Gopi holding his rake. He is trapped and knee deep in the salt. The last caption concludes, “As this drama reaches a crescendo, Gopi is reduced to a parenthesis in his own story.”

Page 10 of a 10-page comic. Panel 1 opens with the caption, “Away from the melee, the milieu on the ground is soothingly pastoral.” It contains the bamboo porch of a hut where Gopi, the narrator, and one of the workers sit and continue to talk. In the background, two men cook dinner on a makeshift wood-fired stove. The next caption reads, “In the twilight, I tell Gopi about the plans and visions for this land.” Gopi responds, “What can we do? We'll go somewhere else.” The narrator then asks, “Do you ever feel like moving to the city permanently with your family?” Panel 2 consists of Gopi’s responses in a series of speech bubbles. The first one reads: “No. Never.” The second one: “Back in the village, there is plenty to sustain us. We have our rice and lentil harvests.” The third one: Back home, if some days I don't Feel like working, I don't. There is Freedom.” The fourth one: “The only thing we don't have is cash. We earn it here and go back to our roots.” The third and the fourth speech bubble are overlaid on Panel 3. It comprises a view from the front yard of Gopi’s permanent house in his village. It is a modest brick house with a sloping roof. It overlooks a rice field where three people are visible sowing. The next three panels are successive views of the same place changing across an unknown period of time. Panel 4 has the caption: “Heavy rains will soon plunge the city into newer problems. Yet, the desire of those who want to profit by building shall persist.” It shows four saltpans filled with water as it drizzles. Gopi’s hut and a tree next to it is visible at a distance. Panel 5 begins with the caption, “Slowly, the swelling tides will engulf everything along the coast, along with this carefully crafted landscape...” It shows heavy rains with the embankments of the four saltpans now disintegrating in the waterlogged land. Gopi’s temporary hut has fallen apart and the lone tree swaying in the storm. The caption in the last concluding Panel 6 says, “...until the cycle is reset. Until no trace of our civilised intrusion remains, and the land returns to its primal self.” The image is now that of a tidal marsh with grassy vegetation. In the foreground, a skink lizard sits on a branch. The lone tree is thriving. The last caption reads, “END.”

Originally published in Longform: An Anthology of Graphic Narratives, Volume 1 by HarperCollins India

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