India, May 10 -- Mumbai is in the throes of a 'quickie' orgasm. Shiny cars whizzing over viaducts, linkways and crown-jewel coastal road, all conveying the illusion of having arrived at the future. However, as it turns into an 'elevated' city, the roads below sink deeper into squalor. Civic hopes get buried under the broken pavements, garbage and encroachments. Less obviously and more irreplaceably, history too.

All roads have a back story, but some are custodians of a broader sweep. The past, colonial and ancient, is present in the 2.5-kilometer Acharya Donde Road, struggling from Parel TT to the socially spurned Sewri. It is about to be overwhelmed by infrastructure's Next Big 'High', the Sewri-Worli Link (SWL). The island city's first...