Play area under Senapati Bapat Marg flyover becomes a hit with children

Mumbai: The underbelly of a flyover, enveloped in traffic noise and fumes, is not the pleasantest of places for children to play in. But the popularity of the recently opened pocket-sized play area under the Senapati Bapat Marg flyover shows otherwise; in a city where 41% of the population lives in slums and has sparse access to playgrounds, any recreational space suffices.
On Saturday, children ran joyfully around the play area, which remains open from 8 am to 12 noon and 4 pm to 10 pm daily. They not only used the play equipment comprising tyres, swings, seesaws and climbing equipment but also had fun with the play area’s enclosure; one child even climbed atop the bars and walked them like a tightrope.
The fact that the play area is in the middle of a busy road did bother the children, but not to the extent of turning them away. “The noise and pollution from the cars is too much,” said Tanya Chaurasiya, 13, who became friends with Renuka Telay, 16, in the play area. “But where else do we go? The nearby Pramod Mahajan Park has too many trees so we think it may have snakes. We used to play kabbadi and games in the other spaces under the flyover earlier, but this is much better.”
The other play options that Renuka and Tanya have are in their small slum homes and the narrow gullies outside them. But those, as they pointed out, did not give them enough scope for “masti”.
The play area had also attracted those from faraway places. Lakhan Kamble, 17, who had come from Govandi, has his weekly haunt there, as he has relatives nearby. Twelve-year-old Rowan Londe had come from Bhayandar with his elder brother.
Ganesh Kashbe, a BMC sweeper, had brought his five-year-old son to the play area, despite living in Wadala. “We get him here every weekend, as we also visit his grandmother,” said Kashbe. “It gives him an opportunity to play rather than staying at home.”
Younger children who lived in the area were accompanied by their parents. New to the city from her UP village, Yasmin Sheikh had come there on the insistence of her nine-year-old daughter. “Her school friends first got her to this place, as I don’t know my way around this big city,” she said. “She then dragged me here. While I can’t bring her everyday as her school gets over late and I have to cook, she got off school early today, so here we are.”
Mahesh Waghdhare, co-founder of StudioPOD which designed the space along with Dutch studio MVRDV, said the idea behind transforming the flyover was to cater to different demographics so that different activities could take place in the space. “There’s a library too for neighbouring residents,” he said.
The play area was done in a public-private partnership starting in 2020, with the BMC and the Nucleus Office Parks, who took it up as a CSR project. It was part of a larger project titled One Green Mile, transforming the entire space under the flyover with outdoor furniture, seating space, an outdoor gym, climbing equipment and wall art, along with improvements to the road and bus stops.