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The book is a revelation, opening up the streets and alleys and the iconic "park" of the area to a new light

Shivaji Park
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Shivaji Park, the place as we know it today, was the result of the city’s efforts to clean itself up after the plague killed thousands

Arundhuti Dasgupta
In these strange times, it is perhaps a little surreal to be reading about a place that emerged out of a plague-ravaged city in 1896-97. Truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction and it turns out Shivaji Park, a place that is indelibly associated with the spirit of Bombay and Mumbai, owes its origins to the bubonic plague of the late 
19th century. 

Shanta Gokhale, resident-raconteur, lovingly chronicles the place in a book that is a rarity in Indian publishing, a biography of a location. She knows the place like the back of her palm and in a slow and