"Come on," I hear him shoot over his shoulder, and we step down into the mangroves. He mentions other problems, like locals leaving offal into the waters to attract crabs, natural scavengers, that would rot and smell. He nods in approval at my wellies as he goes over the low promenade wall. Twenty years ago, when the Chinese ship Zheng Dong washed up on Carter Road and was left there while authorities dithered over what to do with it, the currents on the shore changed, easing the battering of nascent mangrove saplings by the tides. He grins. And there was also the problem of human remains, he says, brought in from the nearby crematorium.—By arrangments with thecitystory. Rehan puts his hands in one and washes his face with the water to make a point. The forest grew up quickly. Rehan is animated, intimate with his knowledge of the tides, the force of the monsoon, the way the power of each wave can be channelled. There’s a small chest with spare gumboots, some tools, a lost teddy bear, a huge buoy, what looks like an anchor… "What are these things?" I ask. Their traditional fishing pools, meant to trap crabs and fish, used to fill up instead with sewage. "Maybe. "It sounds bad now," he admits, "but I fell in love with this pretty little girl who lived in the building next door and I needed to spy on her without my mother finding out." It helps that they grew up and got married. But my mother says, keep walking, the caravan will show up, to follow. Rehan laughs as he shows me a tiny machan, high in a tree, where he sits on days he must wait the tide out. I find it hard to keep him in my line of sight. This included 1690 hectares at the end of Thane Creek, which is now a protected flamingo sanctuary home to 10 mangrove species and over 200 species of birds. When I nod, he grins.He rolls up dragging a home-made looking wheelbarrow behind him."Look at my whale," he says excitedly, and I cannot believe my eyes. There are varying reports about mangrove cover increasing over the last 20 years or being decimated by the builder-politician nexus, but the fact remains that mangroves, like forests, will always be under threat from the minotaur that is "development" in this space-starved city. He playacts moving the massive rocks with the help of the tide, groaning, "Yer granmudder’s aolas" and is unable to hide how pleased he is with the way it is all taking shape. "You built this entire thing on your own?" I ask.In 2005, the Bombay High Court, citing India’s Forest Conservation Act of 1980 and the Coastal Regulation Zone Notification of 1991, ruled to prevent destruction of the mangroves. And with the sewage no longer pooling, the water is clean enough to swim in.For the last few months, regulars on the promenade will have noticed two things.We walk out onto a wide, clean, empty, sandy beach. You spot him now and then, between the winding trunks of the mangroves, putting up signs imploring you to save the mangroves or speaking animatedly with passers-by. It is breathtaking. This construction uses the tides to bring in sand and keep the channels clear so the sewage can flow out.As we walk in, Rehan scoffs at my reticence – the aerial roots of the trees are daunting, I’m still expecting sewage, and in the distance, I see large, brightly coloured things scuttling. On either side of the pipe, mismatched planks have been hewn together to support a sand bank that rises a few feet on the right.  To the left, it is lower. A tree trunk, probably weighing tons, forms a part of the bank."Somewhere between ecologist, prophet, and inventor, perhaps part dryad part naiad, this Bandra boy changed an entire beach with his brain and his bare hands. But never because he’s miscalculated the timing of the waves."I imagined I’d be able to dive off, like this," he says, posing."The mangroves form a deep, visually impenetrable "C", protecting what is the real treasure, Rehan’s piece de resistance."We have been in the groves for nearly two hours, and his enthusiasm is intact. Clear pools of water sparkle. He shows me around.com. The scuttling things turn out to be crabs.Rehan is a proper Bandra boy, and when he came back from the UAE a few years ago, he realised the ocean off Carter Road he used to swim in was inaccessible because of the pooling sewage.He explains how the sand in the beach was being eroded because the eddy of each wave that went over rocks created ditches. "This is where I chill when the tide comes in, and this is where I keep my things because it is higher than the tide. Not only do they regulate temperatures and floodwaters, but mangroves are also usually home to a myriad species of flora and fauna and absorb eight times as much carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than any other ecosystem. Rehan says the mangroves here weren’t always as abundant. He says he only did it because he Wholesale Custom Three dimensional letter Signs wanted to swim. He explains the torque of an eddy that helped move that giant tree right into position. "Whether it’s Jesus, Ram, or Mohammed, or Newton, Einstein, Edison – I look up to ‘doers’. There used to be a subtle temperature drop accompanied by an unmistakable acridity in the air in one particular curve of the corniche for years.Carter Road has fared well though. Rehan takes his signs out of his wheelbarrow and puts them up. The heat and traffic close in. Only because he wanted more time in the ocean. He lights up a clove cigarette and I ask him if his family thinks he’s crazy. His passion for what he is doing is almost overwhelming – his voice arches and, like the ocean, he moves constantly, never still, his arms and face emphasising his words, he crouches, reaches out, walks briskly here and there. But again, it is clean, the forest sucks up the roar of the traffic, and the temperature drops a few degrees. So for the last five years, he has, single-handedly, moved and broken rocks to level the beach. "They’d put some weird talisman stuff up and the idea was to scare people away from the mangroves," he says. More sand has come in, to stay. "That they’d think there was some black magic going on.The area just beyond the wall is surprisingly dry and clean.He is also hilarious. His name is Rehan Merchant. And he’s quite a chap. He shows me the things the tide brings in: rocks, construction debris, and junk (that used to block the ebb, resulting in a stagnant pool of sewage)."The first thing he did invent though, as a teen, was a telescope that looked like a microscope with a singular purpose. So he decided to do something about it. And a man, weathered, eyes twinkling, gum-boots up to his knees has appeared in its stead.We walk back to the promenade. There is much more to be seen and talked about, but it is time to finish for today. Even coastal dwellers, like the Koli fishing community who are native to these shores, have not evolved to keep up with the city. "You from Bandra?" he double-checks. The tide is coming in, and I worry about getting stuck. "Then they’re your grandfadder’s brinjals, men," he retorts in an authentic Bandra patois. Rehan points to a large sewage pipe that has a thin stream of grey water running from it. It has disappeared.Still, every day is a struggle. Rehan said he personally interlinked every pool so now fresh water pours in and out."Growing up, I thought, I’d either be a prophet or an inventor," he says with a smile as he gestures at me to follow him deeper into the mangroves. A heron skips across followed by not fewer than seven chicks. It is a stone whale he has built with literally tons of massive rocks. "Well, the tide helped," he says with a shrug. "You can call it a Chinese conspiracy," Rehan says with a chuckle.The next 20 minutes go by in a blur.

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