Mumbai's 'miracle' well celebrates tricentenary

Faith and water, each indispensable. Together, infinitely potent. Every belief system co-opts water's metaphysical valency in rituals. In Zoroastrianism, it is furthered into the divine feminine, Ardvisura Anahita. Every fire temple houses a well; as did traditional Parsi dwellings, their niche aglow with oil-lamps after dusk. Imagine then the mystic pull of one that has anchored this tiny community for 300 years and witnessed Mumbai fulfil its manifest destinies. Pushed inland by reclamations, today it stands between Churchgate station and Flora Fountain, serenely aloof from the wave of pedestrians and traffic surging past.

- Bachi Karkaria

Bhikha Behram Well is named after the Mumbai merchant who sank it in 1725. He'd made a tidy sum dealing in imported British goods, some say even gunpowder. But he didn't just hire a gang to go blow a hole in the ground. Like Old Testament Joseph, like Martin Luther King 238 years later, he did so on the instructions of a divine dream. One, he didn't obey straight away. Not because he was too busy, too forgetful or simply because he too believed like his wife, that the interrupted sleep was merely the result of too much indulgence at dinner. He didn't do so because the missus had scoffed that the precisely specified spot was too impractical. One, it was too close to the sea and could only yield brackish water. Two, it was too far from their home, so even if the water did turn out to be potable, it would be an expensive schlep to get it there. The dream reappeared, more insistent. A worried Bhikha Behram sought permission from the British authorities. They laughed him out of court on the same logic, and when they heard it was on the prompting of some dream, they roared and threw him out. The dream occurred a third time, the voice now brooking no delay.

This put Bhikha Behram in a greater quandary because word of his hare-brained project had got around, and friends had begun to mock, much like Joseph's brothers, 'Behold the dreamer cometh'. He sank into depression taking his business with him. Mrs. Cynic finally told him to go ahead with the mission so that they could get on with their lives.

A relieved Seth Bhikha Behram unilaterally ordered his men to start digging. Almost as soon as pickaxe broke ground, it unleashed a subterranean spring of clear, sweet water. The level hasn't dropped despite the prodigious amounts drawn from it for three centuries.