Among the original residents of Vashigaon, a village on the eastern periphery of Mumbai, an old saying is commonly cited: Vashi mhanje faashi. Translated, it means Vashi is a noose. The village was surrounded by water on all sides. There was no electricity, no schools, not much employment apart from fishing. There would be trouble finding brides for the men of Vashigaon. That’s how the saying came to be, explains 70-year-old Rambhau Patil, whose father Shantaram Patil is a former sarpanch of Vashigaon. Then, a bridge was built across the Thane creek in 1970, and suddenly the village was close to Mumbai. Patil, who has authored several books on the history of Vashigaon and on that of a Shiva temple in the village, recalls that work began on the bridge, now a part of the Sion-Panvel Highway, in 1963. Old timers recall how they would have to take a boat to cross the Thane creek to reach Mankhurd, from where they would connect to the Mumbai suburban train network. The small community of fishermen would sell fish in the Mumbai markets and cultivate rice on patches of the island. Vashigaon locals were very involved in the making of the bridge. It gave men and women from the village the first job opportunity not connected with fishing, Patil says. The bridge was completed in 1970, paving the way for the development of Navi Mumbai. Villagers say they were initially skeptical about the promise of development. City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra Limited (CIDCO) was then formed, which bought land around 95 villages to develop the township. Villagers recall how many of them had protested in 1972 against CIDCO for better compensation and employment for youngsters. The demography of our village changed after that. With secure jobs and better facilities, our village became part of the city, says Rajaram Joshi, a fisherman born here. The village with around 600 families till six decades ago now has over 3,000 homes, mostly of migrants. In the area, 75 per cent was water and only 25 per cent was land. The order has reversed now, said another resident, Anand Bhagat, who was born in the same year as the protest against CIDCO. The residents do, however, lament the depletion of fish and the high level of pollution that development has brought with it. My nephew broke his shoulder bone after a coconut was flung from the local train into the creek when he was fishing below the bridge. Now, he wears a helmet while fishing, Bhagat laughs. The saying about Vashi too has been tweaked around. As Patil says, people now believe, Vashi mhanje Kashi.