The quiet Mithi River turned hostile on July 26, 2005, flooding the city in the record 944 millimetres rainfall that day. Pinched and bent in places, narrowed by encroachments, treated like a sewage stream, the Mithi became the focus of Mumbai’s flood prevention. But, instead of ecological restoration, it has been turned into a “project” with nearly Rs 3,000 crore earmarked or spent into walling it, raising its riverbed, desilting, and setting up sewage treatment plants. Nearly 20 years after the deluge, the Mithi is far from the clean flowing watercourse it should have been and, unfortunately, is seen in isolation from Mumbai’s ecology.