PHOTOS: Mumbai Falls In Love All Over Again With Its Forgotten Fountains
They're majestic. They're neglected. And now they're slowly being fixed up. Conservationists are preserving them — and officials hope the fountains will supply free water for the city's impoverished.
In a narrow lane near Mumbai's docks, commuters on bicycles weave through the crowd as workers push wooden carts loaded with heavy burlap sacks into warehouses.
Thirty-eight-year-old laborer Mohammad Yaqoob unloads sacks full of marbles from a truck. When he gets tired and thirsty, he walks to an ornate stone structure in the middle of the bustling street. It's a drinking fountain, or pyau (sometimes spelled pyaav), as it's called in the local Hindi and Marathi languages.
"I have a sip of water, rest on the steps for a bit and then get back to work again," says Yaqoob. "This free water is great."
During the British colonial era, wealthy Indian philanthropists — in what was then called Bombay — built these fountains in busy market squares
