So says a recent web map of what I knew as the Aldeia Mar picnic spot in the 60's. The villageon the banks of the Versova creek in Bombay had a little church whose graveyard stones boreinscriptions in Portuguese. Aldeia Mar is 'village by the sea' The creek is fed by the Arabian Sea in the Malad area. Five miles up, it splits into numerouslittle branches that radiate into the Borivali and Bhayandar countryside. They make for convenientsewers that benefit the good Maratha folk. It is wide enough to call for a ferry service of little rowboats. And so a creek it is. In Goa it would qualify for a for a dignified appellation, river, because anupper crust on it's banks would not want to be associated with a smelly run up "Penha da Franca" on the lower bay of an estuary is where the ocean bestows us with a theAldona/Mapuca "River." It blesses us with a bountiful supplyof salt water seafood. Mapucadoes make a fresh contribution by way of the sewer that runs along the market place.
