On a sweltering October afternoon, I found myself on the edge of Mumbai’s Shivaji Park staring at a water fountain. It looked rather ordinary to me—a stone structure that supported two basins. But as my companion, architect Rahul Chemburkar, explained to me, it was one of a handful of successfully restored colonial-era drinking fountains in the city. This remnant of Mumbai’s past had been in ruins, and was brought back to life just a few weeks earlier. Chemburkar has been restoring drinking structures since 2008, when the heritage conservation department…
