100 years

On the 4th December of 1924 the realignment of Mumbai’s harbour and eastern sea face was completed with the unveiling of the Gateway of India. It was meant as a welcome to George V who came to be crowned in Delhi as the Emperor of India in 1911, but the selection of George Wittet’s Indo-Saracenic style design was delayed, resulting in it being erected late. It was put to a proper ceremonial use in 1948, when the last British troops left India through this gate.

Through the 20th century it was a place where tourists thronged during the day, but at night after most people left it was a place where you could sit on the parapet of the sea wall and listen to the gentle lapping of the waves on the stone. You could buy a paper cone of peanuts, “time pass” as it was called in Mumbai, and sit there and watch submarines thread their courses, dark and silent, through a harbour full of party boats.

It all changed in November of 2008, when terrorists with military training attacked Mumbai. One of the major skirmishes took place at the Taj Mahal hotel, next to the Gateway. The monument and the area around it was cordoned off. That’s how it remains today. People can still enter the open court in front of the Gateway during the day through a security barrier, boats still take on passengers for cruises across the harbour, but all the activity stops at night. In a reenactment of late-medieval England’s enclosure of the commons, the space is now often used for concerts and performances for the well-heeled. I wonder how this monument will change in future as the seas rise.