Perpetual motion machine

A city is always in motion. Old buildings are torn down, new ones are put up. Or the interiors are torn apart and rebuilt. We see cities growing, but they can also contract. Old capital cities like Nara and Bagan have clearly contracted, others have been lost and some like Hampi and Siem Riep were rediscovered. But no one really knows a city in its entirety: our lives are too short for it. I took the featured photo of Mumbai from a plane and thought it looked beautiful like the expanding remnants of a supernova, or a cancerous growth picked out in false colour.

On the ground I have seen this growth and change in the form of parts of the city hidden away behind metal sheets. The photos you see in the gallery above were taken in 2006, 2009, 2014, and 2015. When I walk out on the streets today, there are still these metal barriers behind which the city changes. There is no before and after, only here or there.

But if you fix your attention to one place, then you could see a before and after. I took the first photo one night in 2019 when the Metro line 3 tunnel was being dug. The other photo was taken three years later, after the tunnel was done and workers were putting together the superstructure of a metro station. Three years from then perhaps I can complete the set with photos of the station and tunnel from inside.

In 2013, in another part of the town, I saw these massive machines being used to dig deep trenches so that new towers can be built on firm foundations. People were paying for flats before the ground was broken. Six years later I took the other photo of a nearly century old building being torn down before it becomes old enough to get protection. The French have a phrase for this: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The more things change the more they remain the same.

Ramzan dinner

Nothing is more interesting than being a tourist in your own city with a guide who knows you and the area very well. Ramzan / ramadan provides me with such an opportunity every year. Last weekend we went to eat the food that is eaten on the nights of the month of ramzan. The devout will break their fast with a sherbet and fruits at sunset, when the azaan sounds from the mosque. Later in the night there is a large meal. Roads are lined with stalls making fresh food, and there is a pleasant buzz around it. People come by to take away food, and sometimes a family or a group of friends come and sit down at the tables by the roadside to eat.

We are no longer able to do large meals. So I chose the dinner carefully. This man has been making paya for decades. Various parts of the leg are stewed slowly for hours before being served. Every part is used: the hooves, the shin bone, the fleshy calves. The oven has twelve pots on it, and the ultimate treat is the barahandi paya, which is a combination from all twelve pots. I chose the nalli nihari, which has the calves and the marrow in the stew and is served with shavings of butter over it. “You didn’t take a photo of the khamir ki roti!” The Family exclaimed. My bad. The thin, crisp, and yeasty roti should have been in the photo. She took a simple paya, the hooves. With the roti, of course.

There was no need to worry about what to have after. The Family’s favourite is malpua with cream. The expert malpua crafter sits on a raised stool with pots of malpua mix ready on his right. There are two kadhais in front of him, one with boiling oil, another with hot syrup. On order he will craft the malpuas for you: a flat cake of batter fried to a golden crispness before being soaked in the syrup. We’d gone with friends. It was their first visit, and they enjoyed every bit of the food. My malpua eating days are over. Nowadays I take photos.

We walked slowly down the street, doing a tourist jitter. One stall for seekh kabab, one for phirni, one for chicken tikka. The waffle stall is new, and has a crowd around it. And is that street-Chinese? We stopped at the bread-and-eggs stall. This soft white pav is just right to soak up paya, and any other soup you want to pair with it. The man in white expertly slices a loaf or a half for you. I liked his cutting board. I wouldn’t mind a thick slab like that at home.

Zara hat ke, zara bach ke

The title is a line from a Bollywood song of 1956 which is a sort of unofficial anthem of Mumbai. In trochaic tetrameter, the title says something like “move a bit, pay attention.” There’s a video link to the song at the bottom of the post if you haven’t heard it, but I won’t attempt a full translation here. Instead, I’ll echo the song in images, and give you just a few photos of the odd ways in which you can experience a city that you live in it. I’m sure a tourist will see something else altogether.

The featured photo was from a curious experience I had. A photo shoot on the streets of Mumbai is not unusual; most often it is a movie or an advertisement shoot. There aren’t any wedding shoots here; I guess people travel to exotic locations for wedding shoots. I was curious about this bunch of youngsters who were just doing a photo shoot for nothing. Was the photographer trying to build a portfolio? Or the subject? Anyway, it gave me a nice opportunity to ambush the shoot and get a photo of one of the contradictions of the city.

The monochrome photo above is a spot I really like and go back to in different seasons to take photos. In the foreground is a 19th century building in the old local style, and the tower behind it is the stock exchange. I like that contrast as well as the nest of data cables overhead. I took next photo at a pretty iconic spot in Mumbai, but instead of the buildings, I concentrated on the road with the puddles from one of the last monsoon showers of 2023.

We stopped for a coffee after dinner at this place. We use it often, and we don’t notice it much any longer. But this evening I stood at the bar and looked at the windows. Glass and mirrors are wonderful for photos. That evening I saw the indoors and outdoors in one view. I liked that.

The photo on the left above was my first glimpse of the strange photo shoot that I wrote about earlier in the post. I liked the light, not just the one that the photographer’s assistant holds, but also the street lamp which looks like the moon. The second photo is a sunset on the Arabian sea. I pass this spot daily. But on that day, the light stopped me in my tracks. I was very happy that nowadays I always carry a rather decent camera in my pocket. And that reminds me that all these photos are taken with the same constant companion camera.

Let me leave you with a final image of Mumbai as a blade runner’s city, earth’s little satellite lost in its glare. You could imagine a Deckard walking those spottily lit streets, scanning crowds, retiring people. Looking out at the sprawl of mid-town Mumbai, with its old high-density chawls served by buses and the new high-density housing served by underground car parks, I sipped a scotch and imagines the sea taking its own back in twenty years.

Visual drama

Drama? What is that? When I looked out of the window of a aircraft flying low over the Alps the contrast of the darkness of space above and the bright snow below was clearly dramatic. I think most people agree with me about that.

Beijing’s famous National Center for the Performing Arts by the French architect Paul Andreu is built for drama. Even on a smoggy morning a decade ago it looked dramatic. There’s no question about it in my mind. But I can’t speak for others, of course.

Mumbai’s trans-harbour link was inaugurated on Saturday. On Sunday we took it to meet friends for lunch near Pune. It cuts travel time dramatically, by almost a third. But coming back to Mumbai we were treated to an unusual sight: a stiff wind had blown away most of the haze around the city, so we saw Mumbai glowing in the golden hour. I’m sure this kind of view will become iconic in the coming years. First Niece thinks it looks AI generated. That probably means I captured the drama.

At the end of this year’s monsoon I was feeling the lack of outings to the Sahyadris. So when we visited the Kaas plateau right at the end of the season, the sight of raindrops on flowers meant a lot to me. Here I tried to use the flower of a Smithia hirsuta to provide a background to the droplets of water. Is it dramatic? To my eyes it is. But what do you think?

On the banks of a high lake in the Himalayas, some one had the stamina to move large rocks around and balance them in the form of tall spires. The morning’s sunlight on the lake and the dark stone cairns made a striking composition. But is it dramatic? I can’t decide.

It was certainly a dramatic sight when I pulled into a parking lot in Seattle and saw a 1967 Chevelle parked in front of me. It’s not particularly rare, but still, that beautiful classic could cost almost a hundred thousand US dollars. I took several photos, but I think this one looks the best. Have I shown the drama of seeing a car like this in a random parking lot? I’m not sure. I need your help on this.

Sultana’s Saturday

When The Family bought tickets for a concert by Parveen Sultana I was a little sceptical. She is well past 70, would her voice still be what I remember? I need not have worried. Her voice is as alive as her attitude. Her daughter, seated on her left, accompanied her on the tanpura, but the second vocalist was her senior student to her right.

I thought I should take a photo, but I was in the middle of the auditorium with only a phone with me. But these days the digital zoom on the phone is rather good. Zooming by X5 still gave me a decent enough photo. As you can see from tenth of the frame which I have cropped out of it above, this is not print quality. But effectively this is a X15 zoom with a millimeters wide lens. The fact that faces are recognizable at all is a marvel of computational imaging.

Annual recharge

When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal

Richard Nixon

As monsoon begins to fade, sharad ritu, the season of festivals, swings around. This year has been one of extremes. First there was extreme cold, snow in the mountains trapping people at home until March, and repeated cold waves through the plains. Then came a heat with extreme humidity, a deadly condition in which the adjective “killing” is not a literary device. Finally we had a stuttering monsoon in which the whole year’s rain came down in a few days, causing floods and landslides. Sharad ritu in India is not always comfortable; it gave rise to the Anglo-Indian phrase “Indian summer.” But it will not kill. It is now time to kick back and recharge for next year.

I count myself lucky

Baba Ramdev

The season begins with Ganapati: the opener of doors, the one who removes obstacles. On Sunday, as we travelled from one end of the expressway to another, we saw his idols being taken to their home for the next ten days. The silver coloured one which rounded the circle at Regal at the same time as us was jaw-droppingly large. “Worth a few photos” The Family said as she took that terrific header photo. For street photos I set my phone to record one byte per pixel: large in memory, and costly in battery. But worth it when you “digitally zoom”, as I did for the photo above.

You can’t be too greedy

Donald Trump

On the expressway we’d passed an idol which had impressed us no end because we hadn’t seen the true giant yet. Even now the idol impressed me with the extreme weaponry that it held. The supernumerary arms on an idol symbolize power. If you are familiar with Ganapati/Ganesha idols from other parts of the country, I’m sure you will notice that these have six arms, at least one pair more than the norm elsewhere. “Why?” I asked a local. “Aisaich,” he replied, “That’s how it is.”

Work hard

Gautam Adani

At the beginning of our drive, in Pune, I’d noticed many stalls with small idols meant for households (I couldn’t spot any with three pairs of arms). I was happy to have set my phone camera on slow acquisition as I clicked a photo in passing. That gave me enough pixel to crop out the photo that you see above, with its gradation of light. Households doing their own puja is the older tradition, which was invariably followed until Tilak invented public worship as a political weapon against the British Empire in the year 1893 CE. The new tradition is widespread in Mumbai, then an English town. On the other hand, Pune, with its Peshwa history, seems to lean towards the older tradition. I wouldn’t have noticed this difference if I hadn’t taken the drive on Sunday.

I’m feeling relaxed already by the thought that Ganapati will be followed by several other festivals. The chief among them is the festival of Durga, Navaratri. The cycle will end with Diwali. A month later we’ll be into Christmas and the New Year. What a wonderful thought!

Saturday’s sunlight

Walking through Ballard Estate on a Saturday with my camera, I saw a balcony with these old cast iron railings. It has been a few monsoons since they were painted. The mild shadows of a large banyan tree interrupting the sunlight on the flaking paint, the elegant curves which bore that paint, and the line of such curves intersected by the sloppy diagonals of wires seemed like it might make a decent black and white photo.

Unreal city

An art installation featured a city made of plastic crates and plaster. This was the biggest draw in the exhibition; the aisles between the stacks of crates were packed with curious people peering at the small balconies and windows. Humans are openly curious about other lives when it becomes socially acceptable.

Was it patterned after a real city? I felt that it was. The long verandahs on each floor of a chawl, the dense living spaces with high rise towers looming over an aerogel of low-rise buildings, the dilapidated Art Deco buildings, all seemed to evoke Mumbai. The impression was solidified by a model of a slum, the towers of a temple and a mosque poking out of a ramshackle slope of shanties; the blue plastic resembled the ubiquitious blue tarpaulin that you see from the windows of an incoming flight.

Views of an installation at St+Art Mumbai 2023, Sassoon Docks

Mumbai again

Every now and then I see something so out of the ordinary that I feel like I’m a tourist in my own city. This view of hell in the making made me stop whip out my phone for a photo. A city which already has about 1900 cars per kilometer of road has added these large towers right in its midtown. As you can see from the photo, there are still many of the old eight storey houses left. But they are being sold to developers quickly. I’m so glad that there is a highway out of the town close to where I live.

Another uncommon sight: a stretch of road was being repaired! But why not? This patch of road is such a favourite of film makers that you’ve probably seen that door, that facade, in a hundred Bollywood movies set in Mumbai. That road roller will trundle away before the lights and cameras move in. I grabbed the opportunity.

There are pleasant things to photograph too. An artist with a conscience decorated the junction box right in front of Conde Nast’s Mumbai address. Is that a love letter to fashion? Or to glossy magazines in general?

Khari

Khari, the puff pastry that melts in your mouth is a staple of Parsi and Irani cafes. Of course it had to be from Iran. Sure enough, when you search for puff pastry from Iran you get lots of recipes and names of sweets like Zabaan and Naan Khamei. They are sweet, unlike this, whose very name means salty. Apart from the sugar, the recipes seem like they could be for this. A khari and a cutting chai is the typical Mumbai pick-me-up, but it may have started life elsewhere.