It was great to be part of the plan hatched by Akshay Mahajan & Kapil Das of the BlindBoys photography collective to expose the streets of Mumbai to expressive perspectives over the weekend. BlowUp Bombay was one part dynamic duo, one part global photographic talent and three parts street cred. It brought together image hunters who’s work was publicly showcased on the back of a number of earlier global BlowUp plots launched from Bangalore to Paris. (Illustration by Ronald Searle)
Image and display by Puneet Rakheja .
Twenty odd photographers were selected for the Mumbai event with locals invited to come along on the day and add their own work. The format was the humble A3 digital copy, the space sprawled across a few derelict blocks of Bandra and the audience ranged from residents to street sellers, photography fans to roadside romeos. Local children joined in to help put up the images and amusingly took on self appointed roles in protecting the displays.
Delhi BlowUp, 2009 (Photo by Kapil Das)
“As any artist will attest, street art is best made when unpredictable, subversive and not entirely legal… The Blowup events, where an ad-hoc public photo gallery is created using building walls and shop fronts as hanging space, have slowly accrued a devoted following.” – Mumbai Boss
Amongst the core group of exhibitors were prominent names like Bharat Sikka who lives between Europe and India and has shot for Vogue, Marie Claire, Wallpaper and the New Yorker. Adrian Fisk’s work has appeared in National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Paris Match and the Economist and I’m a particular fan of his documentation of the Indian Hair Trade (above: top). Central insurgent Kapil Das was joined by his partner in crime Akshay Mahanjan who’s images (above: bottom) have featured in Wired, Le Monde and the Wall Street Journal.
And then there was little old me who’s shots have appeared in the Guardian, CNN + Design Observer and who managed to be part of the whole conspiracy from way down here in New Zealand. Included in my submission was the series Jewelled for Life which was mainly taken amongst the desert tribes of Kutch where it’s said that tattoos are a permanent kind of jewellery that one takes to one’s death. Here’s a selection:
Lower image by Puneet Rakheja. Check out more of his coverage of the event.
“Life is on display on the street — people walk, sit, stand, sleep, drive, drink, eat, piss, talk, mingle, fight, and love. The street is where groups collide and where people live and die and where all of society mixes with trash, smog, sewage, and the pulsating sounds of traffic. We put together a bunch of our pictures there to bring them to you – where you’re standing, on the street.” – Blindboys
Related posts:
Writing on Walls
Street Art Gets Behind the Wheel
One can find ample instances of mobile phones enhancing the lives of those on low and unpredictable incomes at the base of the pyramid across the world. Today I came across a small yet active example of the advantage of mobile connectivity in the context of my current research endeavors at Dharavi in Mumbai.
Jan Mohammed runs a knife-selling and knife-sharpening enterprise, which he operates from his bicycle, to service the Dharavi-Mahim-Sion area. He conducts business by going door to door in these neighbourhoods and often parks up in one of the busy marketplaces during evenings. Since buying a second-hand mobile phone he has been able to attract the business of local restaurants and caterers who provide bulk sharpening work and have become regular clients via the accessibility his phone assures.
The aspect he likes best about his phone is the prepaid payment method. Having a wife and five children back at his village in Uttar Pradesh means that he makes frequent calls home – but when he is low on money and hasn’t topped up his phonecard he can still receive calls ensuring business. In fact he had just last week paid to replace his knife-sharpening grinder so had no money left for phone credit, yet was still able to receive a lucrative call from a wedding caterer to sharpen 75 knives.
Knife-wallas elsewhere in Dharavi who conduct business without mobile phones.
Related articles:
Pavement Purveyors (Flickr)
Tuned-In
Last week in Mumbai someone kindly explained to me the custom of putting wall tiles of gods from different religions along street facades. They’re positioned at pissing height – and act as a perfect deterrent in a reverent nation.
Related Posts:
Illuminating Urban Imperfections
Same, Same But Different
What do laundry and lunch delivery have to do with my favoured intersection of communication, culture and creativity? Well, in the case of Mumbai’s Dabbawallas and Dhobi Ghats – quite a lot. Via their respective coding systems, both enterprises are able to track items within their service chain to ensure accurate delivery.
The Dabbawalla service entails collection of freshly prepared meals from the residences of suburban office workers from vast reaches of the city, delivery to their workplaces and the return of empty lunch boxes (dabba or tiffin) to its original home – all for a reasonable monthly fee. Delivering over 200,000 lunch boxes each day to workers who have diverse eating habits (often governed by religion) requires an accurate system – especially as each lunch box commonly passes through the hands of at least six men, in quick exchange, on its path from home to office and back again. Most tiffins are collected by bicycle, sorted into destination groups, then carried together on trains and cycled to the offices of their respective customers. In between they are commonly carried on hand pushed carts and large head-balanced trays – all while jostling with chaotic Mumbai rail and road traffic.
With low literacy being an issue for some of the 5000 dabbawallas, they have devised a coding system using colour, symbols, numbers and a few letters which is painted on the lids of the tiffins to indicate the train lines, hub points and destinations at both ends of the delivery cycle. Each part of the marking can be understood by the relevant dabbawalla as the lunch box exchanges hands through the service chain. In the case that a lunch box gets on the wrong path, the code allows it to be set back on the right track – yielding only one mistake per 6 million deliveries according to economic analysis.
The Dabbawalla’s have been operating for over a century and the business continues to grow at a rate of 5-10% per year. When I asked about the effects of the economic downturn I was told with a smile that “the stomach knows no recession.” Their innovative localised system has been studied by business schools worldwide and covered by international media including the New York Times. As a brand strategist I also note an additional factor that contributes to their iconic status in the city: the dabbawalla’s signature Gandhi cap. This further serves as a recognition device between workers at busy exchange points and failure to wear one attracts a fine from their registered co-operative association.
The Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is the world’s largest outdoor laundry which processes three quarters of a million items daily from households, hospitals, hotels and schools.
With articles to be washed, dried, starched and pressed coming from distant neighbour-
hoods to this central location – they have also developed a coding system to track and assure accurate return. Many customers dispatch their laundry to local hubs which send in bulk orders to Mahalaxmi. Each laundry hub attaches their articles with a scrap of cloth bearing a code penned in indelible ink – indicating the short-form name of their hub and their total number of articles over the recorded individual item number.
Workers in both systems are proud of the value that their services provide to the megacity. Together they exemplify the virtues of bottom-up innovation and entrepreneurship at play in this densely populated urban centre. Most dhobis and dabbawallas are migrants to the city – but in the words of 65 year old dhobi walla, Jan Mohammed [pictured above]: “There’s no city like Mumbai.”
Related links:
You can see and read more on my Flickr sets of Dabbawallas and the Dhobi Ghats
and I have upcoming pieces on both services being broadcast on Radio New Zealand.
Last week I went in search of the handful of Bollywood poster wholesalers at the somewhat obscure Tilak market near Grant Rd Station in Mumbai. These dealers stock posters of the latest films for advertising use by movie distributors, large and small cinemas and a growing number of small DVD projection halls in villages and slums across the state. They also store a selection of older posters printed from hand-painted originals – though this is very much a secondary trade to their bustling wholesale enterprise.
Abid Hussain Vora is 78 years old and originally came to Mumbai from Bhopal in the hope of becoming a movie actor. Instead he got into film production and later started his movie poster business. Like mine, his all time favourite Bollywood film is Mughal-e-Azam (1960).
Rajesh Vora is the most recent in three generations of poster sellers encompassing 65 years of trade. His grandfather, the late Amrat Lal Vora, used to extract the silver from black & white film strips and later set up their poster business. His father, Chandra Kant Vora, notes that the film industry gives so much to this city and that his enterprise is a “soni ka line” (golden job). His favourite film is Naya Daur (1957).
Mansoor Ali Hussain, now in his 60s, was obsessed with film photos as a child but could not then afford to attend movies. Instead he chose this line which now also employs his son. His favourite film is Sholay (1975).
Today I headed to Chor Bazaar (Thieves Market) to seek out dealers of older, collectable posters. Abu Khan is the youngest in a line of antique traders who have done business here since the late 1800s. They buy posters and other Bollywood ephemera from auction and collectors. His favourite film is Aradhana (1969).
Lastly I enjoyed a fabulous visit to Shahid Mansoori’s shop that I have been frequenting on trips to Mumbai since childhood. At 55 he is the third generation of his family to work at Chor Bazaar. As a child he collected Bollywood images that came with chocolates and ice-creams and later this evolved into frequenting auctions, purchasing from collectors and scooping up the remains from rural cinema closures. Eventually he heeded the advice of friends to start a business and he now has 40 people sourcing items for him across the nation. His son, Wahid, is currently collating material for an upcoming exhibition in France. Mr. Mansoori’s favourite film is Nishant (1975).
Related articles:
Viva Vernacular
A Closet Full of Bollywood (Hindustan Times)
And if Bollywood kitsch is your thing you’ll probably also enjoy
my Backview Bollywood set on Flickr.
