Vashi

Children of Mumbai Series: Dreams of a flower

This was on the wall where flower sellers set up footpath stalls during Deepavali in Vashi.

The dreams of a little flower add pink to a wall she is not allowed to cross in Vashi. She came here with her family to sell flowers for Deepavali and must be back home now. Meanwhile, this will fade slowly in the winter sun or will be painted over in the next round when the painters who spread the Swatch Bharat Sarveksan poll paint the town.

Vashi

Mitha Bol (A linguistic map of Mumbai)

Tamil

It's that time of the year when tamil newspapers are scattered on the streets of Mumbai (and the rest of India) with a bang, accompanied by wheezing and curse of animals and birds.

Vashi

When I posted this photograph on twitter, I used the caption "What is the spell for Choking to Death?"

Amulya Shruthi, the writer and poet from Bangalore replied that it called "Abra Cadaver".

You can read her amazing blog called Sewn Together, here.

Here is something she wrote about Bombay:

"I miss Bombay. At some point in my life, I’d dreamed of living in a city like Bombay. There’s a static of something disorienting and worn-down-to-primal, like the cobblestones of Causeway, in the light of Bombay. It tints the dust-motes off-camera, and the sweat on the faces of the men and women awe-struck, a little mouth-agape that they are in a Bombay sunset watching a whole piece of something larger, something with more spectacle than our selves being made. I no longer have the energy for Bombay; I say this with little-to-no self-pity. Cities sometimes change us and teach us who we are in different places, what of us still sticks and holds true. Cities lure us with who we could be. And many times we have tell these cities, oh well, maybe some other time."

You can read that blog post here.