Bombay's Dream

Exhibition Photographs of Mumbai India - www.iconphotos.net

Mumbai is a temptress of many seductive moods. If there is one attribute that rises above all else is her preoccupation with herself. It is the only place in India that exudes the self-assurance of a great urban center even while it incorporates so much provinciality.

Signs of the city’s struggle to rise above herself are everywhere; in glitzy malls, on shiny billboards and on crowded streets. Yet it is still possible to capture a serene moment in the fluttering wings of a dove or glasslike stillness of the Arabian Sea.

It is a city on which constant demands are being made by the rest of India and by thousands of who migrate there daily in search of that one golden dream. Most end up battling urban drudgeries while only a handful of them capture movie or corporate stardom. It is a city that somehow makes space for whoever comes at whatever time with whichever aspiration.

It is a city which has taken several terror hits but not once has it wallowed in its own sorrows. What the world glibly calls resilience is merely a great city pushing away its grief to some remote corner of its soul.

Mumbai has always burst at its seams; at any rate for the past two and a half decades. Supporting a population of millions people speaking at least 10 languages, practicing six religions the city seems to be constantly juggling emotions to maintain its fundamental equilibrium.

In the past two months two events have brought to the city unprecedented global attention—the November 26, 2008 terror attacks and the huge critical and commercial success of the movie ‘Slumdog Millionaire.’ While both capture some aspects of life in Mumbai, by no means do they represent everything that goes into making it. Like all great metropolises, it has so many layers of life.

These pictures attempt to capture the Mumbai of hope and optimism. They unobtrusively chronicle a city that is forging ahead to claim its rightful place in the world. Shot all over Mumbai over a period of about a year the photographs are about Mumbai as it wants to be.

You can say something about India and be right. And then you can say something exactly the opposite and still be right. Mumbai is no exception.