Notes from B.Town

I was recently in Mumbai for a short solo vacation after a close cousin’s wedding. It had been quite a while since I had really been unoccupied enough to just absorb the spirit of a place, draw of it and draw from it. This was ideal. The intention was to pretty much get lost in the city, see the city life and city lights. The plan was simple; to just walk around town, visit neighbourhoods and food places and observe and draw. Much inspiration for drawing with brush pens came from the Superheroes at Turmeric Design and the happy notebooks from Paperbox. 

Having been to the city a few times before and being decently skilled at the Marathi language (though I did not end up in many places where I needed to use it), I was able to easily break the touristy ice and hunt for the local flavour, get a feel of of the city. My Mumbai based uncle insisted that I can never get the real feel of Bombay until I spend a night on a footpath. After having spent almost all his adult life in the city, he claims to have never wanted to get this feel of the city for himself.

On the first evening of this trip, I walked to the very charming Abode, to prepare an itinerary for the coming two days. In the itinerary were things/places my friends in Bombay insisted I do, along with suggestions from Abedin Sham at the Abode. Right after, I spent an hour at the Gateway of India. 

My Bombay bucket list was solid and the tone was set;to unearth the old and to understand the intervened. Having recently done a fair bit of Delhi Dallying I was looking forward to explore the city as cultural and architectural narratives woven together. Now that I go through these notes again, I see a whole bunch of grammatical and etc errors. But, I also see spontaneity and honesty. 

I consciously decided to have no music playing in my ears mostly through the trip, but Avishai Cohen’s album Gently Disturbed seemed to be getting the vibe quite well. Articulating an underlying structure in the city that you can surely sense but cannot decipher lucidly, the music during the breaks was as engaging as the city itself. 

Here are notes from Day 1
Here are notes from Day 2