P E O P L E   O F   B A N D R A
 

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It was the very first time I was in the streets of Bandra. Something very familiar struck me, but nothing I could articulate. A feeling of deja-vu, but not really prominent. Yet, there was something very homely and welcoming about that place.

 

The houses there are almost 100 years old. Amidst the concrete jungle of Mumbai, this place has houses whose walls speak of memories and histories that it was witnessed. The dilapidated structure, the old artefacts & Portuguese architecture add to the beauty of this place in all their poetic senses.

 

An old man, a resident of Chapel road area, said that his grandfather was a fisherman and the ocean used to come right outside his house around 60 years back. Now, the sea is kilometres away.

 

This speaks of so much of the change that would have happened in this part of Bandra and how it would have impacted the lives of these people. It was a change they never opted for, but a change that was forced upon by the society; a change that was inevitable.
They are still living in the houses they used to decades ago, it’s the space around them that has evolved. Some houses have changed with the passage of time, the walls got makeovers, the furniture got polished and the fans got modernised, but what stays are the memories. The people there, mainly a catholic christian population, are still rooted to their cultures and ancestral houses that they do not wish to evolve from the spaces that are deeply intimate to them.

 

The portraits are taken in personal spaces of their houses or somewhere outside their houses, places that are special to them, and where the walls of their homes speak of a thousand memories, something I wished to photograph.