#maximum city

[leftmylouboutinsintherain]

Best Moments of the Chanakya School of Craft x Dior Pre-Fall 2023 Collection, Part 2

[urbangeographies]

India’s ‘Maximum City’ Engulfed by Coronavirus

Overflowing hospitals. Exhausted cops. Desperate slums. Here are images from Mumbai as the coronavirus upends the metropolis.

The Maximum City teems with life and density, making social distancing vitually impossible, especially in the informal communities like Dharavi, Mumbai’s biggest slum.

[sinesalvatorem]

Bombay is a fast-paced, even hectic city, but it is not, in the end, a /competitive/ city.

It is a crowded city, used to living with crowds.

A recent magazine ad for an ambassador car, the sturdy workhorse of the Indian roads, illustrates what I mean. The ad copy doesn't devote the usual lascivious attention to leather seat covers, digital dashboards, electronic fuel injection, or the trim lines of the car's design. The Ambassador is actively ugly but lovable the way elephants are, with a jaunty visor and a wide grin.

Instead, there is a snatch of dialogue from within the car. Three people can be seen squashed together in the front bench seat. A man crosses in front of the ungainly pachyderm, holding a briefcase over his head to ward off the downpour.

"Arre... isn't that Joshi?"

"Yes. Let's take him too."

"But we are so many."

"Have a heart, we can always adjust."

Car ads in most countries focus on the luxurious cocoon that awaits you, the driver, once you step inside. The Ambassador ad isn't really touting the virtues of space. It's saying that the kind of people likely to drive an Ambassador will always /make/ more room.

- Maximum City, Bombay Lost And Found

[principleofplenitude]

Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.

Suketu Mehta, from Maximum City (2004)

[siddharth-setia-photography]

Dream Big Asif, 10 year old gifted boy from the slums of Dharavi, Mumbai aspires to become a big music artist one day. He does not own any drum equipment for himself. He usually picks up disposed/unused litter or plastic in the slums and practices. He is a part of a music group "Dharavi Rocks" An extremely enjoyable junk band. All its 12 to 15 members are underprivileged children, mainly ragpickers who have no access to most of life’s comforts yet they dream big to outshine all other children of the slum. By Siddharth Setia

[leftmylouboutinsintherain]

Best Moments of the Chanakya School of Craft x Dior Pre-Fall 2023 Collection, Part 5

[leftmylouboutinsintherain]

Best Moments of the Chanakya School of Craft x Dior Pre-Fall 2023 Collection, Part 4

[leftmylouboutinsintherain]

Best Moments of the Chanakya School of Craft x Dior Pre-Fall 2023 Collection, Part 3