Still Tour 2005 - Mumbai: October 2005

Colaba Glitter Part III

One more batch of images from Colaba. Perhaps one more to come. Lets see how I feel next time ...

... at the gateway

sad carnival # 2

proto-orientalist beggar series part infinity

taj glitter #�3

bunty aur babli

reflections

causeoutofway

gohil tailors

fancy goods

Colaba Glitter part II

Some more pictures from Colaba. People in the evening congregate around the Gateway to India to spend money or to earn money that others spend: families, nutvendors, watchwallahs, beggars, tourists, businessmen ...

watch the watches

sad carnival (again)

nutwork # 3

taj glitter # 2

nutwork # 2

little piggy

Colaba Glitter

Sorry, been awhile since my last posting. Moved house, country and all other such inconveniences...

Anyway, the series continues with no particular logic. Next is Colaba, a few kilometers down South from the very different working class areas of Girgaon. Colaba is the place most people who do not live in the city (especially foreigners) associate with Bombay. If the city would have something called a tourist district, this would be it. This is where the dreadlocked tourists shop for yoga clothes on their way to Goa; this is also where the glitterati of South Bombay come to show themselves in some of the posh restaurants and nightclubs that surround the Taj Hotel; and this is the place where you can watch people grabbing onto their Lonely Planets seeing how far they will dare to venture out from the main street. But unlike the rest of Bombay where people usually let you be, this is also the place where agressive vendors and scouts lured in by the strange attractor of tourism come to try to use their diverse and often-ingenious tactics to make you spend money. Which annoys the fuck out of you the third time onwards...

Despite all, a lot of good times was spent here. Busaba, Gokuls, the view at Starlit Cafe; anyways, look for youself before I start sounding like a tourist brochure.