A few weeks ago I was asked by a writer at a national news daily to share a photograph to commemorate 200 years of Photography. The premise was rather simple - 

 

"Photography turns 200 in 2026, and so we are creating a photographic time capsule of Mumbai. If you can look through your existing body of work and choose one photograph you have already taken of Mumbai that you would put into a time capsule to be opened 200 years from now, what would it be… rather than your most beautiful or iconic Mumbai image, what would you think captures something essential about Mumbai in our time: how we live, work, travel, build, struggle, celebrate or change. If someone in 2226 had this one frame through which to understand the Mumbai we are living in now, what would you want that frame to show?

 

Also, if you could share why this photograph matters, what it says about Mumbai now, and what you imagine may have changed or disappeared 200 years from today. (A small description)"

 

Initially I chose one of my slightly famous images, which I like to describe as a dinosaur on a dinosaur in front of, well, a dinosaur. 

 

Not too complex, but very recognizable if you are from Mumbai or India or come to the city often or have read about the country/city's history. 

 

But I wasn't enthused enough, so I chose something else. Something closer to my recent aesthetic meanderings - a tribute to the mundane. 

 

The city usually announces the end of monsoon by assaulting its minions with a bout of flu. This time, I was also in the welcome party but somehow I tapped down about 200 words to go along with the photograph. About two days later I received the very ominous message that I absolutely dread, "Editor has condensed your input to the following".

 

I present to you, the editor's condensed version - 

 

The city we did not preserve - Photograph by Ritesh Uttamchandani

 

A pavement shelter, restaurant, Royal Enfield, repaired umbrella, peeling signs, water tumbler and old lamp post crowd this frame from Afterlife. “The Bombay of my birth is struggling against erasure in the Mumbai I inhabit today,” Uttamchandani says. These are not protected monuments, yet they reveal how the city actually worked: through repair, reuse, informal shelter, small commerce and gestures of public generosity. This image may, one day, expose a defining contradiction of our time, of a city that pursued “development” so aggressively that it failed to recognise much of what made it distinctive.

 

The phone literally fell from my hand. The only response I could muster was, "It has no soul." It preserved literally nothing of the original. 

 

Eager to back out of this unpaid exercise, but restrained by the reporter, who suggested I do my own edits and in return, she will fight tooth and nail for it to run unchanged. I asked for word count. 100, she said. I need it now please, she added. 

 

I tried and I sent her 99 words. 

 

The Bombay of my birth is struggling to avoid erasure in the Mumbai I live in, a city of aspiration, improvisation, survival and jugaad, increasingly resembling a raging dump even as politicians try to convince us otherwise. This photograph, from my book Afterlife, finds no grand Mumbai: just an umbrella being repaired, water for a thirsty passer-by, a weighing scale, a tilted freezer, a mobile store beside a repair shop, Indian and Chinese food, and an ancient lamp post. Two hundred years from now, all will be gone. But perhaps, this disobedient photograph will invoke what official histories erase: what it felt like to live here.

 

If you have read this far, let me now share the original version that I sent. 

 

FREE INDIA

 

The photograph I share here is from my new book on the city titled Afterlife. Photographed and produced entirely in Mumbai, a city that is both magnificent and exhausted, it is a chronicle of urban residue through the recycling of an eyesore - chamcha hoardings. 

 

The Bombay of my birth is struggling to avoid erasure in the Mumbai I live in. It has accumulated layers of aspiration, neglect, commerce, improvisation and survival. Today, the city often feels like a raging dump, even as enormous energy and money is spent to convince us otherwise.

 

There are no grand gestures in the photograph. No pandering to the Spirit of Mumbai jingoism, City of Dreams narrative or the Art Deco romantics. Just the everyday rhythm of a city with all its signs, noises and colours. 

 

A quiet pavement, a makeshift shelter, a man trying to get through the day, a restaurant, a Royal Enfield, peeling signs and the mess of lives stacked on top of each other. An umbrella being repaired on the pavement. A water tumbler kept out for a thirsty passer-by. A weighting scale next to the cashier, a tilted freezer, the typography, the logos, architecture and design their co-existence with Jugaad. A new mobile store and a repair shop twenty feet apart. A restaurant selling Indian and Chinese food, both, veg and non veg. An ancient lamp post standing over all of it, quietly outliving everyone.

 

Two hundred years from now, most of what is here will be gone. The people, the restaurant, the signs, the motorcycle and this particular patch of pavement will be transformed beyond recognition. But perhaps someone looking at this photograph will understand something that official histories often struggle to convey: what it actually felt like to live here.

 

While politicians spend their lives and fortunes fighting to control what survives and who a city remembers, the photograph is a little less obedient.