What Mumbai Architecture Means to Me
The first attached photo in this post (courtesy my high school classmate Satish Karandikar) is of the St Theresa Church or generally referred to as the Portuguese Church in Girgaum Mumbai. It’s on the corner of the same street where I lived in my childhood. The other two photos are of the Churches in Seville, Spain from my recent trip.
Normally, I like to compare the photos to draw similarities (and contrasts) between them. This time, however, my primary focus is on the first photo, or rather its location. That is because the post is meant to pay a long overdue homage to my birthplace Mumbai. The city offered me a chance to be in the proximity of different architectural styles in my childhood. The Portuguese Church is just one of them and the closest in that sense. The different architectural styles that I was exposed to were religious in purpose like Turkic and Persian-style Mosques, baroque-style churches like this one, Synagogue, Zoroastrian, Jain, and of course, the Hindu temples. But it was also full of secular purpose-building architecture that included gothic, neoclassical, art Nuovo and indo-Saracenic styles.
Now that I get a chance to travel across the world, I find familiarity in otherwise unfamiliar places, thanks to my early exposure in Mumbai. Walking in Rio De Janeiro reminds me of the Maharshi Karve road or the Queen’s necklace in Mumbai. According to the Wikipedia article on Mumbai architecture, Mumbai has the second-highest number of art deco buildings after Miami. The facade of the CST railway station resembles Doge’s Palace in Venice and that’s not a coincidence.
Of course, architecture does not happen in a vacuum. It’s because Mumbai has had an influx of many different people from different parts of India and the world, bringing these unique styles of architecture. In this respect, Mumbai resembles New York to me with its always alive and crowded streets with ample diversity. It’s no wonder that I feel very much at home in New York.
Each different architectural style and each different building in Mumbai has a different story to tell. I regret that I didn’t find out more about it while I was growing up. But then again, it’s only after gaining enough maturity by living in a different place and traveling across the world, that I feel both appreciation for the beauty and richness of the city architecture and the regret for not learning about it earlier. Each visit to the place now brings me new reckoning and awareness that is difficult to articulate. It is a gift that the city continues to give and I am grateful for it.
