Urban India has a large population and is tight on space, so living and working spaces are often small. But that doesn't keep them from being interesting and almost magical in how much stuff is packed into a tiny space.
Mumbai once had many chawls. In the chawl system, the building is usually owned by a landlord and each individual home is a single room of about 10x12 feet. Whole families, sometimes multigenerational, live in each of these spaces. The individual rooms of a chawl don't have toilets and bathrooms within them but have communal facilities on each floor. Chawls were common all over Mumbai when it was still a city full of textile mills, but now only a few remain.
These sketches are all demos done in a workshop so they're often incomplete. (Or stopped at the point at which the main teaching bit is done.) But I am toying with taking that sketch on the right further. The boy peeking over the railing from the floor above was a later addition and I'd like to create a deeper connection between him and the scene below.
This next sketch was done the same afternoon as the chawl demos. I was tired and needed a "small and manageable" subject to sketch, and this peek down an alley between two buildings was perfect. I didn't realize it at the time, but I remembered later, that I have sketched this exact same view, a little over 10 years ago. It is interesting to me to see how my drawing has changed but how what captures my eye hasn't changed much at all.
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More posts in this series from India coming up soon. You can see earlier posts in the series here:
• The Study Hall of Dreams and Hopes
• Crawford Market
• Washing Linen, Fishing Marlin
Gateway to India is a 10-day workshop based in India that I run with my co-instructor, Zainab Tambawala. The next session is in late January 2025. Workshop details will be announced by March 2024. If you are interested in getting on an early sign-up list, write to me at suhita@gmail.com and let me know!
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