Chirodeep Chaudhuri’s pictures of private phone booths capture Mumbai’s business spirit
Entrepreneurship is an idea that has always been dear to the city of Mumbai. Here, everyone has a job and a “side business”, and this may explain the frantic pace of the city. No one is going home from a job; they are simply rushing from one job to another. That side business can be giving private tuitions, filing accounts for an organisation that cannot afford a full-time accountant or making cakes for a nearby bakery.
This is also a city so starved of space that, in its Central Business District, the areas beneath the staircases of older buildings often house a workshop that repairs pens or watches, or a retail outfit that sells mobile phones.
The coin-operated public phones that dot the city emerge as the perfect example of local enterprise. They provide a small, but steady, income since it takes one rupee (two US cents) to make a call. They don’t take up much space, their bright colour attracts attention and there is always the possibility you might want to buy some eggs or juice while waiting for an erratic connection.
Chirodeep Chaudhuri, who took the photographs for this article, says he has not seen as many public telephones in any other city. “Perhaps no other Indian city has as great a need for so many simultaneously operating media,” he says.
In recording Mumbai’s spirit of enterprise, Chaudhuri has also succeeded in finding traces of incidental beauty in the cacophony of the city’s landscape. Jerry Pinto |
