Mumbai Diary: Monday Dossier

Pic/Kirti Surve Parade

Happy birthday, Babasaheb!

On Dr BR Ambedkar's birth anniversary yesterday, a follower carries a bust of the social reformer to Chaityabhumi in Dadar.

Heights of the Maximum City

A photograph of the cityscape by Sanjog Mhatre

Back in 2013, a teenager obsessed with skyscrapers found it perfectly okay to rely on Wikimedia to look up the height, floors, name of the developer or location of a building that caught his attention in Mumbai. "But in the years to follow, everyone got easy access to the Internet; and suddenly anyone could become a Wikimedia author," the 26-year-old Sanjog Mhatre chuckles over a phone call with this diarist. The photographer and founder of Towering Goals, whose platform has been capturing the city from the top of skyscrapers, needed a reliable source that documented these towers. "So, I decided to make one myself!" he said. His recent endeavour is a website (toweringgoals.com), that with information derived directly from sources like the building developers and architects, aims to document the number of floors of the building, verified locations, the height, purpose of the floors, and date of construction, among other details.

Sanjog Mhatre

"This website currently features buildings in Lower Parel, and soon it will include other areas of Mumbai," he shared. Another issue he faced are the incorrect addresses on Google. "A building would be located in Lower Parel, for instance, but on Google, it will indicate that it's in Byculla. The other problem with Mumbai locations is that there is no clear guide to where one area begins and the other ends. I am also working on a book that makes clear demarcations. I have finished the city leg of research and design for the book, and I am now moving this idea to the suburbs," he revealed to this diarist.

Remember India's identity

A printed copy of the Preamble; (right) Shreyas Pande

While everyone found their own way to celebrate Dr Ambedkar Jayanti on Sunday, April 14, Goregaon resident and writer Shreyas Pande joined a friend at Dadar's Chaityabhoomi to welcome it with a difference. The duo distributed free copies of the Preamble of the Constitution of India to visitors. "I have been following Bengaluru-resident Vinay Kumar's campaign #ReclaimConstituion on Twitter, and was quite inspired by it," shared Pande. When he learned of Kumar giving away kits to print the Preamble, Pande came upon the idea to distribute the printed copies among people. "As it was Ambedkar Jayanti, it felt appropriate to highlight the most important document he wrote. Moreover, the values enshrined in the Preamble are also losing ground, and it is good for people to have a reminder of the same," he told this diarist.

When fashion met AI in Bandra

The AR store

Streetwear, gaming, Artificial Intelligence (AI) - three different fields of Gen-Z interests - were presented as one unique exhibition at Bandra's Capsul (streetwear store) over the weekend. The store's collaboration with Chennai-born label Biskit for the pre-launch of their first collection of 2024, invited a start-up Imersive, to make shopping an immersive experience in Augmented Reality (AR).

A customer tries out the experience

Last Saturday, this diarist dropped by the Bandra store, only to be transported to another virtual store at least four times as big, with its futuristic showrooms. The VR headset that we had put on allowed us to peek into the AR store, where mannequins in room number one sported the latest collection. This diarist could walk up to them, or past them, click on their clothes for further inspection, and even select size and shop on the spot. We could also access the other rooms and hang out in galleries with sculptures and installations.

"Fashion is a means to tell your own story. With AI, we aim to take this storytelling a level up," shared Imersive founder and CEO Roshan Raju, who was overseeing the two-day exhibition in the city before it moved on to Ahmedabad and Bengaluru. "The exhibition is all WebXR, meaning that you can enjoy the same shopping experience from any device across the globe. And it is not just for fun; you are actually shopping, as you would online or in physical stores," he reminded.

A win for the dabbawalas

Dabbawalas meet the officials

This section had reported a breakthrough in Mumbai's dabbawala's demands for cycle parking spaces outside railway stations. Priyanka Kumble, lead project and operations, Waatavaran (the organisation that arranged a meeting with Additional Commissioner of Mumbai Municipal Corporation Dr Sudhakar Shinde), shared some good news with us, "The dabbawalas have secured spaces outside Churchgate and Grant Road stations for their cycles. Talks are underway with other ward officers for similar cycle parking lots outside other railway stations as well."