Mumbai In Fact & Fiction with Alisha

Decode Mumbai’s most iconic neighbourhood through the stories which lie behind, around, and within the buildings, streets and spaces so familiar today. We walk back through the area’s earliest history as a lonely island acquired by the East India Co., follow its journey from a struggling, fortified, trading outpost soon transformed by Opium and a daring process of reclamation into a grand, celebrated colonial centre - built in an audacious bid to declare the town then known as Bombay a global powerhouse and the ‘first city’ of India. We leave this imperial showcase devastated by the Bubonic Plague at the end of the 19th century to bask in the later optimism of a modernising, and soon Independent, city.

On the way, we meet and hear from writers and poets who share their experiences of the city now known as Mumbai, in their own voice, as only they can! From Eunice D'souza to Rudyard Kipling, Salman Rushdie to Arun Kolatkar, Kala Ghoda’s triangle to the Bombay crow, Bombay then to Mumbai now, walk with me and the many words written on, and in, this city by the sea.

Alisha Sadikot uses walking tours as a tool to instigate closer looking and creative, critical public engagement with Mumbai's urban histories, art and museum collections. She believes Mumbai is so much more interesting outside of cars and off the main roads - would you agree?