Many of the 20th century poets in Bombay were painters, and vice versa. With the Progressive Artists Group, Indian People's Theatre Association (IPTA), the film industry, Progressive Writers Association and so much more thriving in the city, it wasn’t uncommon for the different communities to meet, mingle, and exchange work. During this crawl, we pay homage to artists like Gieve Patel, Gulammohammad Sheikh, Bhanu Athaiya, Dilip Chitre, amongst others, who contributed to Bombay becoming an artistic hub.

This poetry crawl is conceptualised and led by Saranya Subramanian, founder of The Bombay Poetry Crawl: an archival research space dedicated to Bombay poets who were writing in and about the city, from 1947 - 1999, in Hindi, Marathi, English, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, and every other recorded language.

This edition of the Bombay Painters & Poets Crawl is organised as part of the outreach programme for Sarmaya's ongoing exhibition, High Seas, Open Roads: Journeys that bring us home. The event will end at Sarmaya with a visit to the exhibition.

About the Exhibition: For a majority of human history, travel was painful, expensive and dangerous — and only attempted when it was riskier to stay. The most heroic journeys even today are undertaken by those seeking not adventure, but asylum. A shared genetic memory of these migrations connects us all. And it stirs at the promise of the open road.

There’s a poignant resilience to the artefacts that travel with us. A handful of letters, photographs and sketches, a bottle of coins. They carry the precious cargo of our memories and our stories. From a dream in Delhi to a museum in Mumbai, the story of Sarmaya is shaped by such journeys. We invite you to retrace those steps through souvenirs, sights and immersive soundscapes that remind us of where we’ve been.