Off Lamington Road by Gieve Patel

Painter, poet and playwright, Gieve Patel (1940–2023) had a facility to capture the texture of life on Mumbai’s streets amid the apparent chaos of a crowd. Often, Patel represented people at the very margins of the city’s economy, holding space for each of them in a way that did not veil their predicaments. His work was informed by his practice as a physician, and the proximity it provided him to injury and death.

The street imagined in Off Lamington Road, built off of Patel’s observations of the area around his clinic, presents people in diverse circumstances, and buildings with distinct histories related to the city’s growth. While the painting records a fleeting moment, it is able to show the depth a glance can provide in the silhouettes of a mill, a chawl-style building for migrant workers, and the intimation of a skyline of a bustling metropolis. The individuals are identifiable as adherents of different religious groups, who seem to traverse and share space with ease.

The painting was made before the violence of 1992–93 reshaped Mumbai, and the knowledge of those events today perhaps urges the viewer to look for signs of discord, which are not quite clear. A group on the left is engaged in a celebration of sorts, with a drum and a flute—oddly, this sense of euphoria comes closest to the depiction of a threat. There is one figure, however—a woman lying naked in a pool of dirt in a corner, bleeding from her thigh—who draws our focus, reminding us that as much as Mumbai can provide, it can also take away.