Dive into the spirit of Mumbai's literary cults with this photo essay

A gentleman reads at Chor Bazaar; (right) A lady browses at the Marathi Granth Sangrahalaya in Dadar, the oldest Marathi language library of India

I think my most favourite photograph of the series is of an old gentleman reading a book at Chor Bazaar," Rachna Chopra, winner of the Tata Literature Live! 2022 Photography Fellowship, tells us. Chor Bazaar, also known as "Shor" Bazaar, which she got to explore around the time she took the photo, is a place where "books, written letters, old postcards and filled journals and diaries, vintage typewriters and readers were not hard to find. It just speaks of how imbibed and intrinsic literature and the power of books and the written word has been and continues to be, in our beloved city, Mumbai, in all its glory and bewilderment."

This photograph forms a part of a photo essay titled "Literature Lovers of Mumbai" that Chopra, as the recipient of the fellowship, pursued under the guidance of theatre practitioner, photographer, and publisher Naveen Kishore, who was also part of the jury that selected Chopra. Four finalists out of over 150 initial participants were invited to capture the essence of the 2022 edition of the festival through their lenses. Chopra recalls attending all three days of the festival held at the NCPA and the Title Waves bookstore in Bandra and speaking to people about what literature meant to them, how it helped them escape to a different world, and how the festival helped them widen their minds and meet their favourite authors. "I tried to bring the conversations I had with people into the essay," she says. Kishore, she recalls, was impressed with the fact that her photos went beyond literal captures from the festival to reflect on what it meant to the city and its residents. "I took pictures at Marine Drive too since people were sitting and reading there as well," she points out.

Rachna Chopra and Quasar Thakore-Padamsee

"Rachna's first round of submissions seemed to capture the role of the book around the festival in a surprising, poetic, and beautiful way," says Quasar Thakore-Padamsee, co-director of Tata Literature Live! "Her work seemed to look beyond the ‘goings on' at the fest, and she became the ‘eye' of the attendee, seeing authors and books from afar, in interesting compositions. In a weird way, just as the spirit of Tata Literature Live! is to bring the written word to life through interesting and engaging conversations and discussions on stage, her photographs captured the spirit of the literature lover, being surprised and excited by finding readers in abandoned stairwells, or an arrangement of books, or the joy in a fellow audience member's face."

For the final photo essay, Chopra spent around three months going around the city visiting some of its oldest libraries like the library of The Asiatic Society of Mumbai, the JN Petit Library, the David Sassoon Library, The People's Free Reading Room and Library in Marine Lines and the Marathi Granth Sangrahalaya and exploring the culture around books from paper markets in Bandra and Bora Bazar to second-hand booksellers in Matunga. "Literature is not just for the elite. It is all inclusive. And so, I wanted to explore what the locals of Mumbai were doing. None of the photos were staged. That required a lot of looking around, a lot of just being at the right places," she tells us.

The impulse behind the Tata Literature Live! Photography Fellowship, Padamsee says, was to combine two passions - the love for the written word and the love for the visual frame. "However, we weren't looking at simply capturing writers and books. For us, the fascination was the literature lover, the ‘fan' of literature - who steals time away to attend a session by their favourite author, or furiously tries to finish a novel before they get to their train station, etc." Chopra's photographs, he admits, "evoke the motto that ‘Anyone can read... anywhere', "a perfect encapsulation" of what the festival strives to encourage.