City of Contrasts (Part 1)

Thursday, 6/16

We checked out Anu’s office (JWT India) today. It was interesting to see the stark contrast between the modern and new buildings in her complex and the street vendors on the older Mumbai streets directly across the street. Quiet contrasts loud, empty contrasts bustling, clean contrasts dirty, and highrise offices contrast shacks. Mumbai really is a “city of contrasts”, as our tour guide called it on the bike tour that we would take the next day.

Peggy and Anu adding their faces to the wall of employees' faces at JWT India

From there, we went to the Prince of Wales museum. In the museum, we saw many Indian miniature paintings from the 11^th and 12^th centuries. They are miniature because they were painted on palm leaves. Even after the advent of papyrus, they continued to paint miniatures as it become fashionable. So in fact, it’s quite serendipitous that those Indian artists about a thousand years ago were restricted by the small canvas of the palm leaf! Now, a thousand years later, we find something uniquely attractive about the art of miniatures. Perhaps we like the sensation of zooming in on a small piece of life and finding a wealth of details.

Later that day, we went shopping for clothes and had some scrumptious koti rolls with Anu. Tired, belly’s big, we went to Anu’s to rest for and early tour around Mumbai by bicycle.