The World Heritage Day, celebrated on 18th April every year, was spent in a nationwide lockdown this year. Usually, this would be the week for heritage walks packed with history lessons and anecdotes for the residents of Mumbai city. While the excursions are sorely missed, especially in the times when we are brooding in self isolation, Storycity brings us an intimate experience with the city’s rich, vibrant and colourful heritage—the tiles of Mumbai. Storycity chronicles visual stories of Mumbai and produces beautiful books, maps and guides that introduce the city in a unique and memorable way. It is an initiative by Kahani, a design studio based in Mumbai.
Their most recent project called Tiling Bombay is a repository of tile patterns in colonial (and slightly post-colonial) buildings of Mumbai. “Hidden away in the heritage buildings, libraries, museums, home and offices of Mumbai, are floors filled with wondrous patterns made of handmade tiles. We’re documenting and illustrating the gamut of colours, patterns and floors of these heritage buildings from South Mumbai,” their website says.
For the World Heritage Day, Storycity has created activity sheets with patterns of tiles in four iconic buildings of Mumbai—Elphinstone College, Library Building in Mumbai University, Keneseth Eliyahoo Synagogue, and Khadi Bhandar’s store in Fort. These patterns can be downloaded from here, and printed on standard A4 pages, or can be coloured digitally as well. Colouring Tiling Bombay activity sheets will be a meditating exercise and bring the patterns of these beautiful floorings of Mumbai buildings right under your nose, and your concentrating gaze—an interesting perspective in itself. Most of these vibrant, beautiful floorings can be credited to Minton, a ceramic factory in the colonial era. On your next visit to these Mumbai buildings, look for the patterns you have coloured.
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