Clicking towards a social change

A new project on the Internet aims at bringing people together based on their love for Mumbai

Photographs exchanging hands over the Internet is now passé, but doing so for a cause is slightly new to our city.  Two youngsters from Mumbai have formed a 400-member community that lets you exchange myriad photographs of Mumbai and join a discussion panel to talk about the city that never sleeps.

The website—bombayclicks.com—is the brainchild of 23-year-old Rahul Chitella, the creative head of MAM Movies (an organisation that makes documentary films for social causes), and his friend Maithili Durge who wanted to give back to the community something that they had imbibed over the years—love for aamchi Mumbai. Rahul explains, “Our members can take realistic photographs of the city and bring them on to the discussion forum.”

Most of the members of the portal are from Los Angeles, New York, Paris, London and Cape Town who have either travelled to Mumbai or have something to share about their appreciation of the city. According to Rahul, a lot of photographs submitted to the website give a vivid documentation of the city’s topography. 

He points out, “Alexa Barre from New York, writer for a popular fashion magazine, had visited Mumbai in the late ‘60s. On viewing one of our recent submissions, she came out with an interesting picture about how when one stood at the Gateway of India, one could get an unhindered view of the sea beyond what is today Navy Nagar. All these are priceless pictures of the city that was.” 

The most interesting aspect of the project is perhaps the choice of subjects of the photographs each week. Maithili says how a recent theme titled ‘Colours’ was aimed towards erasing racism. She explains, “Through our pictures, we weaved a discussion about how a riot of colours can blend magic into a canvas, but how the same colours should not matter when it comes to distinguishing one race from the other.”

The project also aims towards highlighting the socio-economic disparity in Mumbai.
There’s one picture showing the Taj Hotel housing the rich tower over an adjacent public loo thronged by commoners, while another showing a lone cobbler occupying a flight of stairs leading to a high-end shoe store. 

The  website, according to its founders, has apparently become quite popular among its overseas members, so much so that many of them have been prompted to organise similar websites documenting their respective cities, and presenting them on a global forum. They are also working towards organising an event that will involve well-known photographers from around the globe getting together to establish a collage of their works promoting a larger global cause.
c_sujata@dnaindia.net