Through a series of photographs taken over the last seven years, Gautam Doshi illustrates the many relationships Mumbaikars share with the sea—of grieving, playing, working, loving.
After a period of loss, I, like most people, found myself by the sea: to find a space for the grief and torment I had inside of me. My mother lost her battle to ALS within just a year of diagnosis—much quicker than the amount of time people with ALS live, hence, it wasn’t something I had even thought about or was prepared to face.
I visit the coast often—to sit at a promenade, or step into the liminal spaces created by intertidal zones—enriching and refueling my curiosity for what the sea has to offer the inhabitants of this city. In photographing these spaces through time, my camera became a tool for documentation, but also a way of understanding the relationship between people and place, and gaining joy and perspective in the bargain.
In the past few years, beaches, open public spaces, and even intertidal zones—especially around Haji Ali and in Worli—have become inaccessible. With more development projects underway, I sense an indescribable loss of something I lean on in times of despair.
This loss is amplified manifold for the Koli community, who have lived with the sea for several generations, in many cases, depending on these intertidal zones for their livelihoods.
The sea holds and accepts us as we grieve, play, work, observe, explore, and love—we drain what we’ve been carrying, then turn away and make our way back into the megalopolis only to have it replenish the angst we’ve just let go of.
These photographs are an ode to the liminal spaces which do not ask to be noticed, and yet generously offer us the grace to go on. This continuing body of work also serves as memory-keeping—for us to know what once was. Soon, we will be left with experiencing the sea and its exhilaration from afar, in a way, mirroring the cultural shift we are inhabiting which isolates us for community and the very processes that bring us vitality and a semblance of peace.
Biodiversity in the intertidal zones is rich and abundant. Colourful corals and their importance for preservation aside, these areas in Mumbai are also breeding grounds for rock oysters, which have traditionally been harvested by the Kolis not only for personal consumption, but also as a means of livelihood. Similarly, worms found and harvested here are sold to fishermen as bait. These intertidal zones are under threat from coastal construction as well as debris and runoff, which lead to a further burial of these areas.
By the sea is where most in the city feel free—to be with the ones they love, free to play, free to be covered in sand. However, constructed obstructions are becoming an ever common sight as Mumbai’s accessible coastline shortens and we’re just given promenades as ‘relief’.
The juxtaposition of old and new, like the under-construction Bandra-Versova Sea Link, as seen from Khar Danda fishing village, is a way for me to observe the scale at which the city, and the seascape, are changing.
Gautam Doshi is a photographer and a multimedia and data journalist. His photographic work has been exhibited at Khoj Studios in Delhi, and the Indian Photography Festival in Hyderabad. He has authored stories across formats for publications such as The Hindu, Scroll, and The Guardian among others. As a self-taught visual artist, he is always looking for ways to expand his practice.
The Mumbai Koli Project is the official impact campaign of the documentary film ‘Against the Tide’, led by The Locavore in close collaboration with Sarvnik Kaur, Ganesh Nakhawa, and Sonia Parekh. It is supported by the Doc Society’s Climate Story Fund which enables independent media storytelling and impact strategies from around the world.
“Come at four,” he had said, the hour when the day’s work reaches its busiest rhythm of filling and dispatching the tiffins.
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