My first memory of Bombay is sitting on the wooden porch steps of my home in Khotachiwadi and watching the neighbourhood unfold – men washing pavements, Chinese vendors wearing Peking hats with baskets full of embroidered tableware and nuns from local convents selling handmade lace borders. I also remember tailing my mum, who was a homemaker, to her appointments every Thursday. She would visit Jewish dressmakers from Lebanon, pick out gloves made in Italy and buy hats from a lady named Anne. Bombay was an otherworldly place to grow up in.
Inside Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum © Devashish Gaur
My parents often took my siblings and me to the Prince of Wales Museum (now called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya) in Kala Ghoda to see artefacts from the Bronze Age’s Indus Valley civilisation up to the Bombay presidency that began in 1661. Another favourite was, and still is, the Framji Dadabhoy Alpaiwalla Museum, which has some fabulous Parsi Gara embroidery, and the Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum is always nostalgic.
To revel in the best of Mumbai, get into the clubs of yore
I leave my house much less than before, but there is a delightful gallery down the lane I live on called 47-A. My friend Srila Chatterjee has done a brilliant job with the programming: you might find a collection of Issey Miyake ensembles one month and Maratha-style art from the Deccan plateau the next. Art always inspired my collections. When I debuted at Lakmé Fashion Week in 2006, I was quite taken by Maharashtra’s Warli paintings and interpreted them in crochet. Bombay’s museums and galleries are where it all started.
