Wings of a city

Looking at Mumbai can sometimes be a joyous thing. If you’re sitting on the upper deck of a Routemaster, the familiar becomes cinematic and distant, and the city’s beauty becomes easily recognizable. The last time I sat on one was in 2007, out of necessity.

It was a Mumbai bandh called by the Shiv Sena, and no suburban cabbie would drive to Dadar. Dadar is perceived, especially on days like these, as an intimidating Sena stronghold. The wholesale vegetable market I pass by every day in a taxi, on the pavements of the Lokmanya Tilak Bridge, looked beautiful. Usually I recognize it by its distinct smell. Coriander leaves, combined with earthy dust and putridity. The bus trundled by, passing wads of green vegetables and women lumbering them on to small vehicles; the familiar smell was faint. The rest of Dadar was restive, and a bit eerie. Mumbai was diminutive and surreal.

The Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport Undertaking (BEST) double-decker bus, the Routemaster, negotiates the city’s maddening traffic jams by blocking what’s around it. Everything stops when the bus stops. Sitting atop, and looking down at still, dysphoric Mumbai, I remembered REM’s music video, Everybody Hurts, set in a better-looking traffic snarl. Joy and vexation in one traffic jam moment.

A few years ago, at a lecture he delivered in New York, Shetty said life in his city was like being stuck in a traffic jam behind a truck carrying inflammable liquid. “You have no other choice but to follow it, never knowing what may happen.” He says he loves and hates the surprises the city throws at him and it is his creative wellspring, a relationship he is wary of describing. “How do you describe your relationship with your mother?”

The double-decker’s reappearance as art is significant not only because this work could redefine the possibilities for public art in India—it is art in progress, wherein the insides of the bus act as an exhibition space—but also because an artist captures, for the first time in a large-scale installation, Mumbai’s history of life on the streets—the act of commuting in the city, which for some outsiders is in the realm of mundane myth, livelihoods fuelled by transport and most importantly, BEST’s amazing efficiency. These buses ply from every corner of the city, are punctual and, in my experience, the kindest modes of public transport in Mumbai.

Since 2007, the double-decker is being progressively phased out. It is hard to say if its slow disappearance has had any impact on the city’s overburdened streets. But heck, the only cinematic Mumbai frame we are left to experience on a daily basis now is that from an aeroplane circling above our slums—already an inspiration for Western film-makers and journalists in a hurry.

At Maker Maxity’s sprawling, spotless premises, the double-decker, whimsically labelled “No 1, From Here to There and Back Again”, is an imposing presence. The idea of flight, and the promise of escape and a better life, is inherent to life in Mumbai, and the Flying Bus, above all else, epitomizes that promise.

It took Shetty to a workshop in Belgaum after Maker commissioned this project. Before the bus was installed, the ground platform at Maker Maxity had to be reinforced so it could withstand the sculpture’s weight. As the project grew, Shetty started thinking of using the space inside the bus. Although the bus is stationary, it accommodates an audience that can move in and out of it, like the passengers of a bus do. Shetty worked with a team of 64 engineers, technicians, electricians, crane operators, tin-smiths, painters, welders and scaffolders to install the Flying Bus.

Maker tells me what happened thereafter: “Around lunchtime one day, as I entered the project I found about 15-odd people standing around the artwork. Some were from the offices in Maker Maxity, some were walk-in visitors, some had cameras. Everyone stopped to look. There was a sense of wonder, a sense of intrigue. Every day we have visitors who purposefully come to Maker Maxity to view Flying Bus, and we have visitors to the offices who detour to see it, enter it, click pictures and engage with it. We often overhear viewers commenting on and arguing the possible relevance of Flying Bus.”

Flying Bus is open for public viewing at Maker Maxity, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra (East), Mumbai. Documentary film-maker Amar Kanwar’s video works are on display inside. Forthcoming works to be displayed at the Flying Bus are photographs by Dayanita Singh, mobile works by the Bangalore-based art duo Pors & Rao, works by artist Gurdeep Singh and a work by graphic novelist Arijit Sen.