Aam Artist Gallery: Play

The art of the common people from the streets of Mumbai

It's a universal fantasy, isn't it? To become a child again, to relive those carefree days of childhood. At some point, we all wished to grow up fast and become adults without realising the preciousness of those innocent years. That’s a prayer that time answers without fail. We quickly grew up, only to dream of returning to the safety of childhood.

It was in Rebooting, a J-drama I watched some months back, where I remember what a woman said about why time feels endless for a small child, especially when waiting for the next annual festival: For a 5-year-old child, a year is 1/5th of their life and feels longer. For someone who is 50, a year is relatively not that long. It’s a blink of an eye.

There is an epidemic of adults trying to reclaim the happiness of their childhood. We want to experience the simple joy of discovering everything for the first time with child-like eyes. We want to play and dance with friends like children. We want to celebrate birthdays and find the same joy we had when we celebrated them as children. We even want to buy and read children's books of the kind we once couldn’t afford or find for our children and read them ourselves (the children have moved on to other things). I have taught myself to cook the dishes I loved as a child. They give great comfort. 

Did you notice the insanely expensive ongoing wedding celebration in the city? A wealthy family pays millions to bring all the groom's childhood heroes - WWE actors, ageing pop stars, cricketers, etc.- to make him happy. There were no writers. 

A sabeel made by adults.

Today’s photographs show art by the children of Mumbai around the sabeels or water fountains that thousands of children in Mumbai make every Muharram on our city streets.  Sabeels were set up along the routes of the mourning procession during Muharram across the subcontinent. But over the years in Mumbai, it has become an activity beyond a route and setting them up brings children and teenagers together. 

The same children also set up cribs during Christmas. They make the Old Man every New Year's Eve, which is burnt to welcome the New Year and set up stalls during Ganpati and Navratri celebrations to distribute water.  

This is their art.

A tazia. A replica of a tomb(?) A mourning ritual during the Muharram procession being decorated.

Decorations around the water container. The landscape started as a recreation of the desert plains near Karbala, present-day Iraq.

Old men effigies representing the year gone by are burnt to welcome a new year.

Goga Baba from Rajasthan on the streets of Mumbai.

Ganpati

Xmas

Rejuvenescere Infantia

Here’s a chant to make a wish to bring back the joys of childhood, Harry Potter style.