30 JUNE - JULY 2019Roaming across Mumbai, Tanya George analyses the
cosmopolitan capital’s multilingual typographic landscapeNERVE | RAMBLET
ake a walk down any street in Mumbai, and you will
see lots of letters. Letters on shopfronts, on the
sides of buildings, on bus stops and billboards.
Some hand-painted, others printed on materials
that can withstand Mumbai’s climate, and the
neon backlit ones that come alive only at night. All these signs
essentially help in identifying establishments and defining
spaces. Few, like wayfinding signage, help to do both. The explicit
job and function of signage is to respectively communicate with
prospective patrons and let people know more about a venue —
the name, address and if a shop, what it sells and perhaps other
details like its hours. When a shop owner puts one up, they are
making an investment to attract more buyers. Subliminally, a sign
communicates a certain tone and voice, and it creates an identity
for the establishment by communicating its salient features suchas, how expensive a place might be, how modern a brand is and
whom they see as their potential customers.
Today, in Mumbai, these could be a diverse range of
individuals. As the economic and entertainment capital, the
city draws people from the rest of the country. They move here
not only with their hopes and dreams, but also their languages,
and they usually gravitate towards those with whom they can
communicate and form communities.
This social phenomenon can be traced back to the 1600s,
when the East India Company moved its headquarters from
Surat to (then) Bombay and invited traders from all over to
come and set up shop. The shift from Surat brought with it
those Gujarati tradesmen who were already involved with the
Company or saw business potential in Bombay. Even today, you
can observe the evidence of this legacy as you stroll through