Verve – July 2019

30 JUNE - JULY 2019

Roaming across Mumbai, Tanya George analyses the

cosmopolitan capital’s multilingual typographic landscape

NERVE | RAMBLE

T

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 such

as, 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