In Photos: Mumbai’s Workspaces You May Have Seen But Never Noticed

Glimpses of the city you’ve seen, but never stopped to notice. Through Instagrammer Gopal MS, here you have it.

The office of a pedestrian subway’s proud caretaker.

(Photo courtesy: Gopal MS/Instagram)

Gopal MS insists that he is a blogger, but his photo documentation of Mumbai, and often the old city of Bombay, on Instagram says otherwise. The photos on his profile, which has over 24,000 followers, aren’t what you would expect when one says ‘street photography’. More than scenes, he captures glimpses, sign boards, menus and graffiti and people doing mundane tasks amid chaos in an overwhelmingly honest way, with a few hashtags he has created and keeps adding to.

Trees with religious red strings go under #TreesOfMumbai, and vandalism as street art goes under #AamArtistGallery.

For this curation of Quint Lens, we browsed through hundreds of Gopal’s photos under #WorkspaceMumbai, which documents informal and small jobs done by lakhs of people that make the city what it is.

Through Gopal’s simple point-and-shoot and keen eye, here you have it – Mumbai paused.

Spotted: Traffic Warden at work

Spotted: A Zoroastrian calendar at a homeopathic pharmacy 

Hot samosas for traders waiting on a footpath, at a daily wage workers’ market in Vashi, Navi Mumbai 

To note: The water mug at the chaiwallah 

The office of a pedestrian subway’s proud caretaker 

Stones and imitation jewellery being sorted to be reused at Zaveri Bazaar 

Marketing level: Kulfi 

‘Good luck’ lemons, chillies and charcoal for sale at a traffic light 

Carving name boards and gravestones 

The wait at a daily wage workers’ market 

The making of papad 

Chachas who sell mutton for the most important family meal of the week: the Sunday lunch 

A vintage HM car from the 50s at a local garage-wallah’s, who supplies cars for films 

A datoon-wallah waits for customers to buy his teeth-cleaning Neem twigs 

Selling cakes, the old-school way 

You can see more of Gopal’s photographs from this series and several other projects of his on Instagram (@mumbaipaused).