The growth of the city of Bombay (and of some other 20th century Asian cities too) – can be traced, literally, by the sites of the cinema theatres. The infrastructure of cinema (studios and theatres) followed the growth of the urban population and sometimes even speculated the expansion of the urban territory by occupying and acquiring yet-to-be urbanised lands. The rise and decline of the cinema theatres is the story of consolidation and disintegration of urban public culture in the 20th century.

An anthology of text and image essays, documentation transcripts, maps, graphics, annotated artworks, and films on various configurations of the cinemas that the city makes and the cities of Bombay/Mumbai that its cinema produces. The forms of the texts range from critical essays to cartography to memoirs to art works to found images. The anthology, foreworded by Arjun Appadurai, has also compiled a volume of testimonies, found material, documents and research arts that were generated and produced by the seven year long endeavour - Project Cinema City: Research Art and Documentary Practices.

Adjudged Best Printed Book of the year at Publishing Next Industry Award 2014.

dates.sites presents two parallel timelines, in text and graphics, and by cross-connecting the dates and the sites, of the city of Bombay / Mumbai in the 20th century - anchored to its most adored public institution: cinema. The book is written, designed and imaged with snippets, fractions, scraps of found texts, found stories, found knowledge, found signage etc. The disparate strands are edited and loosely threaded together following some associative and playful impulses. The book states less and insinuates more.

This is a compilation of selected lectures, exercises and demonstrations that took place in the five iterations of annual Cultural Appraisal Course for undergraduate students in 1996-2001.

The book, developed through a research grant provided by Majlis, comprises a hundred testimonies by the inhabitants of the textile mills precinct of Bombay, locally called Girangaon (village of textile mills). This area, with a dense network of textile mills, public housing schemes, bazaars and public amenity centres, covers about a thousand acres of land in the heart of India’s commercial and financial capital. As the area metamorphoses into a high-end neighbourhood, with corporate offices and shopping malls coming up in the premises of closed/demolished mill compounds, the working class inhabitants are not only being pushed out of the area but their political and cultural history too are being threatened. This book is an attempt to collate that history.


Received Maharashtra Foundation Award, Nominated for Crossword Book award.