JOURNAL

How Mumbai Shapes the Way I See and Write

Words by Ankita Chakraborty & Illustration by Omkar Sawant

June 3, 2026

I came to Mumbai for the first time in 2017. I remember feeling happy yet oddly wistful. Kolkata has always been home, but as I walked through the wide and narrow streets of Mumbai, past the painted walls and the steady flow of people, I felt something familiar. The city reminded me of Kolkata in more ways than one. There were the surviving colonial architecture, the walls adorned with film icons, and the roads where someone is always selling fresh flowers. It felt like stepping into a place that was not mine, but one that was somehow still familiar.

One of the first places I visited was Colaba. Like many others, I wanted to see the Gateway of India, but what really took me by surprise was the street art. It appeared suddenly and everywhere, turning corners, stretching across walls, making the city itself feel like a canvas for its people.

Street art in India isn’t new. It once took a utilitarian form — through government-sanctioned wall paintings, school projects, and ad hoc efforts to revive walls otherwise left to decay under layers of posters, bills, and everyday vandalism. Over the last decade, organised movements have made it what it is today — open, public, and maybe even democratic. It belongs to the street, to everyone who passes by, and to the city itself.

Old-World Corners

At Thought Over Design, I get to explore the streets that surround the studio in Fort. Places like the Kala Ghoda, Tarq, and the Jehangir Art Gallery are just a hop and skip away. For a team photo shoot, my colleagues and I had headed to Sassoon Dock. For someone who is not from Mumbai, I associated the idea of a dock with a space providing functional thoroughfare, not sentient walls steeped in unforgettable art. But here, larger-than-life murals leaned into the skyline, with graffiti spreading below in every shade imaginable. I found myself in an inspired daze. That day, work felt less like a job and more like a daydream — my writing carrying traces of the whimsy I had just witnessed.

Before joining TOD, I don’t think I ever realised how much of an impact visuals had on me, and the writer that I am. For years, I wished I carried a notebook everywhere, and now I do. I believe writing down things I notice helps me think better. In Mumbai, where culture and languages constantly overlap, that habit has become a way of writing visual inspirations down before they disappear from my sight. 

"Before joining TOD, I don’t think I ever realised how much of an impact visuals had on me, and the writer that I am. For years, I wished I carried a notebook everywhere, and now I do."

The Language of the City 

Only the other day, on a local train, I overheard a conversation between two friends. One complained about the rain and the mould in his house. The other, almost sternly, said there is no real reason to complain unless “paani nahi tapakta.” That phrase stayed with me. It captures something essential about Mumbai — its practicality and its ability to remind you that things are really not that bad, even on the days you feel worn out.

Over time, I realised that this spirit has shaped me too. The language of the city seeps into my own, just like its art has inspired my words. When I sit down at my laptop and write something personal, I often notice turns of phrase that feel new, sharper, and more rooted in lived experience. I catch myself thinking that I would never have written this way years ago. 

"The language of the city seeps into my own, just like its art has inspired my words."

My friends tell me I see Mumbai through a romantic lens. Maybe, I do. There are days I feel exhausted because of the travel, the crowd, and the constant downpour.

Yet it’s always in those moments, just before I give in to disappointment, that someone offers me an umbrella. In other cities, that might be rare. In Mumbai, it feels completely normal, like the salt in the air.  So, while there are days when the city wears me out, there are others when it feels like home. And maybe that’s what makes Mumbai special. Exhausting but also generous and endlessly human. Flawed but impossible not to love.

About the writer

Ankita is a copywriter at TOD. She’s a true-blue couch potato and has an innate love for books, old movies, and everything pop culture.

A note about the Journal

For us at Thought Over Design ‘Creativity’ isn’t an end product. It’s an ongoing journey of inspiration that comes from fresh observations of the world, headlong dives into curious obsessions, explorations of art and culture, listening to diverse voices, and a million more places we’re still discovering.

The Journal is an experiment in sharing these musings with the world. It’s a mixed bag of scribbles from our research, inspiration sessions, lateral think pieces, work from designers we admire, pop-culture takes and often our own agenda-free creative pursuits.

The stories and ideas we share here are an attempt to not just gather our own thoughts but also leave the world a little more inspired than we found it.