My Mohalla — our project on exploring neighbourhoods through the eyes of young people, was featured in Time Out magazine this month. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
“Most Bandra (W) residents know Flaurian D’Souza on Chapel Road as the go-to man for getting a pair of pants stitched. But locals Malaika Mathew Chawla, 13, and Subhashri Acharya, 10, are among the few who know a little more: at the age of five, D’Souza’s right leg was crushed in a building collapse and the one time that municipal officials paid the tailor a visit for haftaa, D’Souza took off his fake leg and brandished it until they ran away. Chawla knows this story because of a neighbourhood initiative called My Mohalla, by Jalebi Ink, a group that introduces children to media through workshops and other activities. The project encouraged Chawla to speak to the shopkeepers in Bandra’s bazaars and write a series of reports on their lives. Started a year ago, My Mohalla attempts to track the history and culture of Mumbai neighbourhoods through interviews, images and narratives about its people and places. So far, the project has got almost 30 children to document their neighbourhoods such as Mohammed Ali Road, Bandra and Khar, and their reports and photos have been published on Jalebi Ink’s website. My Mohalla was started, said Anuradha Sengupta, journalist and co-founder of Jalebi Ink, because they felt younger people are often isolated from their own community. “Children should be aware that they are linked to a larger whole,” said Sengupta, who previously edited YA!, a children’s newspaper published by DNA.
Bandra children have tramped across Bazaar Road and met their neighbourhood cobblers, fisherwomen, a bangle seller, an idli seller and a phone booth operator.”
Read more here