The Rolls Royce dreams of being a bus. What joy, to race through the roads, a big red bus that everyone knows. To have a route and a fare, and people who depend on you, for work, for school, to go back home. To have a function that is more than being a symbol of wealth. To not be relegated to a dimly lit showroom, waiting to be claimed. A shiny trophy dreaming of Bombay.

What is Bombay’s dream?

On the 10th of November, 2006, a man working as a sweeper in Mumbai won the lottery. News outlets reported on Girish Rathod’s miracle win of 2 Crore Rupees as a dream. Dream riches. At the time, he was only the 9th person in Mumbai, and the 67th in India to be a Crorepati or a multi-millionaire. Today, in 2023, Mumbai alone is said to be home to an estimated 59,000 millionaires. A dream, a dream.

10th November 2006. A year before the global financial crisis of 2007 - 2008. Two years before the 26/11 terrorist attacks that infamously targeted Mumbai’s most iconic hotel – the natural habitat of Rolls Royce cars. This is a photograph that feels remote in a way that many older photographs don’t, even though it was made less than 20 years ago. Perhaps because in reading a news report of a poor man winning the lottery, I learnt that there were only 66 multimillionaires in India in 2006. The world was once a dream.

Who made this photograph?

It’s a strange and interesting thing that the collection entry for this image does not credit a photographer, but only the collection of the man to whom it was dedicated – Deepak Puri.

The print, however, is both dated and signed by the photographer, Chandu Mhatre, November 10, 2006, Mumbai, India.

Bombay’s Dream

A beautifully poetic title. Sometimes, as is also the case with a novel, or a film, it is the title that stays with you, long after its substance has dissolved into the slush of memory. Bombay’s Dream. Despite the fact that the photograph points to a particular dream (aspiration, desire, the pursuit of wealth?), I find myself almost refracting off the shiny surface of this beautiful car, and into this sliver of a city, drenched in red, and blue and white.

I looked for Girish Rathod online, to know if his dream had continued. I found only one article from two years later, published on the 31st of December, 2008. It is titled Reality Bites.

At the time, he was still using a bus to go to work and he still lived with his family of five in a 450 sq ft rented apartment.

But he did own a flame-red BMW car, parked far away from his home, for its own safety.