Addictive, intoxicating, drugging and infectiously photogenic – the city of dreams, the city that never sleeps, the city of contrasts, the city of Mumbai.

And there I was, in this monster of a city, camera in my hand and a bag slung across my shoulders, not to mention that somewhat small a dream in my heart – a little dream to capture this city of dreams in photographs; chronicle its melancholic fumes, its chaotic madness, its vivid contrasts in my photographs. And thus, I set about exploring the city in that moist heat, like a child exploring his new toy.

What I saw was that Mumbai’s always effervescent, always bubbling with life. There was not one dull moment in any of those twenty four hours that constitute a day, life in Mumbai is never still, never stagnant. Be it the early morning Borivali station or Crawford Market or Dhobi Ghat or the late night Nariman Point or CST, Mumbai is always on the run, always alive.

The cacophony of the honking cars, the wrenching appeals of the hawkers and the constant buzz of the crowd, each person trying to say something more important than the other, is something that one learns to live with in a matter of hours in Mumbai. And that is what fascinated me the most.

As a photographer, I’ve tried to narrate the tale of Mumbai through each of the photographs in this series and also envelop it all into one solid story – much like Mumbai, where many stories are wrapped inside one.

This city matured me as a photographer, taught me a lot. The innumerable frames that floated all around, this city told me that one could never capture it all, yet could tell it all through whatever one’s captured.

Thus, I present to you my most passionate set of photographs and a series that I am very emotionally attached to – The Mumbai Chronicles.