We spend so much of our lives moving through Mumbai that it is easy to forget to actually look at it.
This Independence Day, Cityflo and Salaam Bombay Foundation decided to do just that. We took 15 young visual storytellers across South Mumbai, turning a day out into an opportunity to see the city through a different lens. The idea behind City is the Classroom was simple: take learning beyond four walls and let the city do some of the teaching.
As they moved through the Gateway of India, August Kranti Maidan, Mani Bhavan and Paradox Museum, the students captured Mumbai as they saw it - in the details that caught their eye, the moments that stayed with them and the stories they found along the way.
For Cityflo, taking this journey by bus felt quite natural. We spend our days moving through Mumbai, passing its neighbourhoods, landmarks and streets. This time, we got to slow down and let a group of young people experience some of those places for themselves. As Sankalp Kelshikar, Co-founder, CMO & Head of Cityflo Corporate, puts it, "How a city moves is closely connected to how it grows."
Now, their photographs will spend a little more time in the city too, travelling across Cityflo platforms and giving others a chance to see these familiar places through their eyes.
And perhaps that is where the classroom continues. A photograph makes you notice something you may have passed a hundred times. It makes you curious about a place you thought you knew. It leaves you with a question you didn't have before.
Mumbai has always had plenty to teach us. Sometimes, all it takes is someone looking at it differently to make us stop and look too.