THE EPHEMERAL MEGACITY: MUMBAI TO THE KUMBH MELA
Event Date: 12th June 2015
Speaker: Rahul Mehrotra
Venue: Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai
Sharada Dwivedi came to be known as the Biographer of Bombay in the words of Charles Correa. A librarian by background, she came into prominence with her many publications on the city including Bombay: The Cities Within (1995), Fort Walks: Around Bombay’s Fort Area (1999) and Anchoring a City Line: the History of the Western Suburban Railway and its Headquarters in Bombay (2000). She was also a trustee of the Urban Design Research Institute. With her passing away in 2012, the UDRI decided to host a memorial lecture every year as a tribute to her achievements.
Brief: The talk presented the research findings from the interdisciplinary team at Harvard that undertook a study of the Kumbh Mela, the world’s largest festival and drew lessons for future research.