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Flip the book on its back and the other half presents a vividly coloured,cleverly composed kaleidoscope of decisive moments. The fast-paced nightlife contrasts the working-class commuters held together by the urgency of destination. The giddy vertigo of high-rise buildings grinds to a halt when the next image captures the immobilised traffic. The steel and sinew of the Bandra-Worli Sealink is contrasted with the potholed misery of monsoons,while cinema hoardings scream for attention in the breathless city of simultaneity.

What makes this hefty glossy different from predecessors such as Bombay: The Cities Within by Rahul Mehrotra and Sharada Dwivedi? For starters,it does not have the long-format writing style or the historical approach that the latter has. The writing by Jim Masselos and Naresh Fernandes recaps history,but,importantly,this book lets the images do most of the talking.

Puns and tongue-in-cheek moments echo both in the images and captions. In fact,the section that captures the much-documented and discussed pioneering efforts of the Parsi community and the building of infrastructure by the British is not without its subtle asides. At the outset,the Grand Parsi Dinner thrown by pioneer Bomanji is underwritten by a gender pun. The caption underscores the men in tailored tuxes contrasted with the traditional,fine saris of the women who changed their garb much later. Another cutting observation is the documentation of Bombay natives through studio portraits,for the purpose of conquest,by the early British traders. Though some of these images appear worn by time,one can understand its relevance.

Juxtaposing the patriotism of the past with the jingoism of the present can be interesting there is a 1930s image of the Ganapati immersion where the lord is dressed in the regalia of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and an arresting,new image of an injured man dressed up as Chattrapati Shivaji.

The one criticism is that the images appear without an immediate credit to the photographer. The names appear only at one end of the book in a tedious practice where the lenspersons name is mentioned alongside page numbers a method that is not reader-friendly or respectful to the photographer.