SHARADA DWIVEDI AND RAHUL MEHROTRA'S DEFINITIVE TOME, BOMBAY DECO, IS BACK ON BOOKSHELVES, EXPANDED AND UPDATED.

Mumbai's tryst with the art deco style is well known.

- AATISH NATH

The salient facts are oft repeated, like the fact that the city has the second largest concentration of art deco buildings after Miami or that the buildings running from Marine Drive to Oval Maidan were declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 2018. And yet, so many of these facts would be unknown if it weren't for the research and writing of authors (late) Sharada Dwivedi, the city's best-known historian, and architect Rahul Mehrotra.

Together, they first published Bombay Deco in 2008, at a time when—Mehrotra notes in his preface to the new edition—"very little information on Art Deco in Bombay had surfaced". In the years since, that has changed and Mehrotra has worked with Pictor Publishing to update and reissue the book. Its release comes during a time when Mumbai is eager to remake itself—building outwards, upwards and in the cracks in between.