Our flight back to Germany was cancelled after finishing research in Bhopal, which stranded us in Mumbai with a twelve-hour layover. Instead of waiting at the airport, we boarded a TukTuk into the city.

The city hit us like a physical force – heat, horns, the constant vibration in the air. Skyscrapers and sprawling squatter settlements were not easy to distinguish, glass and steel balanced on uncertainty. I wasn’t sure whether I was witnessing the future, the past, or something being born in real time.
But I knew one thing: This city doesn’t ask for your attention – it takes it.