Year: 2098.
Place: Mumbai, India.
This is not the city of dreams. There are no evening joggers at Marine Drive. The local doesn't ply anymore. The vada pav stalls that once dotted the streets are gone. What remains instead is debris, sludge, toxic waste and a sense of doom. Ragged-looking spacecrafts roam the skies. The high-rises, made taller and taller over the years, now tower over the city's population like dirty, crumbling monsters.
This is the story one imagines when looking at Kushal Tikle's image series Mumbai 2098. A Singapore-based Indian concept artist, Tikle found inspiration for this set of images in a story, titled Maggot, written by a studio named Thought Gun Shells.
"After the corporations ran the global government into the ground, billions of the poorest souls around the world were left to fend for themselves. Ninety percent of the 50.3 million people in Mumbai have settled into a sprawling third world slum city.
The extremely wealthy around the world are sheltered from the corporate funded warfare and the grasping fingers of the impoverished outside in self contained cities called Arcologies. Now, decades after the collapse, a gang of five Indian orphans struggle to survive under the shadow of Mumbai’s Arcology. They scavenge in the abandoned techno-industrial wastelands outside the city, sifting for lost intel and valuable resources in the overgrown and derelict ruin of the decadent past. Out there, in the reclaimed wild; braving crumbling buildings, toxic waste, and rusting murderous drones, crafty but innocent hands will discover a world-ending evil that was better off forgotten."
"What got me inspired was the story of these helpless orphans having the courage to fight back against the injustice done to them and their city," Tikle said. "Few keywords that got me going were, Arcologies, scavenge, wastelands, crumbling buildings. These are a typical of any dystopian themed post-apocalyptic story."
Tikle, 30, who grew up in Ahmedabad, has lived in Mumbai and experienced its "beauty and grittiness and intensity" first hand. "For a story like this, the city could be any," said Tikle. "I would have chosen Mumbai even if the city was nameless in the story for the many cultural, non-cultural elements that I could play with while designing. Mumbai has Bollywood, high-rise buildings, cultural diversity, festivals."
The concept designs, which look like they have been taken straight from the pages of a dystopic graphic novel, were an assignment for design school and took him around seven weeks to complete. "When I started this project I thought I would be happy if I could do at least four paintings," he said. "But it just kept getting more and more interesting and I managed to make five more. I would love to work on a graphic novel on this subject. Almost like a page to page film and not just a storyboard or comic. And once the full story is realised, then this will be excellent material for a film."
One of the more interesting elements of this art work is the various aircraft and air cruisers that have been designed and illustrated with great detail and thought. The contraptions, made using material scavenged from the wreckage and wastelands, are built by the people themselves. "I imagined that the orphan protagonists of the story would be technologically sound to construct their own ship using scrap material. That's when I got the idea of integrating various elements of not just vehicles but, say chariots, hoardings, turbans, network towers, etc. I still haven't figured out how these airships play a role in the story, but as far as design goes, they are built by the people for the people, out of scrap. Thus the various silly designs, especially the Pagdi Ship, which has a turban at the back of it. The Jaadi is a modified Ambassador car and the Dhakkan Cruiser is part chariot."
Some relics from the Mumbai of past survive in the images and can be glimpsed in the smog-filled spaces, devoid of hope and sun. Bollywood posters bearing faces of Waheeda Rehman and Amitabh Bachchan stick out from corners. The local train, now broken down and abandoned, can be seen amid the waste. The chawls seem to have survived.
The images make you question the direction in which Indian metros are heading. They give shape to the apathetic attitude of most people towards issues related to environment and industrialisation.
Tikle explained some of his illustrations and talks about what he was thinking when drawing them.
"Mumbai city has an energy so intense that one immediately gets sucked into it. While doing this sketch I was looking to recreate and compose a similar zone for my concept. My inspirations were, of course, the Dharavi slums in Mumbai. I imagined these vertical slums and built-forms to depict the scale and the volume of Mumbai in 2098."
"Here, I wanted to show the wastelands of Mumbai as opposed to the corporation that's governing the city. Also, this could be the place where people scavenge for scrap metal to build their own vehicles. For inspiration, I turned to the slums and dhobi ghats, train wreckages, garbage dumps, etc. This piece gave me much freedom to think and go a little crazy".
"This image shows the state of infrastructure during the corporations' reign, these drones patrol the city to ensure order and to identify and bring down any rebel activity."
"Dhakkan in Hindi means a lid and is also a slang word for 'idiot' or 'stupid'. Constructed and designed by the people of Mumbai, the cruiser is designed for rapid pursuits and capturing drones and other gang-war vehicles. The vehicle is made from the junk available to the people of Mumbai – canvas cloth, wooden planks, jet engines, chariot vehicle parts, streetlights, etc. Special features include an eject pod.
"This was a vehicle that I designed for the three orphan protagonists of the story. It's named Baap, Hindi for father. The word suited the design and its energy as it is the orphans' home ship as well as their battle and rescue ship. It is made out of junk materials such as asbestos sheets, wooden boards, metal scrap, pulleys, satellite towers, car parts, etc."
"Pagdi in Hindi means turban. This was a random idea where I tried to use the turban as a design element for the airship. This is a cargo ship for loading and unloading and can also be used as a travel ship. The rear fabric has a temporary camouflaging feature for escaping or hiding from enemy pods and patrolling drones."