India Immersion
My photo featured in a new poster promoting the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design‘s upcoming trip to India:
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It was about three weeks ago that I received an email out of the blue from a professor at the Institute of Design, telling me that he had come across my photo (on this blog) and asking me for permission to use it in a poster he was working up. I didn’t hesitate to grant him that permission, as long as he gave me a photo credit (which you may be able to see in tiny writing at the bottom left of the poster).
I took this photo of the Mumbai Financial District in February 2007. If you look closely towards the water’s edge and underneath the wording from about the last “i” in “Immersion” until the first “r” in “Program” you can see the top of Mumbai’s famous Taj Mahal Hotel peaking up above the modern buildings. That’s the back side (which, when first built, was actually the front) of the Mumbai landmark, one of four famous places attacked by Pakistani terrorists in November 2008. The Taj was built in 1903 and is the exemplar of “Bombay Gothic” architecture. Below is a photo I took of the Taj in 2008, a view from the front (which, when built, was it’s back). The tower immediately behind the Taj is actually the modern part of the hotel and where the main lobby is now located. It’s clearly visible in the poster photo above, under the letters “mer” in the word “Immersion.”
Taj Hotel. Mumbai. April 2008.
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For more on the Taj Hotel and Mumbai please see this post from last November. Also, I have to thank Mike Ray, Editor of Redstone Science Fiction, who converted the poster image (I had in pdf format) to jpeg, enabling me to publish this little piece.
LetsJapan 
Two awesome shots. 🙂
Thanks so much, writechic! You can imagine my grief and anger in November 2008, sitting in the family home in South Alabama, watching live shots of the beautiful Taj being engulfed in flame. In the short span from May 2006-April 2008 I’d developed not a few memories there at the Taj, and in Mumbai in general.
In the ’80s and ’90s I’d been to NYC a few times, but had never been in the World Trade Center. But, of course, as an American and a citizen of the world I was horrified and wound-up into a fit of righteous fury over the 9.11 attacks.
But, still, I’d never been in the WTC, so of course had no personal memories there. The Taj was different for me.
R.