‘THE CROSS-OVER’ by Jhanvi Lathia

Thesis Abstract:

Bombay today is a city where multiplicity thrives and grows. What we eat, what we wear, what we say, where we live is a result of past influences and people who have come here. Everything we encounter is a hybrid, a result of communities coming together and making something their own.

There are hundreds of stories, memories, and ideas growing here every day, but more importantly hundreds of people. The transformation of culture in a place like Bombay is something worth exploring. From all the myriad of cultural practices occurring in Bombay at the same time, this thesis aims to analyze the history of it and how it came here. Understanding the true nature of how cultures coexist at the same time and how they interact in all these spaces. It is interesting to see how many kinds of cultures have crossed all of the community boundaries and now are celebrated by many people differently. The term cultural communication arises, where different cultures merge to then form a new one or even a different version of the very same one. Through the spaces, people inhabit they adapt, adjust and transform. Everyone has multiple facets to their identity and culture is a strong force that shapes our identity. Migration describes how an identity of a city is shaped by so many small different elements that bring it altogether. These small elements are clusters of people that bring their traditions, which are important to hold on to as today’s millennial generation can barely speak their own mother tongue, and remember the general traditions that everyone follows.

Credit- Jhanvi Lathia