Cities often reveal themselves through the things we choose to ignore. A street performer weaving through traffic, a brightly painted truck squeezed between luxury cars, an unexpected object appearing where it seemingly doesn't 'belong'. In Mumbai, a city built on constant motion and coexistence, the unusual rarely stays unusual for long. It simply becomes part of the landscape.

This observation sits at the heart of Portable Roofs, a new project by SAZO that blurs the line between product design and storytelling. The collection consists of four umbrellas — Public Fool, Five Eyed Freak, Happy Sad, and Tiny Emergency — each carrying its own distinct personality. Rather than approaching them as functional objects, SAZO imagined them as characters inhabiting a larger world, one populated by oddities, playful contradictions, and small moments of absurdity.

Accompanying the collection was a giant red character that wandered through Mumbai's streets, markets, and neighbourhoods. Moving through spaces as varied as Chor Bazaar, flower markets, furniture shops, and the lanes of the old city, the figure inserted itself into everyday scenes that were already rich with visual and cultural texture. At first glance, the character appeared surreal — an oversized interruption in the routine rhythms of urban life. Yet what emerged over the course of the project was something far more interesting.

And people adapted to its presence almost immediately. Shopkeepers continued serving customers. Pedestrians carried on with their errands. Conversations resumed. Rather than disrupting the city, the character seemed to be absorbed into it. The giant red figure became less of a spectacle and more of a participant, another eccentric presence among the countless personalities that already populate Mumbai's streets.

The resulting images feel like a study of how cities accommodate difference. In many ways, Mumbai has always thrived on contradiction. It is a place where old and new, order and chaos, can exist in close proximity. The city's visual language is already crowded with peculiarities, making it uniquely capable of embracing something strange without demanding an explanation for it.

The project sees what happens when imagination enters public space as a companion, exploring the possibility that humour and eccentricity are not embedded within everyday life.

It is about the delight of encountering something unexpected, the stories hidden in ordinary places, and the uniquely urban ability to make room for things that don't quite fit. In a city like Mumbai, perhaps that is exactly what allows them to belong.

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