Mumbai is suddenly waking up to the idea of street art. In the past couple of years, the city has served as a canvas for laser graffiti and antiterrorist expressionism, wall murals and outdoor music concerts. The most recent of these is BlowUp Bombay, a photo exhibit that took place on Saturday, May 22, at a boho heritage village in Bandra, where peeling walls and century-old homes were papered with over 3,000 prints taken by photographers both professional and untrained.

The exhibit started at the opening of a tiny lane with clichéd shots of local trains and street-kid portraits. Further down, an artist painted under a Banyan tree and a photographer refused to disclose the locations of secret Indian beaches he’d shot. But, there were aspects of the show that we loved even more than the actual photos: the fact that we could take any print we liked for free. Our acquisition: a tri-series of bicycles in sepia tones.