Nazr is a daily game of noticing Bombay.
One prompt for the whole city. Answer it with a photo from the street.
Some of the prompts people have played: Search for a gaze in ordinary objects, A throne for nobody, Something held together by hope, A spelling with its own opinions, A face where no face should be, An animal with a job, The smallest shop in Mumbai, Something the sun is drawing, A name that outlived its shop.
✱ The problem
Mumbai is right in front of us. We’re all looking at our phones.
FIELD NOTE 01
We notice strange, funny, lovely things around Bombay every day. By the next corner, most of it is forgotten.
FIELD NOTE 02
Posting it feels like too much of a thing. Is it worth it? How does it look? Who’s going to see it?
FIELD NOTE 03
Yet we all follow the pages that simply document the city. The jugaad, the signboards, the shop cats.
What people told us
“Nothing. It’s traffic.”
“If you start paying attention to every horn, you’ll go crazy.”
“I stopped seeing the poetry in Mumbai.”
So we didn’t build another feed. We made noticing the city a daily game, and every find adds to a shared archive of Bombay.
✱ How to play
Three steps. One whole city playing.
Interpret
One prompt a day, the same for everyone. It’s never a plain instruction, so what it means is up to you.
Nazar seeks:
Search for a gaze in ordinary objects.
Spot & snap
Look around, wherever you are: the street, the station, the view from a window. When something answers the prompt, take a photo. Two switches can be a pair of eyes. A headlight can be a glare.
Share & compare
Post your find, then see how everyone else read the same prompt. Same prompt, endless ways to look at Mumbai.
@two_headlights
@switchboard_sid
@cat_on_a_wall
✱ Live from the street
Today’s game
Nazar seeks:
…
A new prompt in --:--:--
Recent finds from the street
✱ Your player
Everyone plays as a Battu.
No sign-up to start. You get a handle and a Battu face of your own, and you can roll it until it feels like you.
@LOCAL_79
@MONSOON_22
@PARLE_00
@TIFFIN_89
@CROW_48
@CHAI_91
✱ In the wild
Find a Battu. Scan it anywhere.
Our Battus ride around Mumbai on auto partitions, and Scan to Play stickers turn up all over the city. Scan one, or just open nazarit.in wherever you are, and show us what you see.
