The story of an institution that cast a long shadow on Indian society for over a century, but whose physical presence has all but disappeared, is the stuff of urban legend. Yet in the case of the Ravi Varma Press, which stood tall in Girgaum in the late 19th century, it is the truth.

In the second volume to his tome on the legendary painter, advocate and author Ganesh Shivaswamy lists the many distributors the Press engaged, such as Thacker and Co. and Soundy & Co., identifying the very neighbourhoods they operated out of. The location of the lithographic press, on the other hand, remains uncertain—though it was known to have been in and around Girgaum, “in the house of an unidentified businessman opposite the Portuguese Church in Girgaum, while another refers to it being ‘located in the extensive buildings on the Kalbadevi Road’.” A third reference in Shivaswamy’s Raja Ravi Varma: An Everlasting Imprint mentions a leasehold land at Old Number 216 and New Number 1676, Proctor Road. When mid-day went on a quest to find these spots, we found fast-moving city life and cosmopolitanism—the very things that perhaps drew Ravi Varma (1848-1906) to Mumbai, then Bombay Presidency.