On a sunny weekday afternoon, it’s business as usual in Girgaum until we step into a discreet bylane of JSS Road that leads to the quiet neighbourhood of Khotachiwadi. Lined with vibrant Portuguese-style bungalows, it is home to residents of the Marathi, East Indian and Gujarati communities.

Through the glass windows of one of these cottages—this one’s a distinct cobalt blue—we see collaborators Srila Chatterjee, Tara Lal and Mortimer Chatterjee. Srila is curator and founder of Baro Market, while partners Tara and Mortimer run Colaba gallery Chatterjee & Lal. Eighteen years after they first collaborated for the Kala Ghoda Festival, the trio is back with 47-A, a gallery that Srila hopes will ask questions about the position of design within a larger cultural framework. Of the gallery’s simple eponymous name, Mortimer laughs, “Numbers are so important in this area. Everyone refers to bungalows and its people by their house number, so it seemed appropriate. The name also has a sense of neutrality—you can overlay all sorts of things within the space without a specific name coming in the way.”