Anjali Monteiro and KP Jayasankar, TISS Mumbai

Through a reading of Govandi CID, a crime serial on Youtube this paper attempts to explore how subaltern spaces within the city are refracted through the lens of those who live there. The serial is made by the SVJ Boyzz, a group of young men who live in Shivaji Nagar in Govandi, Mumbai, who see their creative endeavours as a way of tackling the high rate of substance abuse among youth in the area. The paper will reflect on their choice of using fictional forms such as crime stories and music videos in order to negotiate the reality of their everyday, and the spaces that this opens up for them. It also looks at the encounter between a group of students making a documentary on Govandi CID and the SVJ Boyzz and the ways in which these different ways of apprehending Govandi speak to each other.