This is a Bidi shop.

It seems to specialise in Phool Chap Bidi. There seem to be multiple Phool Chap Bidi companies, but perhaps this particular one is still in business.

Sign Board Advertisement for Saccha Mukta Bidi

c.1970

The table fan is in fact a prize from Phool Chap Bidi. I wonder if the folding chair is also a prize, or if it is meant as an aid for the promotion of the bidis. Like an ad-chair.

Advertisement for Kale Khan Saudagar Bidi

1950’s

I found these five other images from the MAP collection focusing on Bidis. Four of these are print advertisements. Beautifully designed and brightly coloured, they are a microcosm of identities, assertion, advertisement, desire and aspiration all wrapped in bundles of 50. In the fifth, a Jyoti Bhatt photograph, the bidi advertisement forms a backdrop to a darker image. And it holds some of the apparent symbolism, metaphor and pointed gesturing of photography.

Does a bidi shop really need so many steel tumblers and tiffin boxes? Maybe these are prizes too. That would actually make sense, and now the chair feels more like a prize too. Second prize, the table fan being first, and the tumblers as consolation prizes.

I have to say it, this is a fantastic photograph

Somehow, everything about it is perfect to me. It’s the perfectly imperfect composition, where the centre of the photograph is empty of human subjects, but the edges are teeming with them, each face and body engaged in their own individual pose.

Your eye moves from the brilliant table fan, the star of the photograph, to the smile of the man holding it joyfully, looking almost bashful as he holds this gleaming consumer product up for view.

The circle of the fan mimics the circular edge of the loudspeaker perched on the ledge behind. You begin to hear it the moment you see the man in a coat holding a microphone to his lips, his right hand thrust into the air, holding a bill (certificate?) that must be connected to the fan. The air fills with the singsong blare of this man’s appeal. Come! buy it! Come, you may win it! Come, you have already won! Come, and take this beauty home, accompanied by the smiles of all around you!

Okay, this merch is pretty cool. An objectively good-looking bag that would absolutely be ripped off today to be sold in some overpriced ‘design’ shop.

Sign Board Advertisement for Haji Beedi

Early 20th Century

Gujarat

c. 1970, Jyoti Bhatt

(Hiralal Chaap Special Bidi)

That is an absolute rip-off of the Air India Maharaja, in the Campiest way imaginable. And it works beautifully!

Sign Board Advertisement for Telephone Beedi

Early-mid 20th Century