A yellow basalt gateway on the harbour, backed by an arcaded colonial shopping causeway.
What Colaba looks like
The stands at the water's edge at Apollo Bunder, a yellow basalt arch 26 metres high with a 15 metre dome. Boats moor in the harbour in front of it, and the colonnaded front of the faces the same waterfront plaza a short walk along the promenade.
South of the plaza, runs as a narrow shopping street lined with arcaded colonial buildings three to five storeys tall, their ground floors covered by a continuous stone colonnade. Upmarket shopfronts sit beside small stalls selling curios and antiques along the footpath. The Art Deco front of stands at the northern end of the strip. , a walled block of Parsi apartment buildings, sits back from the road a few streets south.
At street level, a domed white temple front sits flush against the shopfronts. Traffic backs up behind black and yellow taxis at the crossing outside it. Wrought iron gates and stone archways front the older institutional buildings set back from the road, and palm trees and lawns surround the bandstand in the Cooperage gardens near the water.
, built on reclaimed land at the Causeway's southern end, is lined with fishing boats and open fish stalls. Across the bay at Cuffe Parade, a wall of high rise towers rises behind more moored boats, seen from the rocks along the waterfront.
Shot in Colaba
Tenet filmed a scene inside the Royal Bombay Yacht Club, where Neil first appears on the Gateway of India waterfront. The production also shot outside Cafe Mondegar on Colaba Causeway, and a separate scene follows the Protagonist and Priya past the Gateway of India arch itself. The Mumbai shoot ran for about ten days in 2019.
Tenet, 2020
The Gateway of India waterfront
The Protagonist and Priya walk past the Gateway of India arch on their way south toward Colaba, one of several scenes the production shot around the plaza and the harbour in front of it. The Royal Bombay Yacht Club, a short walk from the arch on Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Marg, doubles as the point where Neil first appears.
What Colaba can double for
BBD Bagh in Kolkata, West Bengal, India
British colonial government and commercial buildings ring BBD Bagh in Kolkata, arcaded at street level in the same Raj era stucco and stone as the Causeway's shopfronts. Most went up between the 1900s and the 1940s. The square itself is far wider and more traffic heavy than the Causeway, so a tighter frame along the arcades holds the match better than the open square does. Kolkata's buildings run to red brick and darker stone rather than Colaba's paler stucco, so a wide shot needs colour correction to match. Try searching colonial arcaded government buildings now.
Beach Street in George Town, Penang, Malaysia
Beach Street keeps the covered, arcaded five foot ways common to British era trading ports. Two to three storeys of shuttered shopfronts run under a continuous colonnade, mostly built between the 1900s and the 1930s. The scale and the arcaded street level match the Causeway closely, though Beach Street runs straighter and has no open waterfront plaza at one end. Chinese temple signage and shophouse shutters need dressing out, and Penang's arcades run lower and narrower than Colaba's. Try searching arcaded five foot shopfronts now.
Republic Street in Valletta, Malta
Republic Street runs from a fortified harbour gate through a narrow arcaded shopping street, a similar sequence to the walk from the Gateway of India down the Causeway, mostly dressed between the 1900s and the 1950s. Valletta's limestone is pale like the Causeway's stucco, but the bastion walls and baroque detailing are heavier than anything in Colaba. Keep the gate itself out of wide shots, since its fortress walls look European rather than Indo-Saracenic; tighter shopfront frames hold the match better. Try searching arcaded harbour gate street now.
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