About 20 million passengers travelled through Mumbai International airport in 2021. Some of those landing or taking off from runway 27 on 7 June of that year may well have been watched by the five boys playing in this picture; local kids who’d gathered at the viewing point Jari Mari Hill.
“I’d been to the hill once before, and was struck by just how close the plane landed, so I returned with my phone to try to shoot some pictures,” Rahul Machigar, a Mumbai native, says. “A little boy told me that an aircraft was coming, so I quickly set up the frame and took it without hesitation. I showed them and they liked it so much that they asked me to take more!
