New Delhi, Jan. 1 -- When Zainab Tambawalla heard that a hospital building with an ornate, antique gate she had admired on a heritage walk in Mumbai might be demolished, she wrote an email to the owners requesting that they preserve the extensive wrought iron grillwork. Closer to home, she was dismayed to find that the elegant wooden signage outside her father's paint shop had been removed. "Some moments will be gone before you take out your notebook," says Tambawalla, who self-deprecatingly describes her work as "urban sketching".

In her first solo show, a high-spirited parade of vibrant watercolours entitled Seen Unseen, Tambawalla reveals herself as a miniaturist of the metropolis, but also a conservationist of a kind (the exhibition ...