We now call the city ‘Mumbai’. Politics may have changed names but a part of the city will still be Bombay. Bombay, because it’s hard to imagine any other name for that part; Bombay because when it was built, its architects imagined as Bombay, and nothing else. They still call it South ‘Bombay’.
It’s the only part of the city that has gargoyles — the kind you see Spiderman conversing with when he’s feeling pretty miserable — huge stone lions, glass paintings at a station, old rickety staircases, rooms with ancient fans. It’s that part of the city that hides something, that makes one wonder: what it was like when there were no high rises.
Spaces define cities, they give the city a character, a flavour that attracts the flâneur. Delhi is defined by old Delhi and Chandni Chowk and one wonders of the times when the Mughals ruled over it. Mumbai is known by its colonial past, because Mumbai or Bombay was always a colonial city.
The Portugeuse gave the tiny fishing hamlet as dowry to the British in the late 17th century and from then on it was the British who moulded the city. And because the founding imagination was colonial, it’s not easy to escape that history of Mumbai.
It’s the only part of the city that has gargoyles — the kind you see Spiderman conversing with when he’s feeling pretty miserable — huge stone lions, glass paintings at a station, old rickety staircases, rooms with ancient fans. It’s that part of the city that hides something, that makes one wonder: what it was like when there were no high rises.
Victoria Terminus in the 1950s . Getty Images.
The Portugeuse gave the tiny fishing hamlet as dowry to the British in the late 17th century and from then on it was the British who moulded the city. And because the founding imagination was colonial, it’s not easy to escape that history of Mumbai.
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