Bandra was a tiny fishing village inhabited by the Koli fishermen. There were also farmers.

It was acquired by the British East India Company even while the rest of Bombay belonged to the Portuguese.

There was a 18 hole golf course in Bandra and it was called Danda Green with an English style Club House on the top of the hill, surrounded by trees. Membership was only for the British who lived in Pali Hill. Each cottage had a stable for horses.

Bandra consisted of villages Sherly, Malla, Rajan, Kantwady, Waroda, Ranwar, Boran and Pali besides Chuim. Ranwar also had a tennis court and the famous Ranwar Club famous for Christmas and New Year eve dances.

Most of the elder of Bandra worked for the East India Company and hence called East Indians. In the Bandra of the forties and before, large cottages with large gardens were available for rent at Rs 30/- a month. Marriages were held with an 8 day celebration from Thursday to Thursday for a Sunday wedding and the whole village was invited.

Thursday was the pig slaughter day and Friday to make pappads for drinks, Saturday to make fugias and bring water from the village well to bathe the bride or groom. Sunday was the wedding ceremony and long reception.

Monday was day of rest and to finish remaining food and on Tuesday the feet of guests were washed in exchange for cash. Then farewell dinner on Wed and guests left on Thursday by which time honeymoon was over.

Tradition has it that the suburb was originally known as Vandra or Ape as it was the home of monkeys, then Bandor as the Portuguese called it in 1505, then called Bandera, Bandura, Bandore, Pandara, Bandorah, Bandara and finally Bandra till a railway sign board finalized it at the end of the last century.

Salsette was originally separated by a tidal creek which Portuguese called Bandora creek. English changed it to Mahim creek.

Bandra had 2 hills, the Mount Mary hill and the Pail hill. On 12th Apr 1867 the first railway service was inaugurated of one train per day between Virar and Bombay.

Bandra at one time was peopled mainly by East Indians (original residents of Bombay Salsette, Bassein, and Thana), a few Goans and Manglorian immigrants, Parsis, Muslims, Europeans and Hindu Kolis. Till as late as the 30’s Bandra had only one bus service from Pali Naka, Hill road to the Rly stn. Other people just walked to the nearest Rly stn. After World War II the building boom started to accommodate immigrants.

The five oldest roads in Bandra are: Godbunder Rd, originally ran from Mahim causeway, then to skirt Bazaar Rd, went past the Bandra talab and continued to Godbunder. The road was later made straight by cutting through the talab. 

Bazaar Rd began at Godbunder Rd opposite the mosque and ran through the market keeping close to the
coast which is now the reclamation. 

Hill Rd
starting fm stn went through middle of Bandra town, past St Andrews to terminate at the foot of the Mount near Mehboob studio. Pali Rd began at St Peters cut through Pali village till Danda. 

BJ Rd runs from St Andrews to Lands End, was built by Byramjee Jeejebhoy and opened to public in 1878. 

There are over 150 crosses at various places. Many crosses were built to ward off the plague epidemic (1896-1906).The oldest is the one relocated in St Andrew’s church compound. Stands 17ft high and made of a single stone. It was originally in the Jesuit seminary of St
Anne built in 1610. The bldg was destroyed in 1739 and the cross was relocated to St Andrews church. The surface is carved all
over with 39 emblems of the passion of Christ. 

Bazaar Rd is only 2 km long but houses a Jain temple, Ram mandir, Hanuman temple, Khoja mosque, Christian chapel and a Sikh gurduwara. 

Main roads in Bandra Perry, Carter, Bullock, Kane, and Bates were named after British collectors and magistrates. Mr Carter was collector in 1924 and Mr Bullock was the Chief Magistrate.

Christians in Bandra are mostly of the Koli, Bhandari and Kunbi castes. 

The architect of Mount Mary’s church was a Bombay architect Shahpoorjee Chandabhoy. The basilica was built in 1904 at a cost of Rs.1 lakh. Also the first time a non catholic was asked to build the church. It was built to serve the garrison posted at Castella de Aguada-the fort at Land’s End road. It was destroyed in a fire in 1739 and rebuilt in 1761, the year marking beginning of Bandra feast as it is
celebrated today. 

The walls enclosing the compound of St Andrew’s church was built by a Parsi, Manockjee Sorabjee Ashburner in 1862. It is recorded on a slab on the main gate of the enclosure. In 1879, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy constructed a flight of steps from foot of Mt Mary hill to north side of church known as the Degrados de Bomanjee (steps of Bomanjee). 

St Stanislaus started in 1863 as a ‘Native Boy’s orphanage’ became a high school in 1923 and was first English medium in the
suburbs.

 
In 1661 when King Charles married Catherina of Portugal, Bombay was given to England as part of the dowry. Salsette was not part of this treaty and remained with the Portuguese.

In 1739 with the threat of Maratha invasion, the Portuguese appealed to the British for help and they suggested to the Portuguese to destroy all fortifications around the chapel and the fortress Aguada. However the Marathas took over and ruled for 2 decades. But after the battle of Panipat in 1761, Maratha power declined and the British took over and Salsette including Bandra came under British rule. Portuguese were left with just Goa, Daman and Diu.

The English found in this newly acquired territory of Salsette thousands of Indian families who were converted to Christianity.

It was from these families the English drew their supplies of clerks, assistants and secretaries. At that time there was hardly a Hindu, Parsi or Muslim who could read Roman characters.

There was also a large influx of Christians from Goa, Karnataka and Kerala and this prompted local converts to take the name of ‘East Indians’ and form the East Indian Association on 26th May 1887 to distinguish the ’sons of the soil’ who were the first employees of the East India Company, from Indian Christians who came from further down the West coast and shared the same names and religion, and vied for the same jobs.

Crossing the Mahim creek was by ferry to the industrial town of Bombay. After many boats capsized, a road was built by Lady Jamsethji in 1843 at a cost of Rs.1,55,800. It was designed by Lt.Crawford and opened to public in 1845.

Railway started in 1867 with one train but 6 yrs later it was increased to 24
each day and now trains that stop at Bandra are 940.

The Tata Agiary on Hill Rd was built by Tata in memory of his wife in 1884. 

So much for my dear Bandra!

Pedder Road in the city is one of the busiest thoroughfares. Not only for local traffic but also for suburban commuters connecting to points in South Bombay.

This protest was nothing but a tamasha that the parents and kids resorted to so that they get some media coverage. Ironically this happened on the same day that Omar Abdullah resigned. So the hoped for TV coverage didnt happen as they wouldve loved.

What pisses me off is the reasons and the modus operandi of these very selfish parents. The school wants to demolish the building because it is unsafe for occupancy. They are moving the children to another building a little distance away. The building has been inspected by three independent structural engineers who all agree that is is unsafe. However the parents still want the school to keep the building open and let their children study in this unsafe building.

The parents allege that the school is trying to shunt out the lower fee-paying SSC division to some other building and use this plot to build a fancy high fee-paying Int’l division school.

The controversy started last year when the school management decided to permanently shift SSC students to a new location on D N Road in Fort, as they wanted to demolish the existing building at Hughes Road for IGCSE and IB Board. Parents approached the HC against decision and won the case in July.

On June 4, the school management had circulated a notice to parents that school would restart on June 29 at building in D N Road, Fort. The school, however, did not starts as the matter was pending in court [link]

If this is correct and I am sure there is some truth to it, then take this to court, get a stay order and pursue it through legal means. Don’t resort to uncivilized hooligan tactics.

The police stood there for the most part and could not do much as they said kids were involved and therefore they could not use any means to disperse the crowd. I guess they meant tear gas et al.

The parents took shelter behind the children and held the city and lakhs of people to ransom.

What is more appalling is that students were encouraged to do crazy things like climb up on the front of buses etc as this picture shows.

This also sends a very wrong message to children, the adults of tomorrow. It teaches them that taking the law into your own hands is the recourse to all problems and loutish, roughish behavior is the way to go.

Image Copyrights Mid-Day

Mahafreed Irani, a journalist with Times of India and a friend from the blog/twitter/facebook world has a first person account on her blog.

Floods – 2009 : Mumbai

Floods in Mumbai are attributable to simultaneous occurrence of rainfall and high tides. If, the rainfall is in excess of 200 mm in a day (24 hrs), floods can occur anytime irrespective of tides. However, if there is moderate rainfall but the tide is in excess of 4.50 meters at the same time, the city of Mumbai is sure to get flooded.

Accordingly, heavy floods are anticipated on the following days in Mumbai, if there is excessive rainfall at the time of high tides, since the tides are extremely high on these days: –

BMC has already planned to keep the schools closed on 24 July 2009 since the tide level is record high of last 100 years on this day.

Mumbaites are, therefore, requested to cooperate with the administration by restricting their movements and certainly not to take their vehicles out on the roads these days.

There are speculations about very high waves on 22 July 2009 due to solar eclipse. 

Public should, therefore, keep away from the beaches that day.

This is an aerial photograph and the numbers point to familiar landmarks in the city.

How many of these can you identify.

To find out the correct answers and to read Geve’s post, hop over to the Google Earth Community.

The delegation includes Martin Luther King III as well as other prominent Black leaders from the USA.

He, along with US Representative John Lewis, who was part of the civil rights movement, and congressman Spencer Bachus were present at the historic Gateway of India on Wednesday afternoon to commemorate the 50th anniversary of late Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s visit to India to study Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophies.

“I am honoured to be here to retrace the steps of my father who came to pay tribute to Mr Gandhi,” said Martin Luther King III in his opening statement. According to him, this 50-year-commemoration is extremely important as right now the world needs the message of non violence more than ever. He believes it is also the time to applaud the spirit of the people here. He added, “Mumbai is a great city that can and has overcome tragic circumstances.”

The location was chosen to speak about the importance of peace and non-violence and the philosophies shared by Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King, Jr as it has been witness to a lot of bloodshed in the recent terror attacks. Also present were Andrea King, wife of Martin Luther King III, Congresswomen Jackson Lee and Loretta Sanchez.

Here is a complete transcript and link to a radio address recording on All India Radio.

Historically it was not so. I remember going to Khajuraho as a student of architecture and noticing that within the thousands of temple carvings, was a vast encyclopedia of every form of sexual preference. If at that time this was main stream enough to become part of a temple monument, then why is it that today we, the same people and society shun it. A lot of that blame can be put on the Victorian morals dumped on India during the 400 year British presence in India.

However things are begining to change. Just last year there was a Gay Pride Parade in Mumbai and other cities and the general awareness and acceptance seems to be on the increase. At least in the urban metros.

And therefore, it is not long that this presence is felt in the Indian blogosphere too.

Gaysi: The Gay Desi is a new group blog that has been up and about for a short while now and their writing and content is crisp, fresh and interesting.

As the founder Broom writes

I wanted to have a space where gaysis could come and share their stories, their triumphs and failures, their struggles and their dreams, their hopes and despair. And in doing so, give other gaysis a sliver of hope too.

But this blog is not just for gaysis. It’s for the non-gaysis who want to be better friends or better relatives to their gaysi friends and family members. It’s a place where we will, hopefully, demystify what it means to be a gaysi.

So hop on over, and join the transformation to a more understanding society for one and all. One that transcends all barriers, especially the one of sexual orientation.

Barkha Dutt….she of the screeching, shouting, TV soap opera fame has through her network sent a legal notice to Chyetanya Kunte, an Indian blogger.

During the terrorist attacks of 26/11 in Mumbai, Kunte wrote a blog post about shoddy journalism (now deleted) that targeted the shenanigans of Barkha Dutt. However the “internets” never forget and the post lives on here.

Kunte writes

If the terrorists don’t manage to shove you in to your private hell, the journalists on national television will certainly help you get there.

And that is a very valid point.

The Indian blogosphere is rightly disgusted.

Barkha Dutt tries to explain herself on this topic on Facebook.

Gaurav makes a fine point.

Can you imagine if what would have happened if any of the politicians had dared to sue NDTV for libel. Not only NDTV but everyone in English media would be crying fascism like it was Third Reich. This despite the fact that not only a politician has as much right to redressal as NDTV but also he probably has a stronger case for libel against Barkha Dutt (and English media) than Barkha Dutt has against Chyetanya.

Frankly, I think Barkha Dutt screwed up on this one. By unnecessarily making an issue where none exists, she has further lost credibility. This whole incident reminds me of IIPM-gate.

Am no legal eagle (unlike my sister…a real lawyer and all!) but what would happen if Kunte would ignore this notice and ask BD and NDTV to go take a walk?

A horrific terrorist attack has ravaged one of Mumbai’s most-loved symbols and taken the lives of many of its dedicated staff. This heritage hotel was not started as a commercial venture. It was Jamsetji Tata’s gift to the city he loved — as the Taj Mahal of Agra was Shah Jahan’s memorial to the woman he loved.

MUMBAI’S PRIDE: Before the Gateway of India was built, the Taj Mahal offered the first view of the city of Bombay to ships sailing into the harbour. Even now, with many more tall buildings on the skyline, the hotel engages immediate attention.
The 1880s and 1890s were a time of great construction in Bombay. The Grand Victoria Terminus was built, and after it the Municipal Corporation building, another beautiful structure, followed by the Churchgate headquarters of the B.B. & C.I. Railways (now Western Railways). But there was no hotel worthy of the growing city.

Being an ardent fan of Mark Twain, Jamsetji Tata may have read of the writer’s fate in the so-called ‘best’ Watson’s Hotel: Mark Twain and his family were roused every morning at dawn by doors slamming, servants shouting, and “fiendish bursts of laughter, explosions of dynamite.” The Irish chef at the hotel was apparently more conversant with the French language that with French cooking, “serving up Irish stew on 14 occasions under 14 different French names.” Sir Stanley Reed, Editor of The Times of India, said Jamsetji had an intense pride and affection for the city of his birth, and when a friend protested against the intense discomforts of hotel life in Bombay, he growled: “I will build one.”

One day without consulting anybody, not even his sons or partners, he announced his plan to build a grand hotel. It was his personal contribution and money he was putting in — not that of Tata & Sons. Along the present Yacht Club at Apollo Bunder was a little bay where yachts used to scull. The British were reclaiming the land and he bought a substantial site of two-and-a-half acres on November 1, 1898 on a 99-year lease. There was no formal laying of a foundation stone but a traditional coconut was broken and a Parsi diva (oil lamp) was lit, perhaps by the well or spring between the present swimming pool and the lifts. This ceremony took place in 1900.

Many an interesting story is invented round the Taj being designed by an Italian/French architect who, after his exertions, went home and returned to find the building was put the wrong way around — what should have been in the rear was in front and vise versa. Heartbroken he went to the top floor of the Taj and flung himself out of the window. Dramatic! Touching! But not true. As anyone who stayed at the then-non-air-conditioned Taj in the summer would attest, the late afternoon breezes that blow across Colaba do not spring up from the harbour but sweep in from across Back Bay. The U-shaped wings of the hotel were positioned to trap this breeze and extract the most benefit.

Indeed, the necessity to draw whatever relief there might be from the torrid heat of western India was certainly the inspiration behind the hotel’s two most original features. At the time, the clientele Jamsetji expected was from abroad and his endeavour was to make the hotel as cool as possible. Thus it had high ceilings and wide corridors, which would be conducive to air circulation. Furthermore, the Wellington Mews — another property Jamsetji bought — behind the hotel site was where the horses and carriages were housed and these could roll in directly from the west side.

One convincing explanation comes from the daughter of a Goan customs officer, Francis Xavier D’Mello, who was stationed in the customs shed at Apollo Bunder and witnessed the Taj rising stone by stone: “Jamsetji Tata came regularly to watch his great hotel being built. The customs shed provided the only shelter from the blazing sun, so Mr. Tata used to come there and have long chats with my father. Once my father asked him why he had put the entrance to the Taj at the back, and Jamsetji told him that he wanted the majority of his hotel guests to have rooms overlooking the sea. Jamsetji surely had some hand in his broad instructions to the architect.”

Sadly, having designed the Taj along with a Parsi architect under Jamsetji’s instructions, Sitaram died of malaria. The dome designed on the model of the Victoria Terminus (now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) had not been built. W.A. Chambers was called to help. Khansahib Sorabji Contractor built the solid structure.

The prospectus for the hotel to be underlined some salient features: “The Hotel, when completed, will be five storeys high, and will accommodate, beside hotel boarders to the number of 500, a number of permanent residents. Immense cellars, below the ground floor level will contain the refrigeration plant, which will cool the rooms of the inmates, and will also enable their food to be stored in a manner foreign to India. The ground floor will be occupied by the offices, first-class restaurants, and shops for the sale of articles generally desired by travellers. The first floor will be mostly taken up with a grand dining room, drawing room, reading rooms, billiard room, and a few grand suites, all provided with electric fans. The second, third, fourth and fifth floors will contain bedrooms, mostly double and furnished in the Continental style with sofa, tables and chairs, and other furniture, and on each floor bathrooms and lavatories. The kitchens etc., will be on the top of the house with a roof garden. The Hotel will be lighted throughout with electric lights, and many lifts, also worked by electricity, will convey residents from floor to floor with comfort. A Turkish bath will also be fitted up in the Hotel.”

Jamsetji personally went to order the electrical machinery from Dusseldorf and chandeliers from Berlin. Furthermore, he made sure that if by chance electricity failed, a back up system of gas lights was at hand. There was the in-house soda bottling plant, an electric laundry, fans from the USA — and the first spun-steel pillars from the Paris Exhibition where the Eiffel Tower was then the latest wonder of the world. These pillars, a hundred years later, hold up the ceiling of the Banquet Hall.

For all his projects Jamsetji got the costing done thoroughly but not for the Taj. It was his gift to the city he loved — as the Taj Mahal of Agra was Shah Jahan’s memorial to the woman he loved. It cost about Rs. 25 lakh. When the hotel opened, it had a large staff of waiters but only seven guests. It was Bombay’s first public building to be lit by electricity and when it happened, those present outside clapped as they saw it lit.

As if such a grand edifice was not enough, he purchased two small islands near Uran called Panjoo and Dongri so that the guests at the Taj could go on picnics.

Jamsetji wanted to lease out the Taj to an experienced European hotelier. The plans fell through and finding the staff and running the hotel was to fall initially on him in 1902 and later on his partners and colleagues. The Gateway of India came up only in 1924 to commemorate the visit of King Emperor George V and Queen Mary in 1911. Before that at the Gateway site, sahibs used to sit at tables sipping burra and chotta pegs.

Perhaps, says Allen and Dwivedi (who have done research on the Taj), Jamsetji believed in starting a new venture on an auspicious date, Muhurat as it is called. It was decided to open the hotel on December 16, 1903, before the building was complete. Only one wing was ready and the dome had not been completed. A study of Jamsetji’s medical reports of the late-1903 shows his health was deteriorating. His sons and colleagues may have decided to speed up the opening so he could have the satisfaction of seeing at least one of his dreams come true. Steel, the hydro-electric venture, and the Indian Institute of Science came up after his death.

Five months after the Muhurat, when Jamsetji died, a leading journal of Calcutta, The Empress, wrote in the obituary: “The new hotel represented, to Mr. Tata, something more than a mere commercial venture, and he had determined that the Taj Mahal Hotel should set an example, which should re-act throughout India, in removing one of the greatest hindrances to agreeable travel in this country. The plans were drawn with the sole purpose of securing an entirely worthy building, and he looked for no immediate financial returns. There is something peculiarly saddening in the coincidence that the fixing of the key-stone of the noble dome should have preceded, but only a few days, the death of the man who inspired it.”

The lives of the clientele, which was mainly British, revolved round news from home. The P. & O. brought the mail every Friday morning and left every Saturday evening. The London GPO’s largest single destination was mail for India. It was rushed from London, sorted out between Aden and Bombay and special bags delivered within an hour of the arrival of the steamer. Saturday was spent in answering letters. The Sea Lounge at the Taj was created as a letter-writing room and by special arrangement mail from the Taj was directly delivered to the ship.

In years to come, world-renowned personalities have stayed there, from Somerset Maugham and Duke Ellington to Lord Mountbatten and Bill Clinton. The hotel was featured in a hundred books, including Louis Bromfield’s One Night in Bombay, which is centred on the Taj.

The maharajas become the great patrons of the Taj and invited the hotel to do special catering in their states. The Chamber of Princes was to meet there regularly every January — hence the ‘Princes’ Room’ at the southern end of the Taj. The business maharajas were to follow next; today the Taj is the most sought after venue for wedding receptions, and one can frequently see fire crackers being let off at the gate as the bridegroom’s party dances merrily away.

As there was no Gateway of India for 20 years after the Taj came up, the hotel offered the first view of the city to ships sailing into the harbour until 1924. Even now, with many more tall buildings on the skyline, the hotel engages immediate attention. It is a symbol of Mumbai.

(Russi M. Lala is the author of For the Love of India — The Life and Times of Jamsetji Tata. He lives near the Taj Mahal and even closer to Nariman House.)

© Copyright 2000 – 2008 The Hindu

In Mumbai’s teeming history lies the hope for our recovery
The resilience of this great cosmopolitan city has been tested like never before

At the Parsi fire temple a few minutes from the Taj Mahal hotel, the second sitting at dinner was coming to an end. A large Parsi wedding – and all of them are big, fat Indian weddings – has three dinner sittings, where the guests, after lining up to give the bride and groom "the packet" (an envelope containing cash), go to the bar for a large Scotch and soda or two, then wait their turn to be seated for dinner.

The star of the meal is the patra ni machi, fish coated with green chutney and steamed in a banana leaf, but it’s only one course of a many-splendoured meal. As the second sitting finished their last bit of dessert, and the third lot of diners were about to begin their meal, some of the first-sitting guests began to dance to the band which was belting out old Abba numbers along with Frank Sinatra singing "My Way".

And then the news came. Leopold’s, an old Irani-style cafe in Colaba, popular with the firang (foreigner) back-pack crowd, had been attacked by gun-weilding terrorists. Then, in quick succession, the Trident and the Taj, the city’s two best known hotels, were under siege. The third sitting continued, but in complete silence.

The Parsi wedding, with its sumptuous banquet, has been an intrinsic part of the city scene. As have the Punjabi sangeet, the Muslim nikah, the Mahrashtrain lagna, all disparate parts of a composite whole which has survived many attempts to destroy it.

That’s because Mumbai is a resilient city, much of its resilience coming from its cosmopolitan fibre: the industrious strain that comes from the people who have settled here from the South of India; the North Indians with their willingness to undertake the most menial of tasks cheerfully; the entrepreneurial Parsis and Marwaris who set up its cotton mills and industries; Gujarati traders and businessmen … All these came together to produce the DNA of Mumbai and its rubber ball-like ability to bounce back from wherever it was thrown.

Yet on Wednesday night, that resilience has been tested like it’s never been tested before. Mumbai is not new to terrorist attacks: bombs have been placed in buildings, in trains, in the marketplace. These bombs have killed many people too. But the killings were random and the dead were, by and large, the men on the street.

On Wednesday, those young men – armed to their teeth, answering to heaven knows what call from where – who stormed the Taj and the Trident, targeted the citadels of the privileged. They also targeted foreigners, who may be fleeced but are never under threat in India. In choosing the Taj Mahal Hotel, the terrorists also chose the city’s most iconic building, one which is called the Taj needing neither suffix nor prefix, so much so that if you ask a local about the Taj Mahal, he will spontaneously say, "Oh, that’s in Agra." By attacking the privileged and the movers and shakers of the city at their iconic symbol, the terrorists were making a statement to the world and shaking the city to its core. Will it ever recover? Yes, Mumbai nee Bombay, has regrouped in the past. It has withstood the attempts of the Shiv Sena, a regional party of the State of Maharashtra to change the metropolis.

The Sena came to prominence in the 1970s by playing on the universal fear of the "immigrant". The outsider was the "Madrasi", anyone from one of the Southern states of Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka. Easily distinguishable by his Dravidan features and darker skin, and his ability to work hard, well beyond the call of duty (sounds familiar?). Later when the Sena realised it needed the "Madrasi" vote, its bogeyman became the Muslim. And now an off-shoot of the Sena, the MNS (the Maharashtran Nav Nirman Samiti) has made the North Indian the object of its ire.

Workers from the northern states of Bihar and UP have been driven off factories and offices, often violently. And generally with disastrous results because they are the ones doing the menial jobs the locals do not want, and they are the ones driving the city’s decrepit taxis and they are the city’s masons and carpenters, none of them glamorous jobs, all of them involving hard work in Mumbai’s heat and dust.

If only politicians knew their history! When the Peshwas, the Maratha rulers held sway in the region, they were based in Pune, 150 kilometres away and not in Mumbai. Mumbai was a marshland, which is why nobody wanted it till the Portuguese came, and they too happily gave it away to the British as part of the dowry of Catherine de Braganza when she married Charles II.

The British were the ones who saw that Mumbai would make an excellent port. They developed it, built a walled city by constructing a fort (the central part of the city is still called Fort) and invited people they thought would be useful by giving them tax breaks, land and other incentives. This is how Parsis came to the city, and the Tatas, the Wadias and The Godrej’s who went on to build industrial empires. Other "invitees" included Muslims from Surat who were well-off businessmen willing to invest in new ventures, and Gujarati traders famed for their business acumen. There weren’t any Marathas orMaharashtrians in this mix. In fact, the original inhabitants of Mumbai were its fishermen, the Kolis, who were of – no prizes for guessing – of Dravidian origin. The Marathas came later, refugees from Peshwa wars. No wonder politicians do not remember history.

In short, Mumbai belongs to no one. Or it belongs to everyone. To the Parsi, the Marwari, the Gujarati, the Punjabi, the Englishman and the European and yes, the Maharshtrian. That’s why whatever wedges have been hammered into it from the past in an attempt to divide it have not succeeded. The terrorists holed up in the Taj and the Trident have tried their best to hammer yet another nail in. But something tells me they will not succeed.

This is not just based on a sense of hopeless optimism. Yesterday morning, after watching television news channels giving details of the horrific happenings in the city, morning walkers were out as usual, many at their usual staring point at Nariman Point, not far from the Trident. Where fires were raging and occasional shots could still be heard.

Though traffic was thinner than usual, come office hours cars, taxis and buses were on the road while commuters had boarded the trains at their usual time. Many offices had opened at their normal time and seemed determined to put out an invisible banner which said, "Business as usual". Not just that, at the sites where terrorist activity was still at its fiercest, people were milling around, some no doubt out of morbid curiosity, but many more because they wanted to help in any way they could.

This was reminiscent of the time when synchronised bombs had ripped apart Mumbai’s train service; before any official help could arrive on the scene, passengers devised their own rescue service, making taxis and auto rickshaws into temporary ambulances. That’s the spirit of Mumbai. And it will not be put down.

Anil Dharker is a Mumbai-based columnist and author whose books include ‘Icons’, a study of leading figures in contemporary India