Not Mumbai or Bombay, just my Bombai

Mumbai was never one city and its name was never ever Mumbai. Photo by C Y Gopinath

Would you consider writing a defining biography of one of the world's greatest cities?" the publisher asked me. He meant Mumbai.

I thought about it about for a moment and said, "Let me think about it."

I couldn't think of a worse person than me to write a book on Mumbai. The city has unfailingly distressed and stressed me out physically, mentally, spiritually. I am driven to incoherent ranting by its devastated roads, mounds of garbage, malodorous sewage rivers and ubiquitous atmospheric muck. All this despite being the world's richest municipal corporation, with a budget of R52,619 crore in 2023-24.

"If you'd said you were in love with Mumbai, I might have had second thoughts," said the publisher. Perhaps you've heard of him. David Davidar, once CEO of Penguin, first in India and then Canada, and now top honcho at his own Aleph Publishing right here in India.

"Think about it," he said. "You've spent 30 years of your life in Mumbai."

So I thought about it. And the memories, people, stories and punchlines came flooding back.

I remember Tarachand Saggar, a UP taxi driver who could lift weights with his hair and did not want to die unknown. I met him in a kabadiwala shop in Lokhandwala, and he was convinced that I could make him famous.. Eventually, I got him into Ripley's Believe It or Not.

I remember carrying my father's life savings in a cloth bag from Worli to a swamp called Andheri to buy a house not yet built on a marsh not yet reclaimed. Lokhandwala Complex became the city's most chic and creative colony to live in but the swamp mosquitoes never went away. Bollywood artistes like Paintal, Johnny Lever, Sridevi and Juhi Chawla became our neighbours.

There was Dr Suchetan Pradhan, the effervescent dentist who has peered into the mouths of nearly every famous Bollywood actor, cricketer, footballer, artist and performer in Mumbai - well, hundreds, anyway.

I remember following Amitabh Bachchan around for three days 50 years ago as he studio-hopped around old Bollywood. He was just setting out; so was I. What if I could tag him for three days again, now that he's 81?

And then there's the city's indefatigable, irrepressible spirit.

Remember those terrible floods of 2006 that submerged entire cars with their passengers, killing 1,095 people? What stands out is one uplifting, transcendental moment on Pali Hill at 5 am when the rains broke. Unbidden, families emerged from their apartments bearing hot breakfast for weary passengers who had spent all night trapped in their cars by the downpour.

The same sublime spirit surfaced after the dreadful communal riots of 1992 and 1993. On March 12, 1993, 12 bombs and flames shattered the city, but the very next day everyone showed up for work. Trains ran as always. A few weeks later, 15,000 Mumbaikars stood their ground again by joining hands in one islands-long chain of secular solidarity.

There are so many memories from back then, enough to fill a book. But there's a twist - Mumbai is not that city anymore. In 20 years, it has reinvented itself yet again, with new alleys to discover and new stories to tell. There's been no better time to rediscover that story and tell it.

That's how, in an instant, I knew this was a book I simply had to write.

What to call it? I needed something more multi-faceted than Mumbai.

After all, Mumbai was never one city and its name was never ever Mumbai. It was a cluster of islands, all joined together into a megalopolis by land laboriously reclaimed over centuries. The Kolis of Kathiawar, they say, brought their deity Mumbadevi with them when they settled here. But back then, there was no city to call Mumbai.

When King Charles II got it from the Portuguese as part of his dowry for marrying Catherine of Braganza, it was called Bombaim, Portuguese for good bay. When he leased it to the East India Company - for a grand sum of £10 a year - it had become anglicised to Bombay.

There have been other names, the oldest recorded being Kakamuchee and Galajunkja. Over the 16th and 17th centuries it has been Mombayn, Bombain, Bambaye, Bombeye, and Boon Bay. The revenue minister of the Gujarat province called it Manbai.

But the name that I heard in my childhood, spoken by my parents in Tamil, was Bombai. One day, my father would promise us, we would all go to Bombai, and it would be the best time of our lives.

I called David and told him my decision to write the book. "I'd like to call it Bombai," I said. "It marries Bom from the old name with bai from the new name. It also gives me butterflies."

"Agreed," said David. "Let's call it Bombai: Lives of a Megalopolis."
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I'm looking for stories of Mumbai's people, their miracles, hopes, inventiveness, triumphs small and big and their pains and passions. If you live in Mumbai and have stories to share, please write to me, including your name and contact details, at bombaistories@gmail.com.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.