Renamed Mumbai, India’s most populous city is the country’s glamorous commercial hub, a magnet to rich and poor, surrounded on three sides by the Arabian Sea.
The story of Mumbai is fascinating. From obscure, humble beginnings as a set of seven small islands with tidal creeks and marshes between them, the city has risen to such eminence that today it is India’s most important commercial and industrial centre. The seven islands have been merged by land reclamation into one and thus survive only as names of localities like Colaba, Mahim, Mazgaon, Parel, Worli, Girgaum and Dongri. Known until 1995 as Bombay, the Marathi name “Mumbai” derives from the local deity, Mumba Devi. The first Portuguese settlers called the area “Bom Baim” (Good Bay).
Today, Mumbai is booming. Home to the wealthy and the glamorous, it has long been India’s Hollywood (”Bollywood”), producing more films each year than any other city in the world. Nowadays, it is also the home of India’s own fast-growing satellite and television industries.
Like all big cities, Mumbai has its seamy side, its slums and its overcrowding, the foothills of poverty on which are built towering skyscrapers. And like all success stories, there have been chapters of intrigue, violence, happiness and calm, and the struggles of the pre-independence years, when Mumbai became the political capital of nationalist India. Some of its more disgraceful moments during the 1990s were communal riots between Hindus and Muslims, encouraged by the chauvinist Shiv Sena, and its shady founder, Bal Thackeray.
Mumbai is on India’s west coast, running down from Gujarat, through Mumbai to Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. South of Mumbai, narrow beaches and plains sweep up into the forested hills of the Western Ghats. The city has a natural harbour, which was developed by the British and, once the Suez Canal opened in the 19th century, the port never knew a dull moment. Today it handles more than 40 percent of India’s maritime trade.
India’s largest city now stretches 22 km (14 miles) into the Arabian Sea. The maximum width of the composite island that now constitutes metropolitan Mumbai is no more than 5 km (3 miles). Into this narrow strip are squeezed the majority of Mumbai’s 16.3 million people, its major business and commercial establishments, its docks and warehouses, and much of its industry - including almost the whole of its major textile industry, which employs thousands of workers.
Mumbai summers are hot and humid, the winters warm, while the sea breeze brings relief throughout the year. The monsoon hits between June and September, bringing curtains of heavy rain that obscure the view and flood the roads.
