THE MASKED CITY I would still prefer to call ‘Mumbai’ as ‘Bombay’-colloquial to the city of dreamers, achievers and wanderers. The city where everyone believes dreams come true, was once made up of seven marshy islands, and was originally inhabited by fishermen, known as kolis. The islands were ruled by the Silahara Hindu rulers of Puri, who also built the city’s medieval Walkeshwar temple complex. It appears the islands became part of the maritime trading network of the north Konkan ports that the Silaharas controlled. This overseas trade brought in a floating population of traders and seafarers, including Hindus, Muslims, Arabs, Persians and Jews. Prosperity came, and since then, Bombay has been a magnet for migrants, from the arrival of the Arabs of the Gujarat sultanate, to the Portuguese who became the Roman Catholic converters of large swathes of Mumbai’s population, to the English in 1661. Everyone came to Bombay — from the Gujarati speaking trading and ...