city adrift
whom they share no common tongue, they do so in an argot that amalgamates the syntax and vocabulary of half a dozen linguistic traditions. It wraps Hindi, Urdu, Gujarati, Marathi and English into the embrace of a dialect Salman Rushdie named Hug-me. Bombay’s aptitude for aggregation can also be tasted in the snacks sold on its footpaths: Chinese bhel, Schezwan idlis and cheese dosas are made with ingredients (blended together with a large dollop of enterprise) that share the skillet only in this city. Even though these ensembles seem ungainly to some, Bombay has, over the last two hundred years, held India in thrall. For, in addition to inventing snacks and slang, the proud denizens of the metropolis reclaimed from ocean and iniquity have specialized in producing a commodity that is rather more incandescent. The city of interlocked islands, it’s widely acknowledged, is the place that manufactures India’s dreams. The idea of India was born in Bombay in 1885, when the Indian National Congress held its first meeting in Gowalia Tank. The notion that workers deserved a fair deal followed in 1890, when the first Indian trade union was formed in the mill district. For a century, the Bombay film industry has been projecting visions of egalitarianism and meritocracy and love marriages into the heartland, suggesting that any adversity can be overcome if you work hard enough (and dance around a tree in the appropriate fashion). To be fair, not all Bombay fabrications have been salutary: since
5