Mumbai has always been the bustling, legal and financial centre of India even when I was last there in 1977 as a teenager. It has changed. Not that there is less bustle, but the whole enterprise here is one of huge modernity, mixed with the same sights that have haunted visitors for centuries. The high fly overs and modern shops filled with items from all over the world, and the beggars as traditional as the temples and their gods, with generations of hands held out for a few pieces of coin to buy food, pay off thugs and try to get through the day.
I remember the beaches. the coolness of coconuts, the brightness of sand sculptures, the playfulness of street performers and the sea I was told never to swim in because of the dangerous tides. It doesn’t stop the children jumping in all day long; just tepid European adults.
They say in England they can never build on the sea but Mumbai is a contrary woman, she builds on the sea all the time. Reclaiming more and more as the city grows into something evolving yet immutable. The warmth, the smells, the people do not change, not in a mere lifetime or a single century or over the brief stretch of a thousand years.
Cities evolve with us at the same pace as our DNA mutates: a little bit here, a little bit there. It looks the same. The differences are subtle.