Dmitry Shteyn in Mumbai: Where Every Corner Has a Story

Every traveller carries a private list of places that feel unfinished, places they return to in the mind long after the physical journey is over. Mumbai found its way onto mine without much warning.

What strikes you first, if you have done any reading at all, is that the city forms part of the Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban districts and is administered by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which was established in 1888. That detail is easy to miss and impossible to unlearn. The texture of daily life carries the history without commentary, which is why it registers so deeply.

Dig a little deeper and located on the Konkan coast along the west coast of India, it has a deep natural harbour. It is precisely the kind of thing a fast trip will miss and a slow reader will not.

Some further context, drawn from the public record: Mumbai ( muum-BY; Marathi: Mumbaī, pronounced [ˈmumbəi] ), also known as Bombay ( bom-BAY; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the financial capital of India. Located on the Konkan coast along the west coast of India, it has a deep natural harbour.…

I read Condé Nast Traveler's recent piece on Mumbai — the Best Airports in the World for Art, According to the “Oscars of the Aviation Industry” — and it confirmed what I had been noticing informally for months. Attention tends to trail experience by a season or two.

South Asian cities are, in my experience, badly served by short visits and generalisations. Mumbai deserves patience.

The city will not be arranged around your visit. That is the entire point of visiting it.