But is that enough to tie in with my identity to a city? If it is just about being correct then why not ‘BengaliMan’ or ‘ManinPowai’?

Fact is that I love this city, through all the monsoonal deluges, bomb blasts, disturbances, and have loved it for a long time. Not in an unconditional, perfect way – I rant against the many seeming warts of Bombay – but I can never get myself to stay away from it. The closest analogy is the love felt for Delhi by the protagonist of Khushwant Singh’s ‘Delhi’, who keeps returning to Delhi like he keeps going back to his mistress. But I do not think of Bombay as my mistress, it is rather like the adolescent love from which there is no going away, and whose very thought brings back other sepia memories of the past, and the seeming fullness of those days.

I came to Bombay for the first time when I was 18 , to join college. There was no reason for me to come to Bombay – I had no family in the city (even of the twice removed kinds), it was a 26 hour train journey from where I had grown up, and I was not even getting a good branch to study. But even then, there was an infatuation that drew me to Bombay. The lure of the ‘big city life’, the ’sone ki chidiya’ was too strong for me, having grown up with images of the city immortalized by Bollywood and cricket magazines, and photographs of relatives who had spent some years in Bombay.
(As a result, even today, I call this city ‘Bombay’. In spite of the political incorrectness. Bombay was the city I came to, and Bombay is the city I live in.)

It has been 12 years since that rainy July morning when I came here, and since then I have always come ‘back’ to Bombay. When I came back to the country after 4 years, Bombay it was again. Leading the life of the typical urban nomad (5 cities in the last 8 years, parents moving base twice in the last 4 years), this is the only place I call home, the only place I have roots in.

Bombay is where I took my first tottering steps into adulthood, fell in love for the first time, had my first heartbreak, got my first paycheck, met the woman who would later become my wife, did experiments with hairstyles, music and food, discovered the joys of alcohol, made the best of friends, and encountered despair and death for the first time. We have shared experiences of all kinds, and by those experiences, our identities have mingled together – Bombay is a part of my identity, a common thread that runs through large parts of my life, even the parts when I did not live in this city.

There is another reason. Yes, Bombay is home for me. But Bombay is also a city which is very welcoming of immigrants, of outsiders, of people who were not born here. In my admittedly limited experience, I have not seen any other city which is as welcoming of outsiders. Everyday, at railway stations, ports, airports, bus terminals, it lets in millions of people for the first time, with just one piece of advice – work hard, follow your dreams, do your ‘dhanda’ and you are welcome here. And the new initiates take that advice to heart. I am also one among them, and ply my trade here.

I call myself an ‘un-rooted’ person, everytime I grow roots someplace, it is time to up and go away. Except Bombay. Here the roots stay. In the city of immigrants.

What better name than ‘Man in Bombay’?