Answer:

Moloch, as we all know, was the Canaanite idol to whom childr en were sacniced, often

as burnt offenngs In 1996, when my Geman nend Henning Stegmull er and I made a

film on Mumbai for Second German Televiion for their series on emerging megacities

Hennang thought of the title Geliebte Moloch to evoke the spint of Bombay

Yet this tatle is not how he, a sympathetic outsider, saw the aty While making the fim, I

interviewed on camera a cross-section of Bombayites asking them very smple questions

When did you first come to Bombay What made you come here? How do you find life

here? What do you thunk of the FUTURE of thas caty7 As we went around the caty. captunng

its hyperactive spinit in its myn ad moving images, we accosted VENDORS, small

shopkeepers, bollywood superstars aænd film directors, prostututes, business executives, ad

ilm makers, wnters and intell e ctuals, hospital nurses, butchers, ishmengers-an entire

random cross-section of people at work and people on the move, and some temporanily

resting Most of them were unanimous in expressing their fatal atracti on to India's Big

Apple Or should one change the metaphor and call it India's HAPUS Mango0?

I myself have had a lifelong love-hate relationship wth the city I was not born here but

my father was My grandfather made a fortune here in his rather bnieflife that ended

abruptly in the early 1920s He was the only one in my famaly (-- that hals from the

Konkan coast but sought to make a living in the pnincely state of BARODA where my

grandfather, faced wath the prospect of feedang a lage famuly on a small piece ofland

granted to his amcestors by Shivayı the Great, migrated-)to make a fínanaal success

My father re-emigrated to Maharashtra from Gujarat, to Bambay whi ch then was the

capital of both the present states and parts of Kanatakca as well Anyone who is nealy

broke anywhere in the subcontinent thinks of resurecting personal fortune in this

legendary aty t is the poor man's ultimate casino and his last roll of the dice

I came to Bombay in 1951-52 at the age of twelve, on the verge of adol escence I came to

Bombay with my younger brother in advance of the rest of the famaly to start schooling in

anew environment I LIVED with my father's elder sister's family in Dadar and went to the

Indian Education Society's Boys' High School known simply as 'Pnto Villa' after the

building that housed it This was near the magnificent landmaæk Portuguese Church

hentage building since replaced by one of Charles Corea's early architectural

experiments. The next year, my family moved into Bambay in afat in a newly

constructed building at Sion, which was then in the process ofrehabilitating parttion

refugees from Sind Sion and Chembur were then small outposts on the fringe of the

compact isl and aity, still very colonial in its downtown twlight of Bntish India's Urbs

Prima Iindica The population of Bombay was then barely around 300,000, less than a

fourth of the current sgure