We meet author and journalist Sidharth Bhatia at the Royal Yacht Club, a structure and institution as Mumbai as it can be. It seems apt because Bhatia’s new book, Mumbai: A Million Islands, is about this marvellous city we all live in, or aspire to make a home in. It also talks of the relentless way the city has transformed in the past five years. As the coastal road, the Atal Setu, and other constructions have taken over, Bhatia rues the loss of space, memory and history. “The book can be seen as a record of where we are now. The city has been changing, and that’s axiomatic of Mumbai, because it’s already changing. This book may be completely outdated in 15 years — it’s a time capsule. But it’s changing on steroids. People don’t have words to describe what’s happening; everywhere there is dust, there is digging, there are cranes — this affects us on a daily basis. One-time quiet areas like Khar and Malabar — people don’t know how to react. I felt the same. I had to record this.” 

Sitting with Bhatia, whom this writer had the pleasure of working under as Editor, and who is the Founding Editor of The Wire, is cathartic, because it’s like sitting with a die-hard lover of Mumbai. In times where we find more things to complain about this metropolis than appreciate, Mumbaikars like Bhatia are rare. He may be able to point out its flaws in detail, but he also loves the city through thick and thin, and till  death does us all apart. In the book, he talks, and has visited, areas many of us have only heard tales of, never daring to tread beyond our comfort zones. Like Lallubhai Compound, a residential colony made up of 72 buildings, which was created under the Slum Rehabilitation Act, with construction work completed in 2003. “This is where project affected people are moved. Who are they? For example, a road is widened, and the people living on the sides of that road are then shifted. For example, someone I spoke to had been living in a make-shift slum at the GPO. There is no transport there, there is nothing. There was a report of high incidents of TB there. There is no ventilation, and no sewerage. But what’s worse is that these people who have been moved, used to belong to a community where they first stayed. Care has been taken to separate them, so communities break up,” he tells us, his face scrunching up in alarm.