History of Mumbai

History of Mumbai I'm sitting on the 20th floor of one of the 16 buildings in the Dreams Complex in Bhandup, Mumbai. One of the readers is thinking how a super senior citizen in India can put his location map in the public domain. No worries. By the time someone reaches here, my location will be different. Chinta mat karo... proceed with reading. There are 8 flats on each floor. So about 2000 plus residential units, with more than 90 percent with an average occupancy of 3. The vast area where the complex is, was the space occupied by Automobile Products of India (API) which produced essentially Lambretta scooters (I owned one of them during 1974 to 1990's). We are still using the water from some the borewells which were used by the factory. The large compounds in Mumbai earlier occupied by factories and cloth mills are now office and residential complexes and business centres. Geography and landmarks keep changing. On last Sunday afternoon, when we were moving out to watch a movie in the nearby Magnet Mall, there was a crowd in the ground floor lobby. Stopped to know what was happening. Body of one of the occupants of my building was waiting for the hearse for its last journey. I couldn't locate any familiar face in the crowd. The person had recently taken a flat on rent. After waiting for few minutes, we moved on. That's Mumbai life. Mumbai : Looking back https://www.britannica.com/place/Mumbai Excerpts : "Located on Maharashtra’s coast, Mumbai is India’s most-populous city, and it is one of the largest and most densely populated urban areas in the world. It was built on a site of ancient settlement, and it took its name from the local goddess Mumba—a form of Parvati, the consort of Shiva—whose temple once stood in what is now the southeastern section of the city. It became known as Bombay during the British colonial period, the name possibly an Anglicized corruption of Mumbai or perhaps of Bom Baim (“Good Harbor”), supposedly a Portuguese name for the locale. The name Mumbai was restored officially in 1995, although Bombay remained in common usage." Media Response The Editor The Economic Times Chat Room December 2, 2024 Focus on service* This refers to the report "Banks up Staff Background Checks as Mule A/Cs and Frauds Balloon" (Economic Times, December 2). While welcoming this timely move, this response is to draw attention of the top level management functionaries of banks, government and supervisory and regulatory bodies to a couple of other allied aspects of management. With the day-to-day functioning becoming more and more technology-dependent, the human faces of all services sectors including banking are fading out. This is affecting the less tech-savvy elders more. If banks are interested in keeping the senior citizens as a source of dependable long term deposits, they may have to deploy one or two officials in bigger branches to guide/help senior citizens to operate machines which accept deposits of cash/cheques and update passbooks and carry out other transactions. M G WARRIER Mumbai *Not published