Affairs: Neighbourhood enclave / Mumbai
Why Colaba is the jewel of India’s second city
In the first of a new series on urban enclaves – places that have their own powerful dynamism – we head to a former colonial redoubt in Mumbai (or still Bombay to locals).
At the southernmost tip of Mumbai, people congregate along the shoreline, seeking respite from the tropical morning heat. This is Colaba, a former island that’s now one of four peninsulas dangling from India’s most populous megacity into the Arabian Sea. Once a haven for jackals and pirates, Colaba became a mercantile enclave that blossomed into a jewel of the British Raj in the late 19th century after colonial authorities reclaimed land in the strait separating it from the rest of what was then, and still is (for many locals at least), known as…
