Mumbai

The seven islands off the Konkan coast held fishing villages of the Koli people, the Elephanta temples across the harbour and, from the 14th century, the rule of the Gujarat Sultanate. Portugal took them under a treaty of 1534 and called the anchorage Bom Bahia; in 1661 they passed to the English crown as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry, and Charles II leased them to the East India Company in 1668. The Company fortified the harbour, and successive engineering schemes joined the islands into one landmass over the following two centuries.

Trade made the city. Cotton, opium and shipbuilding brought Parsi, Gujarati, Bohra and Baghdadi Jewish merchants; the American Civil War cut off supplies of American cotton in the 1860s and sent Bombay's exports and speculation soaring. The profits paid for the Victorian Gothic public buildings around the Oval Maidan, the railway terminus of 1887, universities, hospitals and, once the walls came down, a planned city. Mills spread north through Girangaon, and migrants came from across India to work them; Art Deco flats and cinemas lined the newly reclaimed Back Bay in the 1930s.

Bombay was a centre of nationalist politics, from the founding meeting of the Indian National Congress in 1885 to the Quit India resolution of 1942. After independence it became the capital of Maharashtra in 1960 following the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. The textile strike of 1982 broke the mill economy; communal riots followed the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992–93, and bomb attacks struck in 1993, 2006 and 2008. The city was renamed Mumbai in 1995, after the goddess Mumbadevi, and the mill lands became towers.

Mumbai is the home of Hindi cinema, which has shaped the city's image of itself since the studios of the 1930s and 1940s; production companies, studios and film families cluster in the western suburbs, and film music plays from taxis and shop fronts everywhere. The city also carries a long tradition of Marathi theatre, Hindustani classical concerts in the cool season, jazz that arrived through the 1930s dance bands, and a lively contemporary art and gallery scene around Kala Ghoda and Colaba.

Its communities are unusually varied even for India: Marathi speakers and the Koli fishing families who were here first, Gujarati and Marwari traders, Parsis whose philanthropy built much of the old city, Catholics of Bandra and the East Indian community, Muslims of the older central districts, and migrants from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and the south. Ganesh Chaturthi is the festival that belongs to the whole city, with neighbourhood pandals, processions and the immersion of images in the sea; Navratri, Eid, Christmas and Diwali follow one another through the calendar.

Mumbaikars take pride in a reputation for hard work, punctuality and a certain directness, and in the way the city keeps running through monsoon floods and worse. The dabbawalas, who carry thousands of home-cooked lunches across the railway network each day, are the standing example. Cricket is the shared obsession, played on every maidan and followed at the Wankhede Stadium.

About 12.5 million people lived in the city at the 2011 census and more than 20 million in the wider metropolitan region, one of the largest urban areas in the world. Space is the defining problem: property prices in the south rival those of far richer cities, about two-fifths of the population lives in informal settlements, and Dharavi, between the two railway lines, is among the largest and most industrious of them, full of small workshops for leather, pottery and recycling.

The economy is financial and commercial. The Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange are here, along with the headquarters of many Indian corporations, the film and television industry, diamond and textile trading, a major port and, since the mills closed, offices and malls on the old industrial land at Lower Parel and Worli.

The working day is built around the commute: crowded trains from the northern suburbs before dawn, the dabbawala lunch delivery at midday, and a long journey home. Infrastructure has changed quickly in recent years with new metro lines, a coastal road and the trans-harbour bridge, but traffic, air quality, flooding during the monsoon and the cost of housing remain the issues that dominate public debate.

Mumbai's street food is famous across India. Vada pav, a spiced potato fritter in a soft bread roll with chutney, is the city's own invention, eaten standing up outside stations; pav bhaji is a mash of spiced vegetables with buttered rolls; bhelpuri, sevpuri and pani puri belong to the chaat carts on the beaches; and misal pav, a fiery sprouted-bean curry, comes from inland Maharashtra. Frankie rolls and Bombay sandwiches are the office lunch.

The sea supplies Koli and Malvani cooking: pomfret and surmai fried in semolina, prawn curries thickened with coconut, crab, and bombil, the fish known as Bombay duck, dried or battered. Kokum, a sour fruit, flavours sol kadhi, the pink coconut-milk drink served after a fish meal. Parsi kitchens contribute dhansak, mutton stewed with lentils and rice, patra ni machhi steamed in banana leaf and berry pulao, while the Irani cafés serve bun maska, cutting chai and caramel custard.

Gujarati and Jain vegetarian thalis are everywhere, as are south Indian idli and dosa counters that have been in the city for generations. The old Muslim districts around Mohammed Ali Road cook kebabs, nihari and, in Ramadan, malpua and phirni late into the night. Sweets run from Maharashtrian puran poli and modak to kulfi and falooda, and the local drink with a meal is often nimbu pani or masala chai.