Mumbai

India has always been fixated with Bombay. It is India's archetypal metropolis, imbibing the most extreme of paradoxes. The dream factory is glitzy, home to Bollywood, a thriving commerce industry, the moneyed swish set and some of the country's best educational institutions, and yet it has a convoluted underbelly comprising gangsters, dirt cheap prostitutes, street children and the world's largest slums.

The first thing that will strike you about Bombay is the crowd. It is everywhere and it is always moving, making Bombay a heaving mass of population, buzzing with a nervous energy.

Initially a group of seven islands that were merged together by land reclamation, Bombay has a rich Colonial heritage. An amble through the fort area is testimony to the fact, housing beautiful Gothic-Elizabethan buildings and monuments.

Bombay is essentially an immigrant city, and has a myriad faces. To discover one of them, walk through the city's various maidans. Amidst broken glass, refuse and bottles, the grounds are full of cricket enthusiasts, with each maidan housing several pitches. The air is filled with the crack of the bat, the cheers of the players and numerous balls doing the rounds as seven to ten matches are being played at the same time. Anyone can join in the games.

The distinct collage of Bombay's population is reflected in the shopping. It is an inherent urban city where everything is on offer for everyone; where second hand book bazaars coexist with high-end shopping malls, where flower markets jostle with flea markets, where the quaint antiques market is belligerently housed in an area called the Chor Bazaar (Thieves' Bazaar).

And the street food. You haven't seen Bombay if you haven’t sampled the street food - varied and vivacious, scrumptious and spicy, it will leave you asking for more as your eyes water and ears burn. Wash it down then with a tall glass of juice available all over Bombay at stalls.

Having listed out the essentials, what one has to understand is that Bombay escapes definition. It is a city constantly moving, changing, evolving, and it can be known only by being experienced. It has a resilient character, as seen every day in the thousands of dabbawallas who work tirelessly to ferry lunches across a myriad offices or in its Irani restaurants that are still running, in the face of utter commercialisation.

Everything exaggerated, impossible or unimaginable you might have heard about Bombay is in fact true, and more. Look beyond its glaring disparities and you will discover its seductive spirit that keeps the city alive, making it what it is.