Salute Thee Mumbai

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Some cities are born great, some achieve greatness and others have greatness thrust upon them. Many years ago, just out of my teens, I had alighted from a neat double-decker near Mittal Towers, waited at a bank counter to cash my travellers' cheques and then stared bemusedly at some of India's tallest buildings. I had the twenty-year-old's dreamy eyes, small ambitions permitted under a stifling licence raj and a heart which adored surprises. So, when I reached Nariman Point and gazed at the sea, I could feel poetry invading my prosaic self. Here was a city that beckoned the sea in a delightful arc - as though she was astonished that all that water had finally reached her shores. Mumbai, I realized was born great. I looked back at the milestones of human enterprise behind me, India's early skyscrapers. I realized that the city had also worked for her greatness.....