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.

Since then I have kept returning to Mumbai occasionally as a correspondent, at other times as a theatre-person and twice - or maybe thrice -- as a Goa-bound tourist. In the late Eighties, I remember staying at the Salvation Army Hostel very close to the Taj and taking the suburban train to Dadar to enjoy avant garde theatre at Chhabildas. I remember a fantastic evening when Sulbha Deshpande played her heart out in a subtly crafted doctor-patient romance -- a Marathi translation of Aleksei Arbuzov's engaging play Do You Turn Somersaults? I remember a few days later I lost my purse and almost a month's salary in the Deccan Queen on my way back from Pune and journalist-turned-dramatist, Arun Sadhu, bailed me out with a loan of eight hundred rupees.

I also remember a very rainy Mumbai night when a Muslim waiter with roots in UP's Azamgarh walked a drenched kilometre from his restaurant to my hotel doorsteps, all the time sheltering me under his big-hearted umbrella. I remember accompanying Sunil Dutt on his campaign trail many years later in the Nineties when a restless breeze in seaside Versova brought in an unabashed smell of fish. I remember long nights at Hotel Kemps Corner near Peddar Road when fellow journalists, who practise magic, produced bottles of darkly smiling rum even when the clock had struck an embarrassed 1 a.m. I remember shaking hands with late playwright and my theatre idol Vijay Tendulkar in Bandra years ago. I remember haunting pictures taken by photographers Soumitra Ghosh and Edwin Crasto after the '92 riots. I remember Pramod Mahajan giving me fifteen reasons why he'd have a cakewalk over Gurudas Kamat in an election, which he ultimately lost. I remember the Worli taxi driver who refused to take money for the extra kilometres he had driven after taking a wrong left turn.

These moments, to recall just a few, have survived in my mind because of their complete innocence and rare honesty. There's need to reiterate the axiom that innocence and honesty retain their warmth only in an atmosphere of forgiveness. Mumbai has never been pampered like Delhi. She has allowed her life to be slowed down by traffic jams; she has quietly embraced the slums and has been affectionate even towards a bloody underworld. In the process, Mumbai has been robbed, savaged, brutalized but the city of endurance has never lost her sense of humour or her rare ability to infuse new life into what appears to be rotten and decadent on the surface.

That is why a crisis reveals the strength and the sheer audacity of Mumbai's sternum. In 2001, a day after 9/11, journalist Nancy Gibbs writing the cover story for the Time magazine made a significant observation, "On a normal day we value heroism because it is uncommon. On Sept. 11, we valued heroism because it was everywhere." A year ago, on 26/11, that heroism was a contagious blessing across Mumbai. It had infected people in Leopold Cafe, In Taj, in Trident, Chhatrpati Shivaji terminus and everywhere the gun-toting killers went.

The story of an assistant sub-inspector sums up that Mumbai spirit. Standing armed with a baton and nothing else at Girgaum Chowpatty that fateful night, Tukaram Gopal Ombale held on to Ajmal Kasab even as the terrorist pumped seven bullets into his body. He held on to the lethal AK 47 with his bare hands while he bled and was drained of life every passing second. Kasab was overpowered by Ombale's colleagues, but not before a dying Ombale had made a defiant statement which only Mumbai can make. Only Mumbai knows what it means to bounce back, what it means to be quietly resilient, how to make a supreme sacrifice look ordinary, mundane.

Inside a fire-ravaged Taj Mahal Hotel another man put duty ahead of family, personal life. General Manager Karambir Singh Kang closely monitored the security of his guests for hours on end and continued to help out even after he was aware that his wife Neeti and sons Uday and Samar had died during the siege. Kang, a hotel executive, possibly surprised himself with his valour and dedication that night. He simply stuck to his job and kept personal tragedy away from the realm of official responsibilities. Mumbai knows that you have to stand up to a crisis and that you have to grapple with it and suffer if necessary. Mumbai knows that death is a part of life and that you have to carry on. Mumbai is the name of a journey. She's the city of beginnings without end.

This 26/11, I won't be in Mumbai. Mumbai will be in my mind because the rest of us, elsewhere in India, have to think Mumbai, act Mumbai and dream Mumbai. Heroism is about self-belief and Mumbai never had a shortage of it.