City of Dreams
http://www.time.com/time/asia/covers/501060619/bombay.html
A magnet for entrepreneurs, artists, jet-setters and foreign money,
Bombay is the crucible of the new India
By Alex Perry
Posted Monday, June 12, 2006; 20:00 HKT
The streets are wet with the dew of the coming monsoon as Rajeev Samant
unveils his latest triumph in midtown Bombay. The Tasting Room is a
soft-lit tapas bar built into a high-end furniture store in the city's
old textile district. The idea is to showcase Samant's range of Indian
wines in an environment that oozes class and cash, and with bottles
costing twice the average Indian weekly wage, Samant means it to be
exclusive. Tonight the 39-year-old founder of one of the country's
largest vintners, Sula Vineyards, is hosting a group from Insead, the
French business school, who are visiting India to see what all the buzz
is about. Over Samant's Chenin Blanc and Reserve Shiraz, a handful of
Bombay's traders and venture capitalists swap gossip with the students
about who met whom when actor Will Smith and Hollywood mogul Jeffrey
Katzenberg were in town a few months back. "You're so lucky to be here
now," says Samant. "This is an incredible time. It's all happening.
Right here, right now."
If there's a crucible of the new India, it's Bombay. Bangalore gets
plenty of attention for its IT campuses and dotcom billionaires, but
you wouldn't confuse Seattle with New York. Bombay is where the
nation's first Rolls-Royce showroom opened in late May. It's home to
the Bombay Stock Exchange Sensitive Index, which-even after its
recent nosedive-has more than doubled in the past two years. It's
where 40% of Indian tax is paid, where 40% of international flights
land, where Time Out chose to launch a local edition and where Enrique
Iglesias played India. It's the hometown of crime lords and Bollywood
stars, sprawling slums and Manhattan-price condos, and of some of the
hippest clubs and bars from Beirut to Bangkok. And with a population of
18.4 million, it's a world of its own. It hosts conventions for
Japanese bankers and Brazilian anti-globalization protesters. It is
where the U.S. Army sources its kitchen staff for the war in Iraq, and
where your credit-card details might be stored or stolen. It's where
club DJs steal back bhangra, the music of the Punjab, from London and
New York. And it's a highbrow haven where British-Indian novelist
Vikram Seth mixed the sensibilities of Charles Dickens with a little
Indian spice to make the modern classic A Suitable Boy. To know Bombay
is to know modern India. It is the channel for a billion ambitions. And
it's globalization you can touch and walk around, a giant city where
change is pouring in and rippling out around the globe.
Mumbai
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