City of Dreams

Five centuries after the first Europeans arrived, Bombay is once again attracting fortune-seekers from far away. Yana Gupta's journey began in Brno, Czechoslovakia in 1988 at age nine. That year, her mother stitched money and jewelry into her two daughters' clothes and took them on holiday to Croatia. "On the bus on the way back to Czechoslovakia," remembers Gupta, "we got down somewhere and went into some forest. The idea was to get to Germany. But the border guards caught us." The next year, Václav Havel led Czechoslovakia's revolution and life there became less oppressive. But Gupta's mother had sowed the seeds of escape deep in her daughter. By 15, she was modeling in Prague. By 17, it was Milan. And by 19, she was sharing a flat in Tokyo with a group of models. "It was a great experience," says Gupta. "I was learning English and making money and when I was 21, I came to India for a vacation, met someone in an ashram and in two months I married him."

Gupta later separated from her husband. But she stuck with Bombay, and the city quickly became attached to her. She did her first fashion shoot in January 2001; by April she was signed as the face of Lakme cosmetics. Today she is India's top model, representing Christian Dior, 7-Up and Kingfisher Airlines. She has her own annual calendar, a song-and-dance show, and is a fixture on the gossip pages. The most prominent of the foreigners who have moved to Bombay, she is far from alone. While the last official count in 2005 estimated that there were just 30,000 foreigners working in India, that number is rocketing. Delhi-based market-research firm Evalueserve says another 120,000 are needed by 2010 to fill the skills shortage in the IT industry alone, and Bombay real estate agents report a run on luxury properties sparked by new foreign arrivals. The reason for the influx, says Gupta, is that anyone, in any profession, can rise faster and higher in Bombay than almost anywhere else. "That's the thing about Bombay," she says. "It's the place of possibility."

Shanghai may be years ahead today. But some argue that Bombay is better placed in the long run. Stock investor Jhunjhunwala says that in India's favor are the phenomena that all developed economies are democracies, and that bad democratic governments, like markets, eventually tend to get their act together. Crucially, he says, India's boom is about bottom-up enterprise and doesn't rely on enlightened policymaking: "It's people who make countries, not governments."

People make cities too. People, and their hopes. Hope is the reason Gupta stays in Bombay, despite feeling sick from diesel fumes each time she crosses the city. Samant says it's why the people of Bombay pulled together and did not lose heart in the wake of last July's disastrous flooding. "Look at Dharavi," Samant adds, speaking of Asia's largest slum. "The place has a GDP of $1 billion a year. Dharavi makes you realize everyone has a stake in keeping Bombay going." If hope is not to turn to despair, one day all those millions of expectations will have to be met. But for now the City of Dreams is living up to its name.