Seven Islands, One City

Sidharth Jain

Bombay was not founded; it was financed, flooded, gambled on and rebuilt. This audio edition of Seven Islands, One City tells the story of the speculators, builders and rebels who turned seven marshy islands into India's greatest city between 1850 and 1949. By Sidharth Jain.

Episodes

  1. Nov 2

    3. The Train That Made the City

    On 16 April 1853 a crowd at Bori Bunder watched the first passenger train in India leave for Thane. This episode tells how the railway remade Bombay's trade, its land and its sense of what it could become.

  2. Nov 2

    2. The Port Without a King

    In the 1740s the great port of Surat was decaying, its quays full of goods nobody came to buy. This episode follows how lawlessness and collapse in Surat sent merchants, capital and ambition south to Bombay.

  3. Nov 2

    1. How the Sea Was Sewn Shut

    For most of its early history, Bombay kept flooding. Beginning with the Great Breach at Worli in 1782, this episode tells how the sea was walled out and the islands slowly stitched together into a single city.

  4. Nov 2

    0b. Prologue: Before the City

    Before there was a city, there was water: seven malarial islands, the Koli fishermen who knew them, and the Portuguese and English who barely wanted them. This prologue shows how Bombay beat its fever not with medicine but by building over the conditions that produced it.

  5. Nov 2

    0. About this Book

    In a personal note, Sidharth Jain explains why he wrote this book: a childhood spent walking through Churchgate, Fort and Marine Drive, and the questions that followed. Who built Bombay, who paid for it, and how did seven malarial islands become India's great city?

  • 5 Episodes

About

Bombay was not founded; it was financed, flooded, gambled on and rebuilt. This audio edition of Seven Islands, One City tells the story of the speculators, builders and rebels who turned seven marshy islands into India's greatest city between 1850 and 1949. By Sidharth Jain.

Information