Mumbai, Migrants and Myth Making

Life in Mumbai, a city also known as the financial capital of India, raises questions of survival and negotiations on an everyday basis. The chapter presents a glimpse of what it means to survive in the busy intersections of making a life in Mumbai. It illustrates how the dialectics between the migrant labour and the city in the physical world are mediated through myths to conceptualise the city and make meaning of their experiences. These oft-repeated myths, when deconstructed, raise questions related to their engagement and negotiations with the lived materiality in the city. This reinterpretation of lived reality through multiple narratives helps make sense of the city. They compete and often contradict each other but originate from similar lived experiences and the social reality of migrant labour. The chapter explores what these narratives convey about the city, its fluid boundaries and migrants’ renewed attempts to belong to it.