Bombay- the name conjures up a juxtaposition of contrasting images. It is the city of the affluent and the poor, the skyscrapers and the slums, old style Gothic architecture and new style buildings. It is a city with vast ethnic diversity and a truly cosmopolitan population with different customs and languages. It is a city that accepts and welcomes all but is at the same time indifferent and respects privacy. It is the hub of industrial activity and the commercial capital of the country. It is a city in which the businessman, the artist, the worker, and the intellectual feel at home.

The capital of Maharashtra State, 'Mumbai, as the city councillors would like it to be known to the world today in acknowledgement of its patron goddess 'Mumbadevi' is affluent, modern, densely urbanised, and one of India's fastest-growing cities. Bombay is a gritty, impossible, and unforgetable place. Bombay is a mixture of different communities. It is a one-of-a-kind city with a cosmopolitan personality. It is an image of intense activity. It is a city ever in search of modernity but never forgetting its past. It is a city of towering skyscrapers and overcrowded slums. It is a city of bursting crowds and rustling traffic, yet it is a city of great orderliness. Child beggers, pavement sleepers, sprawling urban slums, noise, tangled traffic, skyscrapers, fashionable apartment blocks The very poor, who have emigrated from villages in the surrounding regions to seek a better fortune, and the very rich, including merchants, industrialists, and film stars It is also, in a very special sense, India's most cosmopolitan city. The Indian subcontinent is home to people as diverse, ethnically and in terms of languages and customs, as all the countries of Europe put together, and no city is more representative of this diversity than Bombay, to which people from almost all parts of the country have gravitated. The charm of Bombay lies in the cheerful warmth with which it accepts and welcomes all. It is a city that respects your privacy and your right to live as you please.