You can take the girl out of Bandra, never Bandra out of the girl. This Queen of Suburbs bonds uncommonly. Bandra girls, even generations apart, exult on finding each other years later. On a walk through Ranwar village to track vintage East Indian homes left standing in the alleys of my childhood, I bump into Teresa Marquis outside the oratory chapel. She taught me music at St Joseph’s. It’s 40 seasons since, yet my mind leaps straight to a New Seekers’ song we warbled with her — ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony…’

Perfect harmony: words which echo the rhythmic lilt of life from the time of early East Indian settlers in Bandra, that scenic Salsette Island tip inhabited by Koli fishermen and farmers. Bandra being with the British East India Company (the rest of Bombay went to the Portuguese) the English converted its ethnic Marathi families to Christianity. Paddy cultivators became thriving proprietors of fields fully fertile, strategically situated. Commerce bustled between the mainland and British Bombay by ferry from Bandra port, guarded with a fort still perched at Land’s End.