What is now the bustling metropolis of Mumbai was a scattered group of islands just a few centuries ago. The accounts, legends and facts surrounding its 150-plus years of reclaiming land from the sea is a reminder of how this came to be known as “the City of Dreams.”
In the mid-17th century, Bombay was a collection of seven major islands, some of which were highly historic—the Isle of Bombay, Colaba, Old Womans Island, Mahim, Mazagaon, Parel, and Worli. So when the British took control of Bombay from the Portuguese in 1665, in hopes of using the strategic area to generate wealth, they found less than 20 square miles of land in their possession.