How Mumbai, the city that never sleeps, has been rendered somnolent

Neither rain nor riot, not even a terror attack such as the one on 26/11 or the 12 bomb blasts that ripped through it in 1993, have managed to clamp the city down. But this time the city has curled up

At a small gathering one mildly wintry evening not so long ago, talk veered, as usual, to the city’s incorrigible traffic. A 15-minute journey took me an hour, said a friend. Another lamented that the city’s roads were perhaps the most overworked in the world. Never empty, never out of use.
 

Neither rain nor riot, not even a terror attack such as the one on 26/11 or the 12 bomb blasts that ripped through it in 1993, have managed to clamp the city down. Each time, Mumbai’s indomitable spirit has prevailed — marched into offices, jostled its way into packed