What kind of city do we want? In those years, actually, the question was: What kind of India do we want?” says Shirish Patel.

There is a well-worn tale, and its varying versions, among architects, civil engineers, urbanists and government bodies, of how Navi Mumbai was born. It was the mid-1960s. The Maharashtra government was nudged to look eastwards from Bombay, to the districts of Thane and Raigad. Industries had started coming up in the Thane-Belapur belt; work on the first bridge, now called the Old Vashi Bridge, to connect the island city to the eastern mainland, had begun. Bombay had started to sag under the weight of its own glory — its population count going up and quality of life dipping.