The city has naturally changed a lot since I came three-and-a-half decades ago. But the fact that women can travel alone at all times has remained a constant. The thing that has changed is the business of change.

Bombay auto drivers have always been outstanding at giving exact change, never rounding off the total, which is quite something given auto fares are usually odd numbers. This was true even through that one phase in the 1990s when there was a change shortage. At the time, it became common for shopkeepers to give you a toffee in lieu of the lacking coins, so that a kismi toffee was routinely to be found melting to gunk in my change purse. I knew one shopkeeper who gave us bus tickets to make up the amount. Which seems to be part of the golden age of public transport in Bombay’s history.

This business of exact change was in essence a facet of Mumbai’s professional self-image — attending to all the elements of one’s dhanda — and a certain egalitarianism at the city’s core. That said, I still have PTSD from the toffee currency days and a fear of being without change, laced with demonetisation terror. Specifically, I hoard twenty-rupee coins and fifty rupee notes, but perhaps all this is TMI.