I grew up with the idea that the city I have always called home was a place of magic and potential. The movies reinforced that notion regularly, regurgitating stock footage of migrants turning up at Victoria Terminus, their meagre belongings on trembling shoulders as they took tentative steps into a place that writhed with possibility. They were like lambs, watched by hawks disguised as cab drivers, as they made their way through the crowd, eyes blinking in the sun. I believed in that footage because we were all told to hold up the image of Bombay as a city unlike any other, a shining light in the darkness.

We were told about starlets who turned up daily, armed with dreams of fame and fortune, although we all knew that there were only a few lucky ones who found everything they had hoped for even as a million others fell through the cracks. I could imagine young men and women across India focusing on the ones who made it, because optimism keeps us alive, and sometimes thought of those who were forced to return empty-handed: the ones no one talked about.