My first experience of Bombay was that of cognitive dissonance. This was partly due to the fact that my imagination of Bombay as a city was shaped, in substantial measure, by the newly emerging body of English literature based on the city and partly because the first place I was acquainted with, back in 2006, was Hiranandani Gardens, a planned township in Powai. I wondered, standing in the central plaza of this surreal space, if the small men and women of Rushdie and Nagarkar, Mehta and Roberts, lived in Ambrosia, Florentine, Kensington or Evita, few of the creatively named buildings here. Did they work in global financial companies like CRISIL and Deloitte, or the notorious chemical and drug manufacturer, Bayer?