Bombaywallahs: Bombay People

The story of Bombaywallahs: Bombay People, set in the 1960s, is about the English-speaking Anglophile Indians of Bombay who continued to maintain a Western way of life in the first two decades after Indian independence from Britain in 1947. The legacy of British rule and the English language still dominated the lives and lifestyles of Indian elites in Bombay. They were educated at “English medium” schools in Bombay and additionally may have been educated in England, especially at Oxford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics. The main characters in this story are highly paid managerial executives in Indian and foreign companies in Bombay. The young “foreign-returned” executives working for European and American companies in Bombay were prized trophy “catches” by parents for marriages with their daughters. Higher dowries were offered to net these Westernized “foreign-returned men” who moved in Bombay ’s elite social circles. However, this social system among the English-speaking elites of Bombay was not always smooth and successful as the story of Bombaywallahs will show. There were joys and tragedies in this mix and clash of Eastern and Western cultures.