In the looking, I found the cities within me.

It was when I realised I had a new nationality: I was in exile. I am an adulterous resident: when I am in one city, I am dreaming of the other. I am an exile; citizen of the country of longing.

Each person’s life is dominated by a central event, which shapes and distorts everything that comes after it and, in retrospect, everything that came before.

I am an exile; citizen of the country of longing.

A city like Bombay, like New York, that is a recent creation on the planet and does not have a substantial indigenous population, is full of restless people. Those who have come here have not been at ease somewhere else. And unlike others who may have been equally uncomfortable wherever they came from, these people got up and moved. As I have discovered, having once moved, it is difficult to stop moving.

Bombay as a confident, welcoming city that takes in a million new people a year, that those who want to harm the country pick Bombay. Other Indian cities, such as Delhi and Varanasi, have also been bombed recently, but Bombay's significance as the financial capital of the country means that it's the best target for terrorists who're unhappy with India's progress.

While I was writing my book, I got a top police official in Bombay an invitation to study terrorism at the Rand Institute in Washington DC. This would have helped the city enormously, as he was the detective who cracked the '93 blasts case. But the commissioner declined to let his subordinate take up the offer from Rand, because of his fear that it was CIA-affiliated. That culture of suspicion needs to change; India needs to learn how other democracies fight terror.