As far as builders like 45-year-old Mohammed Farooq Ashraf go, business in Mumbra hasn’t been too bad since 1993. Sitting in Noor Manzil, just off the main road, he says, “Land prices soared after the Bombay riots, the population of this settlement was about three-and-a half lakh but it nearly doubled when those whose homes were destroyed came here to settle down wanting to escape the misery.” So the price of a one-room-with-kitchen used to be Rs 40,000 before 1993. Today, it’s nearly Rs 3 lakh.

This could be just any Mumbai real-estate story.

But the reality is that property built here is linked to life and property destroyed somewhere else. So there you have it: this vast sprawl, more potholes than road, more power-cuts than power. Credit-card providers and home-loan bank lists call it a “grey zone.” Means, institutionally, it’s off the economic radar in the country’s financial heart.

If the isolation of Muslims in a city needed one physical symbol, it’s here in Mumbra, about 40 km off Mumbai in Thane. Ghetto or safe haven? Depends on whom you ask.

Just like in any unplanned Mumbai neighbourhood, it has an endless list of civic problems but talk to residents and you can sense despair rather than hope. For, they seem resigned to the fact that Mumbra will stay the way it is because it’s home to The Victim. Of riots and murder, for over 13 years now. Gujarat was the latest.

Says Ashraf: “In my Jhansi Palace building, there are at least eight families who have shifted base here after the Gujarat riots in 2002.” He, with his son and partner Khalid Ashraf, organizes the Milaad-un-Nabi (Prophet’s birthday) annual procession. Says Khalid Ashraf: “It’s very safe here, even in 1992-3, nothing happened. That’s why all these people flocked here with all they had left. On our Prophet’s birthday celebrations, Hindus on stage receive the procession and arrange the qawwali. The only problem now is that police stations call this sensitive.”

... contd.