Soon the inevitable happened. Renu fell in love with another ‘outsider’, the building sweeper who swept our nanny off her feet with talk of being a businessman. They got married to take a shot at living happily ever after in that ultimate Mumbai fantasy: a 150 sq ft slum house at Rs 1500 per month.

Still, it was Double Income No Kids. (He got a job as an office boy with a real estate broker, selling apartments at Rs 35,000 a square foot; she worked in them, making gourmet dishes for memsahibs like me, who can’t boil an egg to save their lives.)

Then last year, Renu rashly emptied her entire bank balance —squirreled over ten tireless years — borrowed enough to keep herself permanently noosed to the grindstone, and bought her decade-old dream: a 350 sq ft flat in a remote Mumbai suburb. It has a separate hall and bedroom, a private bath (oh luxury!), and real cabinets in the kitchen. Best of all, the building watchman calls her ‘madam’.

Renu has no idea how she is going to repay her loan, honour her monthly outgoings, foot the power bill, or shell out the water tax. But all that is irrelevant, mere tedious detail. Because, you see, for this daughter of a widowed wage labourer, only the dream matters; the dream of being a Mumbaikar. Yet, somewhere in a dusty village hundreds of miles away is a hut she still calls home.

farah.baria@expressindia.com