India, June 7 -- For a city like Mumbai whose contours twist and change with routine frequency, documenting its evolution can be daunting.

Researcher Divya Ravindranath, who works at the intersection of informal labour, gender and urban health, recognized that literature has already laid this groundwork-through the pre-Partition world of sex workers and migrants in the short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto, the chaotic, intrusive chawl life in Kiran Nagarkar's Ravan and Eddie (1995), the murky opium-dazed Bombay of Jeet Thayil's Narcopolis (2012), or the stimulating poetry addas in Jerry Pinto's coming-of-age novel, The Education of Yuri (2022)-all sights and sounds once commonplace, but now waning from the city's consciousness. Reading fi...