Nivedita Dey recalls the glory days of Mumbai’s bygone Cafe Samovar, where for decades, friends, family, strangers, students, lawyers, homemakers, thinkers, creative souls, Bollywood icons, Marxists, liberals, and more diverse groups of humans huddled over cups of cutting chai.

Photo Gallery: Mumbai offers a heady balance of preserving the past while moving forward at breakneck speed, of the iconic, the beautifully mundane, and everything else in between. Here are snapshots from the Maximum City over the past decade - by Karan Madhok