Mumbai cabs: The wandering eye

The black-and-yellow cabs are truly moving monuments of Mumbai. The first of these antique vehicles rolled out into the city’s streets decades ago. And yet today, inspite of excessive exhaust fumes and fading fuel tanks, these four wheelers continue to ply Mumbai’s citizens around. These wonderful old cars are indeed museums in their own right - each interior adorned by quaint artefacts and embroidered upholstery of a bygone era. With the recent rape of a young girl in an Uber-rented vehicle in Delhi, the focus is now firmly on background checks for all of the 44,500 of the city’s black and yellow drivers.

But these relics have fought many battles and survived.