High Street Phoenix

This guide to High Street Phoenix in Mumbai traces the site back to 1905, when the merchant Ramnarain Ruia built a cotton mill on this patch of Lower Parel that ran for decades and shaped the surrounding neighborhood. It follows the mill through the citywide strike of January 1982, led by labor leader Datta Samant, which idled a quarter of a million workers and stretched on for eighteen months. Look up as you listen — an old brick chimney from the original mill still stands somewhere on the compound.