North wind.

Vedilal Kanojia, 55, keeps his head low as he walks through the lanes in Dadar to deliver a bundle of freshly cleaned clothes to a hospital. "I try not to attract too much attention. A few months ago I was a Mumbaikar. Now I am a 'bhaiyya'," he says. Originally from Uttar Pradesh, generations of the Kanojia family have grown up at Dhobi Ghat near Mahalaxmi Station. And like the Kanojias, the washerman's colony is manned by migrants from UP and Bihar who have settled in Mumbai for almost a century. Established in the 1880s by Britishers to do the laundry of viceroys, the dhobis of Mumbai still clean clothes manually. Around 750 families work on 709 flagging stones at the ghat. Six hundred of them are from north India. Santosh Kanojia, secretary of Dhobi Kalyan and Audyogik Vikas Co-operative Society, the registered society of members of Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat has his facts in place. "Outsiders? We are the original inhabitants of Mumbai after the Kolis," he argues. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]