foetid

Hardscrabble Mumbaikars have little energy to spare lamenting lost glories; most are more concerned with the desperate need for housing, collapsing railway overpasses and foetid monsoon floods.

Now the area, previously foetid marshland, has been transformed, with children playing in the turquoise water, couples sunbathing on the gravel beach and families strolling to the old town for burek, a Bosnian meat pastry.

They too could stay connected - and as the kit advanced to the word processors and "disc fax" machines of the 1980s, speech-writing, campaigning and reporting all lived and breathed the same fervid, sometimes foetid, air.

While the horror of the trenches has been well documented, what happened beneath the battlefields - in the foetid, dark, cramped, and frequently wet tunnels - is less well known, and arguably far more frightening.

Victoria Square, the major meeting point for migrants and refugees, has seen hundreds sleeping outdoors in foetid, dank conditions.