A few industries are inextricably linked to Mumbai’s history, identity and its current status as the financial capital of the country, not the least of which are textiles, films and sugar. One man — native to the city, born in 1875 to parents who moved there 16 years after the inauguration of the first train — grew from a clerk to a mogul in the textile industry, went on to fund some of the first films made in India and set up one of the earliest sugar factories in Maharashtra: Vaman Sridhar Apte. His story, in many ways, is the story of Bombay. Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s Tatyasaheb: The Story of a Bombay Entrepreneur, in trying to piece together the former, paints a rich picture of the latter, too. The motivation to write her great-grandfather’s biography though came from a much simpler instinct: wanting to know where she came from. Who amongst us has not wondered about those who came before us? Apte-Rahm’s Tatyasaheb is an attempt at precisely that — an exercise in understanding one’s heritage.…