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There's never a dull moment as you
acquaint yourself better with this slum-strewn and
skyscraper-saturated city, which holds more than 12 million
people, half of whom are homeless. Going back and forth in time,
you touch upon both serious and non-serious issues. The
contributions, which come from a distinguished list of eminent
litterateurs, some of them foreigners, journalists and social
activists like V. S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Jeremy Seabrook,
Behram Contractor and Saadat Manto, take the shape of memoirs,
impressions, or seriously analysed studies and observations of a
city they have long been associated with. A few write-ups, like
those by Pico Iyer and Khushwant Singh, interestingly and
informatively, present the complete flavour of the city,
commenting on its physical attributes, social and cultural
aspects like its heterogeneous mix of races and linguistic
groups "which have little affection for one another"
and it economic attractiveness " for outsiders who hope to
make their fortunes here."
The majority of
the contributors however touch upon a singular subject or
incident — the comparison of city with Paris or the
experiences of a single woman living in a chawl or the
jazz culture of the sixties or the dwindling number of cotton
mills or the dying notes of the Bhendibazar Gharana or the babudom
at its best or the reminiscences of a Parsi woman or the
observation of Muharram by Shia Irani Muslims or the rise of the
Shiv Sena or the mafia culture which is "100 times worse
than that depicted in Satya" — , laying bare more
of Mumbai and its myriad forms.
Each piece of the
anthology presents Mumbai in its varied hues and shades and
captures it from all possible angles. Manto's piece on the
scandalous affairs of Sitara, the dancer from Nepal, is not only
engaging but also freezes for you the spicy goings-on in the
film world in the 1940s.
The anthology
besides giving you a peep of the Bombay of yore, solemnly draws
your attention to some pressing concerns staring the city in the
face. These enjoin you to pause and think where the city is
heading. ‘Clearing the Slums’ by Jeremy Seabrook, a
journalist and campaigner based in London, fittingly highlights
that the policy of the city authorities to create a "sunder
Mumbai" by displacing people only shows how ignorant
they are of economic and social pressures that lead to
urbanisation. Another such stimulating piece of writing is on
the 'encounter' cops of the Mumbai police who are taking on the
underworld head on. They believe, by experience, that "the
only good gangster is the dead gangster."
Expectedly, no
anthology on Mumbai can be complete without touching the riots
of 1993, when "the divided metropolis went to war with
itself." Here you have Suketu Mehta, who grew up in Mumbai
and lives in New York, recounting his visit to the slums ravaged
by riots. An uncomfortably close shot of the macabre killings
comes up as a Shiv sainik graphically describes a man on fire.
He "gets up, falls, runs for his life, falls, gets up,
runs. It is horror. Oil drips from his body, his eyes become
huge`85."
Just when you are
beginning to feel disillusioned and pessimistic about the city,
slated to be the largest in the world in 2020, the anthology
dwells on the hands that reach out from "the train to grab
you on board`85.They do not know that the hand that is reaching
for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or
Brahmin`85.All they know is that you are trying to get to the
city of gold, and that's enough. Come on board, they say. We'll
adjust."
The word addiction
surfaces again even as the voice of Adil Jussawalla, one of the
illustrious contributors, reaches you. "Bombay, for me, is
or has become a destination of the heart. I must stay here with
my hurt."
The anthology with
its assorted ingredients typifies Bombay and its bhel- at
times sweet, at times tangy and caustic, but on the whole highly
palatable.
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