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Author and writer Khushwant Singh erstwhile termed Bombay the “only city” successful India. Calling the remainder “oversized villages”, helium wrote, “It is existent that Bombay has galore much high-rise buildings than immoderate different Indian city: erstwhile you attack it by the oversea it looks similar a miniature New York. It has different things to warrant its metropolis status: it is congested, it has postulation jams astatine each hours of the day, it is highly polluted and galore parts of it stink.”
Bombay oregon Mumbai inactive holds that presumption for different reasons arsenic well. It is possibly the lone metropolis successful India wherever you tin spot Gothic spires and solid skyscrapers successful the blink of an eye. It is the lone metropolis that ne'er sleeps, yet harbours millions of dreams. Bombay is evidently a banker’s treasure trove; it is arsenic a writer’s muse.
In The Only City: Bombay successful Eighteen Stories, assorted writers bring retired the contradictions of this bustling megapolis. “What we person here, successful these pages,” writes Anindita Ghose, successful her editor’s note, “is a postulation of Bombay moments.”
Intimacy successful crowded spaces
These moments are wide to a Mumbaikar astir instantly. In Amrita Mahale’s communicative ‘Aai-Tai’, Sayli, who works successful AI annotation, bumps into her boss, Ananya, connected the thoroughfare wherever she lives. Ananya says she is amazed that she has ne'er seen Sayli before, contempt being her neighbour. But Sayli knows better: successful a sprawling, unequal city, the mediocre conflict for visibility.
In Diksha Basu’s ‘Bollywood, Baby’, an aspiring histrion wears a formal that’s worthy astir fractional her rent. While her begetter remains hopeful that she volition instrumentality location to a “real job” immoderate day, she does each she tin to marque a people successful the glamour world.
In Ghose’s fantabulous ‘Normal Neighbours’, a blessed couple, Mahesh and Aparna, moves into a glitzy apartment. Aparna slips into her caller beingness easily: sipping rootlike juice, going for laps successful the pool, and raising glasses of vino astatine parties. But she becomes tense and snappy erstwhile she realises that not conscionable crushed linen clothes, but spouse swapping excessively is simply a fad for the ace rich.
Author and exertion Anindita Ghose
Sometimes, full stories are Bombay moments. Overcrowded trains spell discomfort oregon adjacent decease for some, but successful Prathyush Parasuraman’s gripping ‘Two Bi Two’, they supply juncture for intersexual gratification. This is simply a metropolis wherever tiny shanties connection small to nary room, truthful intimacy spills into the bid and becomes a nationalist act; a portion of the literal Bombay journey. There is voyeurism arsenic good — bored oregon funny men look on, knowingly but silently, astatine the 2 men’s bodies successful bushed until they are spat retired of the train. In ‘The Hon. Secy’, Kersi Khambatta turns mundane flat fights into a wildly entertaining communicative afloat of humour and over-the-top drama.
The metropolis arsenic witness
Bombay tin beryllium excessively romanticised arsenic a metropolis of upward mobility and hope. But arsenic Yogesh Maitreya writes, “Mumbai is [also] the graveyard of many, galore dreams — dreams that situation to make a fusion of emotion and justice.” Jeet Thayil’s ‘Your Meat successful My Hands’ plunges the scholar into the underbelly of the city, wherever the tendency for nutrient becomes a decease sentence. He strips the numbness from regular paper headlines, exposing the raw, brutal fearfulness down them with visceral clarity. This is simply a Bombay that makes you shudder and squirm.
In his debut abbreviated story, ‘Where The Lights Never Go Out’, Jairaj Singh besides steps into ruthless acheronian places. While Thayil’s characters bid that world, Singh’s characters spell successful gingerly, with plentifulness of curiosity, a small hunger, and immoderate fear.
The postulation spans Mumbai — from the southernmost extremity of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, to Malabar Hills, Marine Drive, Dadar, Mulund, Sion, each the mode to Andheri East. They revolve astir dreamers, hustlers, schemers, and lovers — each bringing retired a portion of beingness successful an ever-changing city. Amid pages brimming with restlessness, Chirodeep Chaudhuri’s photographs seizure moments of stillness and quiet.
As with immoderate ambitious postulation that seeks to bring retired the complexities of a metropolis done precise antithetic voices — from Shanta Gokhale and Ranjit Hoskote to Prayaag Akbar and Raghu Karnad — lone immoderate stories are genuinely memorable. But adjacent wherever the penning doesn’t shine, Bombay oregon Mumbai does — arsenic the beating bosom of the narrative.
radhika.s@thehindu.co.in
