How does one anthologise writings about a city that is equally seductive and repugnant? A city that has been a writer’s muse from the time of its existence? In Maya Nagari — Bombay-Mumbai: A City in Stories, editors Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto clarify that they didn’t set out to capture the financial capital in a book; they simply compiled a list of stories they had read and loved.
Writers in this fine anthology include the likes of Manto, Ismat Chughtai, Eunice de Souza, Cyrus Mistry, Bhupen Khakkar, Ambai, Urmila Pawar, Jayant Kaikini, Maharashtra’s favourite humourist Pu La Deshpande, and the editors themselves, among others. In keeping with Mumbai’s multilingual character, the book includes stories written in the languages of the city: English, with translations from Marathi, Tamil, Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati. “To understand our own lives better, we must enter other lives, and we do that best with literature,” says Gokhale in the introduction.
We see Bombay and Mumbai from the lived experience of chawl residents, street dwellers, mill workers, single women, advertising executives, furtive lovers. Aptly called ‘the most expensive slum in the world’, it is a city bustling with energy and coated with grime. The collection largely essays the bleak underbelly of the city, but it is not without a sliver of hope. In Deshpande’s ‘A Cultural Movement Is Born’, we see chawl life with its intrigues and tragedies but also its comedies: “Batatyachi Chaal (chawl) and Bharat shared the same raashi. As a result, caste skirmishes, absence of unity, disease and earthquake-like tremors when matrons of a certain girth went up or down the stairs, presented everyday dangers.”
Contrasting realities
Not only are the 21 stories in the collection well-chosen, they are also beautifully translated, most of them by the editors themselves. The Ganesh Chaturthi festival, the city’s chawls and the closure of its mills are a leit motif in the book. This is where the church of St. Don Dosco becomes Don Boss and a building called ‘Queen’s Diamonds’ overlooks a garbage heap.
Here, god visits Dadar Bridge only to get caught in the grittier side of the city, and a British policeman finds respectability in India only to land himself in a metaphorical no man’s land after Independence. A Ram devotee and an atheist forge an unlikely friendship, and a Ganesh idol is held hostage. A sex worker tries desperately to earn some money for a trip home to her village while a young journalist and a trade union leader become lovers. The stories draw you into their grief, joys, anxieties and celebrations, delivering gut punches along the way.
In Manto’s ‘Babu Gopi Nath’, the titular character explains his love for kothas (brothels) and shrines: “Because both establishments are an illusion. What better refuge can there be for someone who wants to deceive himself?” Bombay/ Mumbai, too, is like that — a city of illusions and myriad contrasting realities. Maya Nagari represents the sea of stories that the city creates every day, to rival the vast ocean that lines its shore.
The reviewer is an author of fiction and travel, a curator and creative consultant.
