Polyphonous Voices in the City: Bombay's Indian-English Fiction

Author(s): Roshan G. Shahani

Source: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 21 (May 27, 1995), pp. 1250-1254
Published by: Economic and Political Weekly
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4402794 .
Accessed: 30/11/2013 01:04

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Economic and Political Weekly is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Economic and Political Weekly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 Polyphonous Voices in the City
Bombay's Indian-EnglishFiction
Roshan G Shahani

Indian writers in English should not be seen in a privileged relationship to regional language writers; nor is the
relationshiponzeof competition.Thereis space and validityforbothkindsof experience. If culture is to be trulypluralistic
and if Bombay is to epitomise that plurality, then writers in English have a legitimate right to 'appropriate' the city.
The question is not one of territorial rights.

'Country' and 'City' are very powerful Indianness-rusticity-simplicity nexus. With even while it accentuatesa terrifyingsense
words, and this is not surprisingwhen we the needto explain 'our' ways, 'our'culture, of anonymity among its inhabitants and
rememberhow muchthey seem to standfor 'our' traditionsboth to ourselves and to the which manyof the 'Bombaywriters'portray
in the experienceof humancommunities... westernworld,ruralIndiaseemed to appear in their fiction - could give to such writers
powerful feelings have been generalised. moretruly 'ours' and moretrulyIndianthan themselves an anonymity and amorphous-
On the countryhas gatheredthe idea of a the already 'westernised'metropolitancity. ness that is desirable because it permits a
naturalway of life: of peace,innocenceand We tend to carrythat notion with us still, sense of freedom and privacy. Because the
simple virtue.On the city has gatheredthe long after the era of flag-waving city has a plural character,it can provide a
idea of an achieved centre: of learning, independence. As recently as a couple of vantage point for writers to liberate
communicationand light. Powerfulhostile years ago. a reputed critic stated very themselves from an essentialist view of the
associationshave also developed: on the nation. The!city brings the writer close to
categoricallythatthe authenticIndiannovel
city as a place of noise, worldlinessand
in English hadyet to be writtenfor no writer power-structureswhich can supply them
ambition; on the country as a place of
backwardness,ignorance,limitation. to date had written successfully about our with the site andfocus of theirinterrogation.
- Raymond Williams sons-of-the-soil.Theremightbe partialtruth. Admittedly,as will be explored later, such
althoughunintended,in the latterhalf of the an urban writer, often a transculturalone,
IN the earlier stages of Indian writing in statement,in the sense that the tendency to is likely to face the not altogetherunjustified
English, there was a propensity among pictorialiseand romanticisethe Indianrural chargeof elitism, of being out of touch with
wiiters of fiction to set the rural-urban scene by Indiannovelists in English, has led grass roots realities.
milieu in binaryopposition,withassociations to a certaininauthenticity.However, onc is
of simplicityinnocence and peace gathering not so readilyconvincedby the authoritative IMAGININGBOMBAYTHROUGHENGLISH
around country life and those of chaos, assertion that the authenticIndiannovel in
corruptionandevil aroundthe urbanethos. English is waiting to be written.In fact, the The choice of the English language. like
The son-of-the-soil syndrome and/or the Indiancity is as 'representative'of Indiaas the choice of the urban locale, becomes
earth-motherfigurearecommonly featured is the Indian village, although the writer inevitable for these writers.Undoubtedly,it
in this kind of writing. Even when socio- needs to grapplewith a totally different set is the languageof a minusculeminorityand
political realities are conf'ronted, they of realities and, of course, the tendency to a colonial legacy to boot. It is, however, tfie
appear filtered-through a middle-class romanticisethe city can be an equal danger. only tool available to them and one which
consciousness. Although socially relevant This paper does not wish to valorise the they are exploiting to advantage, in order
issues like untouchability, rural poverty, 'city-bred'novel as againstits 'countrified' to capture a particular aspect of Indian
class, caste or genderoppression,are raised, counterpart.They havebeenjuxtaposedonly reality- its urbancosmopolitanism.Bombay
they are often domesticised, sanitised and to emphasise thatthe last couple of decades as a metropoliscould be seen to characterise
finally dissolved and diffused in a romantic have produced important city-centred this composite quality despite its recent,
blurringof focus. Earlyexamples like Mulk writing,muchof it set in metropolitancities very ingloriouspast.Moreover,unlikeother
Raj Anand's TlheUntouchable,Raja Rao's like Bombay. The Bombayite's existence major cities of India, such as Calcutta or
Kanthapura, seminal works in their own can be,as trulycharacteristicof Indiaas the Madras, Bombay's very mixed population
right, come to mind, as do more recent country-dweller's;to go a step further,one has furtherentrenched the use of English,
exampleslike KamalaMarkandaya's Nectair canarguethatthecomplexrangeandplurality notonly as a culturaltool. butas aneveryday
in the Sieve. In the years preceding ol this city's culture make it even more functional means of communication,
independence and in the euphoric decade representativeof the complex pluralityof especially among the middle classes who
that followed, as the young nation was India,althoughone is a little scepticalabout form the bulk of the reading public. The
consolidatingitself,theneedfor'Indianiness'. using this word 'representative'in the first English languagebecomes a handicapwhen
of tradition, found expression through a place.The ideaof pluralityhasgainedground the writer employs it to delineate a rural
valorisationof the Indianpeasantandof the even as the idea of nation and nationhood experienceandhenceRajaRao's exasperated
Indian ruralscape.Not surprisingly,as the is problematised;the writer,we have come cry - 'the telling has not been easy. One has
editorsof WomenWritingin Indiapointout, to think,needspluralkindsof representations to convey in a languagethatis notone's own
thecinemabox-office hit,MotherInlia, was to convey the larger experience. the spirit that is one's own' (Foreword,
made at the peak of this national fervour. When Indianwritersin Englishchoose an Kanthapura).Hisdilemmacanbe understood
In this film the Mother f'igure and the urban locale. they write with a relatively in the context of its time, 1937, in view of
Motherland are venerated, idealised and greatersense of ease andcontidence forthey the novel's rurallocale and of its narrative
invested with powerful symbolic value. In are dealing with a sphere familiarto them. voice - thatof an old village woman. In the
literatureas well as in the visual media, one and working within the modalities they 1980s and 1990s, however, and with the
sought, and very readily discovered, the understandbest.Thecity's amorphousness- younger writers' increasing interest in

1250 Economic and Political Weekly May 27, 1995

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
urbanity and in metropolitan perceptions factor, it is nonetheless an importantone. Fiction, even though it might give the
andissues, thedilemmano longerconfronts The high roadsof literature,as paved by the illusion of authenticity,cannotbe 'realistic'
them. For one thing, English today is as Leavisites have today bifurcated into by- in the narrow sense of the term. Mistry,
Indian a language as any other spoken in lanes and alleys, and into the 'desi sadak' reacting to the insistence that Parsis be
the subcontinent. Aijaz Ahmad puts it and 'gullies' as well. representedin a more flattering light, has
succinctly when he says that 'one cannot Similarly, at what might be termed a stated that he was not reproducinga social
reject English now on the basis of its superficial if not altogether superfluous documentdealingwiththeParsicommunity.
initially colonial insertion, any more than level, it is the familiarityof the locale and In 'Swimming Lessons', a metafictional
one can boycott the railways for the same the hurly-burlyof Bombay's daily routine story,anticipatingthe samecriticism,Mistry
reason' [Ahmad 1992:77]. For another, that, like its local Hinglislhjargon, delight pre-empts it: his fictional persona, Kersi,
writers like Amitav Ghosh and Salman the reader, particularly the local reader. who has just sent his recently published
Rushdiehaveradicallyalteredthetraditional Familiar landmarksand sights crowd the Taleshfnm FirozslzaBaug from Toronto to
map of English fiction. Rushdie himself pages of these narratives:in Rushdie's and his parentsin Bombay,imagineshis father's
avers that as far as Indo-Britishfiction is Mistry's set respectively in the Bombay of reaction:
concerned, 'fiction is in future going to the 1950s and 1970s, in the sombresettings ...thereshouldhavebeensomethingpositive
come as much from addresses in London, of Anita Desai's and Shashi Deshpande's, aboutParsis.therewas so muchto be proud
Birmingham,Yorkshire,as from Delhi or in the ebullient gaiety of Kangas. Hanging of: the greatTatasandtheircontributionto
Bombay' [Rushdie 1988-91:17]. Gardens,Chowpatty,Apollo Bunder.BEST the steel industry.or Sir DinshawPetit in
The phenomenal growth of Indian- buses, local trains. protest, 'morchas', the textile industrywho made Bombaythe
English fiction, the enlargeduse of English 'dubbawalas' delivering home-cooked Manchesterof theEast...Andhe couldhave
in India as a metropolitan language, and Iinches to offices. plus Churchgate and written somethingalso about the historic
the metropolitan concerns of literary WardenRoadapartments,middleclassDadar background,how Parsiscameto Indiafrom
productions,can be ascribed to the rapid flats and pavement dwellings - the seedy Persia...andwere descendentsof Cyrusthe
growthof an urbanmiddleclass readership. Pariscafe andthe spl&ndidTaj hotel (within Great...He .,ould have madea storyof all
The institutionalisingof these studies in the walking distance of each other)- all these this, couldn't he'?[Mistry,R 1987:245].
academic curriculum as well as the give to the narratives'a local habitationand 'He' could have but 'he' did not. Mistry's
mushrooming of indigenous publishing a name' androotthem firmlyin the physical intentionwas not to producean authoritative
houses have further ensured its palpable and geographicalrealities of Bombay. The guide to the social history of the Parsis of
presence. India boasts the second largest reader readily relates to the bustle of this Bombay.Much less was Rushdie's novel an
English reading public in the world: a city; reading about it could even have a attemptto recreate 'national history'. It is
sizeable fraction of this public is to be catharticeffect on his or herfrayedtempers '[Saleem'sj story, not history, even if it
found in Bombay. Increasingly, therefore. andjaded nerses and thereby lead him/her plays with historical shapes' [Rushdie
Indianwriting in English addresses itself to a warm celebration of the vitality of the I 988-91 :22]. Among the numerous'errata'
to this readership. Thus, writing that is metropolis.The Bombayite would respond he commitsin 44lidnight 's Children,Rushdie
relatedto one's working-day experiences, positively to the characterisation by 'confesses' his 'mistakes': 'Concrete
one's privateandpublic life, and to various Rushdie - a writer who proudly called tetrapods',he admits, have never been used
urban-basedissues, today finds a ready himself a 'Bombaywallah' -of' 'Indian in Bombay as partof any land reclamation
readership. It is like seeing oneself in a urbanculture, Bombay above all... [beinig] scheme, [as stated in Saleem's narrative],
film shot on location, even if one figures full of fakery and gaudiness and super- butonlv to shore up and protectthe sea wall
merelyon the fringesof a crowd scene. The ficiality and failed imaginations... [yet] along the Marine Drive promenade. Nor
writer today writes less and less with a also a culture of high vitality, linguistic could the trainthatbringsPictureSingh and
westernreaderin mind, although that kind verve, and a kind of metropolitan Saleem fromDelhi to Bombaypossiblyhave
of self-consciousness, of the desire to excitement that European cities have for passedthroughKurla,which is on a different
explain, describe. interpret and even to the most part forgotten.' It is an 'over- line.[Rushdie 1988-91:221.
represent,is not altogetherabsent. That the painted courtesan' at once seductive and The point that Rushdie makes, and by
writer,by and large, although s/he uses the revolting [Rushdie 1988-91:1101. implica ion so do the otherBombaywriters.
Englishman'slanguage, no longer regards The tendenicyof'thereadet-t he so carried is that, as novelists, they are creating
it as such and in fact addresses himself/ away by the familiarity of the localk- could. Bombays of their imagination.The city is
herself to the Indian reader, as much as to however, lead to occasional fallacic', and tashioned in the writer's ,swnimage, thus
any other. is illustrated by Rushdie's pitfalls. One tends to forget the fact that ceasing to be geographical territory and
statement. Referring to Midnzight's these locations are maps of the mindlinot becoming instead an imagined topos. Nor
Chlildren,he states: "I certainly felt that it touristguidebooks,even thoughunquesiion- do the narratives record history; they
its subcontinentalreaders had rejected the ably (unlike the quixotic H R F Keating). tictionalise it.
work. I should have thought it a tailure. none of thc writers in question could have In fact, Saleem's misreading and
no matterwhat the reaction in the west. So imaged the city without having lived here misrepresentation in many places in
I would say that I write 'tor' people, who at some time or another. Clue-hunting,of Midnight'sChildlrencanserveas ananalogue
feel a part of the things I write about" course, is a seductive game and various to the several readings and representations
[Rushdie 1988-91:19-20]. readers,with equal certainty,have claimed, to which the city lends itself. Bombay's
More specifically, the Bombayites' use, l'orinstance,that 'FirozshaBaug' was none infinite variety, its paradoxes and
appropriationand 'H/indigenisation' of other than Rustom Baug, Khareghat contradictions. defy any easy definition.
English is accurately caught in the same Colony, or Shapur Baug [Saraiya 1991]. Rather. they mirror and account for the
novel, especially in the responses ot Many have waxed indignant at Desai's heterogeneouspresenceandthepolyphonous
Padma or, again, in the Parsi inflections gloomy portrait of Bombay, saying voices of the 'Bombay writers',as different
in Mistry's TialesfromnFirozsha Baag'. 'Bombay was not like that.' Irate readers as Salman Rushdie and Shashi Deshpande,
Undoubtedly.at this level, the narratives have written to Rushdie arguing that the AnitaDesai anidRohintonMistry,Gurcharan
would be judged as having no more than author had charted Bombay's bus routes Das andFirdausKanqga. As theprotagonistof
popularappeal;but if that is not the crucial all wrong IRushdie 198)8-931 :23]. Kanga's Trying,ta; G,-oo realises, wvatching

Economicand Political Weekly May 27, 1995 1251

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
the city of Bombay spread out below his remains merely 'the setting of his life', Deshpandenor Desai celebratethe Bombay
gaze. 'Youcanlookata scene froma thousand 'palpable' for the rest but 'elusive' for him experience. If the all-pervadingnihilism in
differentwindows andyou'll see something [Desai 1988:211]. In a recent television Baum gartner's Bombay is absent in
new each time' [Kanga 1990:49]. interview, Desai has spoken of the Deshpande's Bombay fiction, the city is
impossibility of returning'home' to India nonetheless depicted in negative terms.
MODES OF RECLAIMINGBOMBAY for the time being. (This was soon after the AlthoughagreatadmirerofDesai,Rushdie
1992_93 sectarian violence in India.) Her himself has a more positive perspectiveon
The groundof commonality among these irreconciliationwith her homelandand her Bombay. The difference, of course, could
diverse writers, in fact, could be their constantjourneyingsseem to find a fictional be one of temperament;it could also be the
recognition of the multifacetedness of counterpartin Baumgartner,the prototype need for the emigrant,especially for the one
Bombay. To locate the narrative text in of the Wandering Jew, who is forever who has spent his childhood and boyhood
Bombay, is to textualise the complexity of rebuffedby the city, who is foreverin search in India, to 'reclaim' the lost Atlantisof his
its realities and to problematise the of a homeland. growing years. Nostalgia and the need for
unrepresentative quality of a 'typical' For Shashi Deshpande- who has studied rememberingand re-memberingof the old
Bombayexperience.Likethepost-modernist in Bombay but who has not been a homeland become almost imperative.The
architectureof some of Bombay's more 'Bombayite' in the way Rushdie, Mistryor past, as Rushdie asserts, is a country from
recentstructures- as also theirodd mingling Kangahavebeen - Bombaytypifiestheglitz, which we have all emigrated'butthe writer
with the 19th century pseudo-gothic and the glamour, and the commerce of urban who is 'out-of-country'and moreover 'out
with the spawning slums - the city lends living. Itis the seductivetrapthatapparently of the language' 'experiencesthatloss in an
itself to post-modernist literary plurality. offers so much to the city's upward-bound intui,ified form' [Rushdie 1988-91:12].
Some, like Rushdie and Kanga, might middle class but actually gives so little. Mistry's writing suggests the same need;in
celebrate this chaotic plurality;others like Deshpande's near-twin novels. That Loig fact he has himself stated that the very act
Desai and Deshpande might search for a Silentceand TheDarkHolds No Terrors,are of emigrationhad propelledhim towardthe
totalityandlamentits lack. Rushdie,writing botha critiqueof Bombay'selite world.The act of writing since he had no intentionof
from a different location, has commented city is seen to foster such a strong sense of becoming a writer till he had gone to live
on the need to 'reclaim' his lost city. individuationthat the sense of community in Canada [Mistry, C 1991].
'Bombay', he states, 'is a city built by is lost. No viable alternativesare offered; Inevitably, the Bombay that is recreated
foreignersupon reclaimedland; I (who had the provincialtowns, fromwhichherwomen is the one that was perceived at the point
been away so long that I almost qualified protagonistshail, are not seen as providing of departure.Recallcannot,by its verynature,
for the title) was gripped by the conviction any ready escape routes. To the contrary, becompleteandtotal;memoriesareproustian
thatI too had a city and a historyto reclaim' they are represented as characterised by and fragmentary; they are Rushdie's
[Rushdie 1988-91:101. This might be the parochialism and clannishness. In 'imaginary homelands'. Elements in
need of the transplanted Indian, of the Deshpande's fiction can be discerned the Midnight's Chiildrent and in The Talesfrom
'outsider', like Rushdie or Mistry. Equally 'powerful hostile associations' which Ferozsha Baiugensnarethe readerin a time-
great,althoughhereagainin divergent,even RaymondWilliamshaspointedoutas having warp: Filmhoardings, election slogans,
contraryways, is the need of the 'insider' gatheredaroundthe city and the country- snatches of old songs, are reshaped and
to 'reclaim' the city. 'the city as a place of noise, worldlinessand recalled. Had the narrativesrested on the
To reclaim, however, is to retrieve what ambition... the country as a place of pastnessof Bombay's past, this would have
one considers to be one's own, to get back backwardness. ignorance. limitation'. led to a kindof ossification. But the attempt
whatone haslost. Forwriterslike Deshpande Moreover,the city is seen to representthe is a more complex one, the writersneed to
and Desai, especially for the latter, patriarchalset-up and bourgeois aspiration. 'dig theirown soil' [Nazareth19781in order
reclamationand retrieval are not possible. In silent mockery is held up the pictureof to help them tread more firmly on alien
for these authors have never really made the HappyFamilysyndrome,which reflects soil. If Midnight's Children is a novel of
claim to the city as theirown. Probablythey and is reflected by 'the glossy coloured memory, it is a self-reflexive novel about
need to write about Bombay in order to advertisingvisual' [Deshpande1988:4].The memory as well. The narrativeboth creates
grapplewith the city, to shed their sickness, protagonistsof both novels are women with a Bombay of the mind and points out very
to experiencecatharsis,and therebyto come 'successful careers' which Bombay more self-consciously thatit is creatinga Bombay
totermswithit. Sometimeseven thisbecomes thanany otherIndiancity has scope to offer. of the mind. The text makes clear that the
an impossibility and the city is rejected as Yet both women feel themselves pushed city, like the memories it evokes, could
much as it is seen to reject. Desai's asidefromthecentralpowerstructureswhich never offer a single unified, uniform,
Baumgartner's Bombay is neither are governed and controlled by patriarchy. homogeneous version of truth. Like the
Baumgartner'sBombaynorDesai's; in fact, Gender, however, gives them anotherkind myriad memories, a myriad possibilities
theEliotiannihilismof the UnrealCity finds of remove; from the marginthey can move unfold themselves. One is compelled.
its hollow echo in Desai's rendition of into the epicentre of change. This change therefore. to step aside from the path of
Bombay,even morethanin herearliernovel, again, is conceptualisedin termsof the city. GrandNarrative,'condemned[like Saleem]
Voicesin the Citv,set in Calcutta.Hernovels In ThatLongSilentce,while the 'yuppie' life by a perforatedsheet to a life of fragments'
are peopled with 'isolated singular figures' of comfortable conformity that the couple [Rushdie 1982: 14]. Thus baby Saleem
says Rushdie referringto the protagonists had earlier enjoyed is epitomised by their 'remembers' the Bombay of the newly
in Fire on the Mountainand Clear Light of plush apartmentat Churchgate,their later independent nation:
Day [Rushdie 1988-91:71]. Baumgartner, move, on account of the husband's Now lookingbackthroughbabyeyes, I can
an exiled Jew, epitomises the exiled psyche culpability, to a shoddy flat at Dadar see it all perfectly - it's amazing how much
at its most lonesome. The city in Desai's symbolises a new perspective and even a youcanrememberwhenyou try.WhatI can
novel becomes a metascapethatprojectsthe sense of affirmationon thepartof thewoman. see: the city, basking like a bloodsucker
innerclimateof the mind.For Baumgartner, It becomes for her 'a queer sense of lizardin the summerheat.OurBombay:it
the crowds and the clamour of Colaba homecoming' andhelps herbreak'thatlong looks like a hand hut its really a mouth,
Causeway represent the 'mainstream', silence' in the very act of self-reflexive always open. always hungry,swallowing
'leaving so little space for him'. Bombay narration[Deshpande I19X8:25-261. Neither food and talent from everywhereelse in

1252 Economic and Political Weekly May 27, 1995

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 India.A glamorousleech,producingnothing Inheritorsof much of the colonial legacy, and culturescuriously creates a remarkably
except films bush-shirtsfish... [Rushdie the Parsi community finds itself trappedin secular ambience' [Rushdie 1988-91:16].
1982:146-47]. the past, unableto flow on with the onward For some, like Kanga, it is an epicurean's
As a teenager, Saleem, who has returned currentsof the city, even though Bombay delight, even as he seems to be at pains to
from Rawalpindi can afford to cry out has been its home for generations. interpret Bombay to the western world.
gleefully 'Back-to-Bom'. The clash of By fictionalisingthe Parsi communityof Others,like Desai andDeshpandefindin the
colours in Bombay, 'the rainbowriot of the Bombay,Mistryis not so much,attempting, frenzied momentumof the city symbols of
city', which he celebrates refers by to retrievea diminishingcommunityand its isolation and even of terror.
implication to its variegated cultures as 'quaint'ways, butto retrieve,throughit, his Metaphors and symbols are necessary
against the 'black and white' regimented own sense of self. The immigrant'scultural butsometimes they arenot adequate.While,
world of Rawalpindi [Rushdie 1982:356]. schizophrenia. the experience of 'falling at times, they can help in the grasping of
Yet, as the narrativeproceeds, and an older, betweentwo stools' gives way in this fashion realities, at other times, one needs to
sadderandwiser Saleem returnsto Bombay, to a 'straddlingof two cultures' [Rushdie abandon them for a more direct
the physical facade that has changed 1988-91]. Mistry's returnto the communal comprehdnsion.With all its distrust of the
Kemp's Cornerno longer boasts of Kemp's 'baag' could indicate the immigrant'sneed grand narrative,the writing under study is
chemist shop - epitomises other changes for community and identification, a need certainly not writing aboutthe 'subalterns'
as well. Sombre shadows have gathered that is further intensified in the western of our city. By contrast, recent writing in
around the city, and Shiva, one of the culture where the sense of individuationis regional languages includes these concerns
'other' Midnight's Children takes on an greatly accentuated. Simultaneously, the in its literaryagenda, the writersin English;
identity that becomes as ominous as the Parsi community's own sense of exile also both literally and figuratively, do not
name he possesses. becomes a symbol for the larger sense of possess the necessary language with which
If Bombay becomes for Rushdie the lost exile, experienced by the writer who is an to renderthe consciousness of the,working
boyhoodhome, it becomes, simultaneously, immigrant. Bombay thus becomes a classes andthe deprived sections of the city
a metaphorfor the impossibility of naming metaphorfortwo antitheticalstatesof mind- population. In one episode in Kanga's
things or of reproducing photographic forbothexile andcommunication.Theexiled Trying to Grow, the protagonist likens
images of Reality because incongruities, psyche finds its correspondingstate in this himself to the Pope in his Vatican, when
errors, shadows, inevitably creep in. No self-exiled Parsi community; yet locating he watches, fromlofty heights,the colourful
indisputable truth can be possible, either the particularand the unique experience of cavalcade of Colaba Causeway far below.
about Saleem's birth or parentage, about life in a Parsi 'baag' gives a sense of The comparison is unintentionally
freedom at midnight,aboutfreedom, about community to the immigrantwriter. appropriate.Both authorand narratorshare
history, about memory, and finally even It is not surprising, then, that Mistry the panoramicperspectiveof the privileged;
about the form that fiction writing takes. continues his metaphoric journeyings Bombay can look exceedingly picturesque
Everything becomes a celebration of indefinitely andindefatigably.Sucha Long when seen from towering heights and
ambiguities. As Rushdie expresses it: Journey, his second piece of fiction, is remote distances. This viewpoint can be
located iri Bombay and, according to his seen as an analogue for a similar 'global'
Writers are no longer sages, dispensing brother Cyrus Mistry, the novel he is perspective of the writers in question,
wisdom of the centuries.And those of us currently working on is also centred on although it must be added that they do not
who have been forced by cultural Bombay: The impetus/insistence of the all share Kanga's ratherelitist bias. All of
displacementtoaccepttheprovisionalnature Canadianmosaic model thatone writes out them have been separatedfrom Bombay by-
of all truths,all certainties,haveperhapshad of one's ethnic rootsmightalso have pushed time, space and above all by class; while
modernismforced upon us. We can't lay Mistry to cast long, lingering looks it is true that this could offer clarity of
claim to Olympus,andare thus releasedto homeward. This perspective has at times perspective, it is equally, if paradoxically,
describeour worldsin the way in whichall led to an element of the quaint and the true that temporal, spatial, and class
of us, whetherwritersor not, perceive it
exotic in Mistry's fiction. An instance can distancing can blur the sharpnessof vision.
fromday to day [Rushdie 1988-91:12-13].
be seen in the elaborate 'Doongervadi Admittedly,sympatheticallusions aremade
LikeRushdie,the youngerimmigrantwriter, scene' in Such a Long Journey, which to the problems of the 'other', but these
Mistry,needs to make the fictionaljourney immediately follows an episode so are often uneasy, always peripheral, and
home to Bombay even though it appears poignantly rendered that this description never the focal point of the narratives.For
'brown,weary and unhappy'to his fictional of the Zorastrianrites of the dead comes instance, in Tales from Ferozsha Baug
persona [Mistry 1987]. More specifically, as an an irrelevant appendage. mention is made of the narrator'sbrother
he needs to returnand to retrieve through who has de-classed himself to work among
his fiction the minuscule Parsi community A SLICEOF PLURALBOMBAY the underprivileged; but both he and the
of Bombay, the minuscule 'city' within the work he does remain off-stage. In That
city which is the Parsi baug. For this Groupingthese diverse writingstogether, Long Silence, the resilience of the servant-
dwindling, ethnic minority, the 'baag' one sees that Bombay, as a city, has been maid is juxtaposed against the hysteria of
becomes a communal refuge, a cultural fertile territoryfor the writers to occupy, the protagonist, but it is the mistress's
bulwark against the fast-changing, even if reploughing it might have led to narrative that forms the nucleus of the
'menacing' city. For the author, both the occasional aridity. For some, like Rushdie novel. Likewise, Desai's Bombay contains
'baag'andthecity become a fictionalrefuge, and Mistry, Bombay has been the city of depictions of the stark squalour of the
a meansof rootinghimself a new in the host memory, seen through guilt-tinted as well city's pavementdwellers, buttheyarehazy
country by digging in the soil of his old as gilt-tintedspectacles. For Rushdie, it has shadows- symbols rather than actual
homeland. Not that Mistry, necessarily, alsoencapsulatedthiscountry's multicultural people. It is as if, by suggesting a
endorsesthe 'baag' mentalityor as Northrop diversity and its secular ideology. His own sensitive awareness of these deprived
Frye might have termed it, 'the garrison absorptionof the Hindu as well as Islamic sections of the community,the writersseem
mentality'[Frye 1965]. In fact, Mistry heritage, he believes 'has something to do to offer a rueful apology for their
problematiseshis community's dilemma by with the natureof Bombay, a metropolisin helplessness to give voice to this silenced
examiningthestultifyingeffectsof itsculture. which the multiplicityof commingledfaiths minority. What they thereby succeed in

Economic and Political Weekly May 27, 1995. 1253

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
doing, is to 'contain'this class and to create anew, or conversely, if it helps them to Orient Longman, Bomaby.
spaces for themselves, not only in this externalise their sense of rootlessness. Desai, Anita (1988): Baumgartner's Bombay,
narrow, over-crowded island of our The question is not one of tcrritorialrights. Penguin, London.
existence but in global spheres as well. By writing about Bombay, writers like Deshpande, Shashi ( 1988): That Long Silenice.
Thus,even thoughthiswritingproblematises Rushdie have charted anew the cultural Penguin, Delhi.
-(1990): ThteDark Holds No 7errors. Penguin,
concepts of nationalism, it takes on a map of the world. Bombay has also created Delhi.
representational'thirdworld' colouring. As space for many other writers who are Frye. Northrop( 1965):'Conclusion toaLiterary
MeenakshiMukherjeepoints out, 'There is cartographingother maps, even if these are History of Canada' in Carl Klink (ed)
no getting away from the burden of India local and regional ones. This is the mark Literary Historv of Canada. University of
if you wantto write in English' [Mukherjee of Bombay's multiculturalism,that it can ToroAto, Toronto.
1993:2609]. contain multitudes, even if it has contra- Kanga, Firdaus (1990): Trying to Grov. Ravi
Regional language writing - even in dicted itself in the not very distant past. Dayal, Delhi.
translation- does not, to date, occupy the Markanday,Kamala( 1954): Neatarin the Sieve.
(This is the revised version of a paperpresented Oxford University Press, London.
same global spaces: yet it ought to have
at a workshop on 'Evolving Cultural Identities Mistry, Cyrus (1991): 'Mistry and the Muse',
global significance, precisely because here of Bomibay: 19th and 20th Centuries' in interview in Sutid(a Mid-Day. October 27.
Bombay city becomes the actual site of an Bombay from December 16 to 19, 1992. The Mistry, Rohinton ( 1987): Tales from Ferozsha
actually lived experience. Dalit writing is a paperwill appearin Bomnbav:Mosaic of Arts Ba,ug, Penguin, Canada.
case in point. Even though the English and Letters edited by Sujata Patel and Alice - (1991): Such a Long Journey. Faber.London.
translations,in the very act of translation, Thorner. to be published by Oxford University Mukherjee. Meenakshi (1993):'The Aoxiety of
sanitise the acidic Marathiof the original. Press, Bombay. Indianness: Our Novels in English',
one discovers in these culturalproductions The paper deaLs with a number of diverse Economic aid Political Weekly: XXVIII,
a very different Bombay experience. writers such as Salinan Rushdie, Anita D)esai. No 48, November 27.
Shashi Deshpandeand FirdausKangawho share Nazareth.Peter( 1978): The ThtirdWorldWriter,
Prakash Jadhav's Dadar of 'Under Dadar
the common ground that they have chosen Nairobi.
Bridge' (PoisonedBread) or Daya Pawar'S Bomibay as locale for their works of fiction.] Rao, Raja (1938): Kanthapura. Oxford
Golpitha in 'Son-Eat Your Fill' [Dangle University Press, London.
1992], expose the underbelly of Bombay. Rushdie, Salman (1982): Midnight's Children,
References
Here is protest writing about the Avon, New York.
underprivileged by the underprivilegedof Adaija, Varsha (1993): 'Bichafi Champudi' in - (1988-91): ImaginarynHomelands: Essays
the city. Sometimes, even when it emerges Susie Tharu and K Lalita (eds) Women and Criticism. Granta Books, London.
from a socially privileged milieu, regional Writing in hidia Vol I/. Oxferd University Saraiya, lndu (1991): Interview with Rohinton
language writing focuses upon those who Press, Delhi. Mistry, Sunday. August 4.
Ah;nad, Aijaz (1992): In Theory, Oxford Tharu,Susie and L Lalitha(eds) ( 1993): Women
arethruston to the marginof a well-defined
University Press, Bombay. Writing in lIndia Vol II, Oxford University
bourgeois, male space. The prime example Anand, Mulk Raj (1947): The Untouchable, Press, Delhi.
would come from Mahasweta Devi's Hutchinston, London. Williams, Raymond (1985): The Countr) and
writings in Bengali. In the context of Dangle. Ariun (ed) (1992): Poisoned Bre(ad. the City. Hogarth. London.
urban Bombay, a good instance would be
Varsha Adalja's 'Bichari Champudi'
[Tharu and Lalita 19931, a story that
sensitises the reader to those who are on
the peripheryof the city, shunted aside by
class, caste and gender. The very act of this
kind of writing and of its increasing
accessibility through translations, have
created new and disturbing spaces in the of SocialSciences
Institute
city. Here is political feminist energy
thrusting up through complex ground
New Delhi
realities. Symbols and metaphorsbecome a
luxury- they give way to a harsh, unmiti- AND THEIRFINANCE
PANCHAYAThS
gated reality.The celebrationof Bombay's
pluralitygives way to a questioning of its M A Oommen
incongruities.
Indian writers in English, however.
Abhijit Datta
should not be seen only in a privileged
relationship to regional language writers:
nor is the relationshipone of competition. In the context of the 73rd and 74th constitutional amendments, this
If the former focus upon a particular volume discusses the important principles of inter-govemrnmental
segment of Bombay's society, they are
nonetheless dealing with experiences of a transfers in the Indian federal polity and focuses attention on
largerimport,just as the latter, even while the concepttial and operational problems before the state finance
they describe a limited section of our commissions in relation to panchayatfunctions and finance.
society are not necessarily limited by it.
There is space and validity for both kinds 1995 pp. 77 Rs. 150
of experience. If culture is to be truly
pluralistic and it Bombay is to epitomise Concept Publishing Company
that plurality, then the writers in English A-15/16 Commercal Block,MohanGarden
have a legitimate right to 'appropriate'the New Delhi 110 059 (Phone:5504042,5554042)
city if it helps them to root themselves

1254 Economic and Polcical Weekly May 27, 1995

This content downloaded from 116.203.201.45 on Sat, 30 Nov 2013 01:04:14 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions