Because Writers Find Poetry Even In the City’s Ugliness

Photo: Dhruv Dhawan.

Every city has its particular positive and negative aspects, but no other Indian city’s good, bad and ugly inspire as much literature as Mumbai does. Mumbai has been a muse to a staggering range of authors, from Salman Rushdie to Chetan Bhagat. From well-known places like Colaba’s Leopold Café (Shantaram brings new tourists to the restaurant every day) to far-flung suburbs like Dahanu Road, you can travel a winding path through the city and its history by reading the novels it has inspired.

In fact, we’re of the belief that much of the romance about Mumbai comes from the fact that authors have found poetry and insight in its most charmless parts. Chawls in novels like Ravan and Eddie and Serious Men come across as vibrant beehives, filled with secrets and human bustling. The Mumbai Police, whose officers are noticed in real life only when they mismanage things, has inspired delightful characters like Detective Sartaj Singh of Sacred Games. The absence of picturesque landscapes in Mumbai hasn’t been a problem. Even the dusty world of construction and redevelopment has inspired bestsellers, like Last Man in Tower. The fiction inspired by the city doesn’t attempt to erase the ugliness and despair of life in Mumbai. Instead the fact that Mumbai thrives despite all its problems is what makes it both beautiful and inspiring to our authors. And consequently, poetry and fairy dust are sprinkled over the city’s most maddening aspects, from water shortage to riots.

The sordid side of Mumbai has also served as happy hunting ground for the city’s chroniclers. The country’s financial capital is plagued by a surfeit of socio-economic issues. The sleazy underworld, murderous husbands, corrupt administrations—there’s a lot that is askew in our urban landscape but when written about by the likes of Suketu Mehta (Maximum City), Gyan Prakash (Mumbai Fables), S. H. Zaidi (Black Friday, Mafia Queens of Mumbai) and Sonia Faleiro (Beautiful Thing), these dark stories are much more than depressing news items. They become crazy mirrors reflecting the reality of this city with symbolism and insight. Without literature, both fiction and non-fiction, to show us the possibilities contained in everyday life in this city, Mumbai would feel a lot less magical.

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