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Yesterday's
Metro Where were we when Bombay's lights went out? By Rajdeep Sadesai ONCE WAS BOMBAY It's difficult to refer to a city as vibrant, resilient and "happening" as Bombay in the past tense. For a Bombayite (or is it Mumbaikar?) in exile, it's even more difficult to accept that a city whose robust metropolitan ethos spun countless dreams should now be consigned to sepia-tinted nostalgia. Even if there has been a fall, surely it hasn't been as precipitous as to warrant the writing of its obituary. After all, Bombay still contributes more income tax to the national exchequer than any other city, its film industry still churns out mega-successes, it still provides you with the widest range of cuisine, Marine Drive still exists, and oh yes, it still has Sachin Tendulkar. And yet Pinki Virani is not entirely wrong. The great Bombay dream is over unless the dream happens to be that manufactured by a Ramgopal Varma. If Bombay makes the headlines today, it's because someone has been shot on a busy thoroughfare, or because its presiding deity has been disenfranchised by the Election Commission. Its Ranji Trophy team failed to get past the league stage last year, its textile mills have closed down, its film stars need the protection of security agents, its intellectual horizons are defined by a Shobha De column or a Kiron Kher chat show and even when its government decides to build fancy flyovers, it only ends up raising more controversy over alleged kickbacks on the deal. But at the end of the day, it's the threat to the life and liberty of its citizens that is perhaps the most frightening. When a city that prided itself on its bindaas culture is warned by the moral police that thou shalt not work in a bar after 10 p.m. or shall not hold hands in a public place, there is something seriously wrong somewhere. If you can't commute by Bombay's trains without first worrying whether someone will throw a stone in your direction, then you know that violence is no longer a mafia rule of law but a metaphor for a collapsing urban milieu. After all, one of the great safety valves of Bombay was its railway system: where else in urban India could you take a local train well past midnight with a feeling of total security? And yet it would be unfair to create, as Virani seems to do, a dichotomy between Bombay and Mumbai. Somehow the author falls into the trap of suggesting that Mumbai is an anarchic, criminalised and communalised city, while Bombay in some sense was this genteel, liberal and cosmopolitan metropolis. Let's get this right: Mumbai has taken over because Bombay allowed itself to be hijacked. If the real-estate lobby in Mumbai succumbed to hired killers, it's because for years Bombay's builders and their political patrons used local gangs to get tenants to vacate their premises. If Bal Thackeray and the Sena lumpens came to represent Maharashtrian asmita, it's because the Maharashtrian middle class itself failed to find an effective counterpoint to the Sena's campaign of hate. And if today after five years of Sena-bjp misrule the chattering classes of Malabar Hill are lamenting their fate, it's a moot question why they have chosen to stay away from any form of public life in the first place. Maybe they were too busy trying to have a rendezvous with Simi Garewal to worry about what was happening in the neighbourhood. Who killed Bombay? We all did. Caught somewhere between fiction and non-fiction. By Vibha Bhalla Diplomatic Encounter This is the story of an Indian diplomat, written in remarkably simple and fluid English. Nowhere does the author fall prey to the temptation of using heavy and complicated language replete with uncommon words, a malady with present-day authors. Descriptions of exotic locales -- Brazzaville, Rabat and so on -- lend an interesting note to the narrative. Written by a retired career diplomat himself, the book, however, reads less like a novel than the memoirs of a former foreign service officer. The narrative is engrossing only in patches. Perhaps the subject chosen does not lend itself to any kind of excitement. The author tries hard to make his story interesting. But the effort does not pay. The sexual escapades of his protagonist and the elaborate descriptions of love-making with his successive wives do nothing to enhance readability. The comments on India's relations with other countries sound authentic. Yet they fail to help the cause of the novel. The author's fascination with his protagonist does more harm to his character than good. As a bureaucrat and as a diplomat his success rate is too high to be believed. He has never known failure, never makes a wrong move, never experiences setbacks due to differences with his political masters. The author's ideas on many issues are a little surprising. All the women probationers who joined the civil services with the hero did so because they were fully aware "how little they were likely to be welcomed by their in-laws and even by their husbands because of their lack of good looks" if they'd had conventional marriages. While describing the second wife of the hero, the author cannot reconcile himself to the fact that a simple, shy Indian lady could also be a great economist. Slipshod proof reading doesn't do justice to the novel either. Careers in Armed Forces Understanding Bihar Aruna Asaf Ali Cities of India Against Child Labour Eclipse |
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