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| Gyan Prakash |
The portrait of the maximum city explores its inner life through the eyes of its residents, writers, planners, artists, film-makers and activists. From the terrorist attacks of recent years to land sharks, underworld dons, poor immigrants, the Nanavati murder trial, the stories behind Mumbai's historic journey reveal how it has become the symbol of survival and reinvention. He talks about his fascination with the city and his book.
What prompted the book?
An obsession. Since childhood, I have been obsessed with the city, though it is not my hometown. I grew up in a town nearly a thousand miles away from Mumbai, or Bombay as it was then known. Bombay was never just another big city, but an idea, a figure of myth and desire. Cinema, newspapers, magazines, novels and visiting relatives all stoked this desire. After I completed my last book, "Another Reason," which was on the cultural authority of science in India, I decided to return to this lifelong obsession. An equally important reason was that I find modern cities to be experiments in fabricating societies out of fragments.
Immigrants from different parts, people with very little prior links patch together neighborhoods and collective life in cities. Mumbai is a splendid example of this process. Over the last few centuries, people have washed up in this Island City from all parts of India and beyond to create a society of unequalled vitality and ingenuity. For these reasons, I decided to go to Mumbai about ten years ago, trying to figure out how to approach it, how to understand the origins and the history of Mumbai's imaginary life. What lay behind it? What were the historical forces that produced the images through which it was known and that made it India's classic modern metropolis? I hit the streets, walked the lanes and by-lanes, talked to anyone who would talk to me, scoured archives and libraries, and read everything I could find written on Mumbai. "Mumbai Fables" is the result.
Do you think non-fiction is finally gaining popularity in India?
Book publishing is flourishing in India. Unfortunately, the non-fiction category consists predominantly of memoirs by prominent personalities and journalistic accounts. These obviously should have a place in publishing. But it is equally important to make greater room for books with scholarly depth. I do not mean specialized, academic monographs, but books that draw on scholarship but are accessible and addressed to a general audience. These need not be written by scholars alone. Consider, for example, Simon Singh's The Code Book, or more recently Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer-winning book on the history of cancer.
One can cite many such books in Europe and North America. Their quality raises the standard of non-fiction in general, including of those that are topical and geared towards current events. This also forces up the standard of reviews. As for my book, the response has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Almost all reviewers have found it to be a book enjoyable and informative at the same time. Many readers have emailed me with appreciative words about the book's novelistic style. So, on the whole, I am very encouraged by the response.
How long did it take to write and what was the kind of research involved?
I started work on it in 2000, and it took about eight years of research. As I researched the city, I became convinced that Mumbai's various lives -- artistic, literary, political, economic and legal -- spilled into each other. No domain was self-contained. People lived the map of the city revealed in the newspapers and tabloids. Street life borrowed from cinema as much as the screen drew from real life. I saw architectural plans not just as lines on paper, but also as dream texts. Court trials drew from theater, and cinema placed the law on trial in its narratives. All this cross-pollination required that my research had to identify lateral links between different materials even as I traced their respective linear histories. I looked for relationships between archival documents, newspaper accounts, literary materials, cinematic representations, political treatises and architectural design. This made the research very demanding but also great fun. The research was difficult but also enjoyable. I wrote the book over the thirteen months that I lived in Mumbai during 2008-09.
What is your favourite part of the book? What did you learn about Mumbai that you did not know earlier?
On different days, my favourite chapter is different! On some days, I like the chapter on the Doga comic book the most, on other days it is the chapter on the world of writers and artists in 1930s and the 1940s, or the one on the Nanavati case. Really, I like all of them, it is hard for me to choose! Doga was a discovery, but so were many other things, including the details of the Nariman Point scam in the 1970s, which I used liberally to write the script for "Bombay Velvet," a film that Anurag Kashyap will produce and direct. A wonderful discovery was Meera Devidayal and Atul Dodiya's art.
Where do you see Mumbai in the next decade? What are the strengths that will take it forward and what are the dangers?
The increasing drift towards neoliberal capitalism combined with the powerful nexus between land sharks, politicians, and bureaucrats does not bode well for the city. Add to this the power of the two Senas and the opportunism of the Congress, the future looks clouded. However, I am very upbeat about the resilience and resistance from below. Ultimately, the mounting urban problems affects them the most -- they spend more time commuting to work, have cramped spaces to live in, are paid miserably, and denied adequate public services. Yet, they survive and struggle. In the end, Mumbai's future depends on their aspirations and on their struggle to fight for them.
Do you enjoy non-fiction and are there any that you've particularly enjoyed reading lately?
Yes, I do, but I am very choosy because there is a lot else - more specialized, scholarly books and fiction - that I also like to read. Currently, I am reading Michael Lewis's The Big Short because he is excellent in providing you with a riveting ethnography of the Wall Street while also explaining its irrational and almost criminal practices.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/people/Mumbais-a-lifetime-obsession-Gyan-Prakash/articleshow/8179889.cms
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