Love’s Many Shades

Bombay or Mumbai is a grotty,smelly city,especially in the monsoons. And yet in that ooze and stench,that overflow and grottiness,I find odd moments of beauty. So it’s a complicated love,perverse even,for a creature not necessarily beautiful,sometimes even grotesque,but which gets you in the gut. Keeping all these factors in mind,the title Dirty Love seemed most appropriate for the book.

The book reflects your deep relationship with Mumbai. How has the city contributed to your writing?

This city has not just ‘contributed to my writing’ — it has made me into the writer that I am today. Everything I have seen,experienced,lived and loved in this city left traces on me,long before I knew I would try and write a book about it.

I moved here from Calcutta in 1995,I was not yet 25,I decided to move on an impulse. I was perhaps over-stimulated by the drug that is this city. It went to my head,and it stayed there. Out of that intoxication,and later disenchantment,but never disengagement,this book of stories came to be. Even my poetry book,Sight May Strike You Blind,had poems inspired by the city.

Are these stories written over a long period of time?

Yes,some of these (such as Burn,Magic Show,Grounded) go back several years to the time when I was just feeling my way into the textures and the traumas of this city. The more I got used to its quirks and quagmires,the more I became aware of its strangeness. This is a very strange city,defying description,definition,defying one over-arching narrative. Perhaps that’s why so many authors have written Bombay stories or novels.

The scope and the shape of the book kept changing as I went along,until I arrived at its current architecture.

The story,The Lost Umbrellas of Udipi,gives away the fact that the city’s udipis are one of your comfort zones. What else about the city do you

find comforting?

I find riding in taxis or buses oddly comforting. Perhaps because I’m rarely in a hurry and can relax,chat with the taxi-driver,or,in a bus,observe my co-passengers,enjoy the view of the streets from an elevation. Also comforting is walking in the Fort area where my old office used to be. I also love Juhu,especially the Prithvi Theatre premises.

While reading the book,one gets the feeling that lots of autobiographical elements seeped into the stories. Is that correct?

Perhaps,perhaps not. To write through the prism of self is inescapable. Like any successful fiction,the book draws from reality,refracts it through the writing self,and in doing so,mutates it. So I shall leave this question in the realm of conjecture.

The author will read from the book at Kitab Khana on July 5 at 6.30 pm