Shelf life: City Centre

Irawati is a journalist who covers the city’s Corporation beat (still a beat reporter, as a character remarks snidely in the book). Nothing seems more appropriate for the protagonist of a book which focuses so much on the essence of a city; throughout the book, she is the champion of all the city is and could be, despite being exposed to its ugly side on a regular basis. It could be said that the crux of how Mahale handles the city as a whole can be seen through Ira’s eyes — to love and believe in what it represents without shying away from the hypocrisy and cold-heartedness that is often found within its bounds.

Through most of the novel, Mahale exhibits a commendable control over the pace of the story. She jumps between childhood and adulthood with an ease which, in tangent with her portrayal of the city as a whole, is key in setting the novel apart. One letdown of the book is how the writing is prone to take a sudden turn for the worse, though it recovers within the span of a few lines. In the same vein, there are a few times — especially in the middle portion of the story — where it feels as if the characters and their entanglements fail to match the backdrop they have been portrayed against.

It would be a fair assessment to say that without the city, the tale of Irawati and Kartik would be far less compelling. On the other hand, it is equally uncertain if the construction of Bombay would have been effective without the worlds that encompassed the two of them. This could be what ultimately makes the romance with the city a little less unequal — that without the people through whom we view it, the city could have been something else entirely. When all is said and done, this still remains.