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Journalism of Courage
Mumbai: A City of Dreams
Academic Foundation
Pages: 162
Rs 245
The provisional census figures of 2011 reveal an urban population of 377 million in India and a faster rate of growth of urbanisation during the past decade than in all previous ones. This is contrary to the slowdown projected earlier. That a sizeable chunk of Indians is seeking the cities or is being pushed out to them is an incontrovertible fact. The state of our cities is,therefore,a cause for concern. A lot of literature,the JNNURM school of literature if you like,has emerged on managing cities,commenting on its infrastructure,etc. Then there is a lot of writing that leans on nostalgia on how glorious it was for the old city folk,till rural India came calling,crowding the streets,changing the language spoken and altering accents all round.
Some magazines,projects and online portals have tried to marry the sepia-tinted view of cities to the more real idea of what constitutes a city space. They have looked at urban spaces and how people live,interact,sell and seek jobs there,and how that changes them socially and politically.
A set of six books has come out,on Delhi,Mumbai,Lucknow,Chennai,Kolkata and Hyderabad. People talk about loving and living their city. Some are saddened by the way they dont recognise their city. It is a delightful venture,as it also deals with history,on how each of these cities grew and what they eventually grew into.
The series has been brought out to mark Seminar magazine turning 50 in 2009 and is edited by Malvika Singh. Each book,a reprint of a special issue on a particular city,is a treasure trove. For example,Chennai: A City of Change has a wonderful piece by V. Sriram on Margazhi,the music season,when the city is steeped in classical and devotional music. Sriram writes about how a session of the Congress party in 1927 helped crystallise the idea of a music academy in the city and,subsequently,how the Justice Party,decided in 1941,to have a separate musical congregation of its own and how all of this eventually gave rise to a situation where 70-odd sabhas organising over 2,500 programmes came into being. Contrast this piece with Tishani Doshis on how the change of name from Madras to Chennai took away so much from the place,like the Madras shirt. Those checks remain stubbornly Madras,not Chennai.
The book you pick would naturally reflect your fascination for a particular city,but the one on Mumbai,dedicated to actor Shashi Kapoor,stands apart with its range of subjects. Gyan Prakash gives a wonderful account of journalism and photography by those who came to essay what happened there. Gerson Da Cunha talks about the fall of Bombay. What makes for a great firsthand account of the old city of dreams is the late artist Jehangir Sabavalas requiem to his mother,Bapsey. It is through her life she produced and directed a film,Darkness into Light,in the 1920s that so much of Bombay comes into focus.
The Lucknow book,dedicated to one of its living legends and political figures Hamida Habibullah also former CIC Wajahat Habibullahs mother,is about a city between cultures.
The best thing about the books is how they telescope the transition thoughtful enough to not condemn all change as for the worst,but reflective enough to be able to assess what was and what has been lost.
