Darkness in the City

Publisher: Harper Collins

Pages: 274

Price: Rs 350

Noir fiction as a literary style was made popular by writers like Dashiell Hammet,Raymond Chandler,Mickey Spillane and Elmore Leonard,who pioneered a genre of crime writing featuring tough,cynical characters and gritty urban settings. Noir is French for ‘black’ and noir fiction is directly derived from film noir,a term used to describe cinema based on Stygian crime dramas.

Noir Mumbai is the latest in a series of city-based anthologies. We had Delhi Noir (2010) with its dystopian plots. What made the series different from others in the genre was that it was neighbourhood specific: each contributor had to choose a particular location in the city as a setting for their short stories.

The noir genre ensured that most of the stories would revolve around crime,corruption and sex. In Mumbai,all three have dominated the headlines,more so with India’s financial capital a prime target for terrorists,and with locals who still owe allegiance to the city’s most wanted underworld dons who have taken refuge there. Unlike Delhi,Mumbai’s dark side has been chronicled in any number of books,from Gregory David’s Shantaram to Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games,Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City and Vikas Swarup’s Q & A to name the most celebrated. The city’s slums,mafia-type gangs,politicians,policemen,bureaucrats and businessmen,dance bars and its get-rich-now culture is prime breeding ground for crime and immorality,mirrored in these14 short stories.

Equally,more than Delhi,Mumbai has localities that have a discernible character and resonance,Nagpada,Mira Road,Worli,Pasta Lane and many others are distinct chapters in the city’s narrative,all lending themselves in some way to the sordid underbelly the city is known for. As Altaf Tyrewala,says in the introduction,Mumbai is “an organic conglomerate of innumerable sub-cities,each thrumming to its own vibe.” It is also a city with its own peculiar culture and sub-culture relating to communities,residential blocks and housing societies,domestic help and its seedier bars and nightspots,even its police force and tycoons operate at a different level from the rest of the country. That is enough for the chroniclers to discover rich literary pickings in 14 localities and still offer a sense of variety. That could also be because they range from authors and journalists,to poets and filmmakers who bring their own artistic sensibilities to their portrayal of the City of Dreams.

Those looking for murder mysteries and Mike Hammer-type heroes will be disappointed. The characters portrayed in this collection are deeply flawed,cynical and even bigoted. Tyrewala admits the anthology is “an unsettling read” and certainly,the Dystopian aura of a majority of the stories lends itself to that. The settings are generally seedy and the elements of criminal activity are always extant but the variety comes in the form of stories that looks at the darker aspects of ordinary lives,many born out of personal experiences. Author-journalist Namita Devidayal’s The Egg is a satirical story about social taboos and a housewife living in a building in Walkeshwar where non-vegetarian food is strictly forbidden,and what happens when an egg is discovered in her fridge. Film director Abbas Tyrewala’s story is true film noir,tracing the journey of a driver of an underworld boss,while IT professional Riaz Mullah’s first attempt at fiction,Justice,looks at what motivates a man to plant a bomb and perpetuate communal violence. Amateurish in parts,it nonetheless brings alive a disturbing and ever-present aspect of Mumbai.

Ever-present too is terrorism,specifically 26/11,reflected in the fantasy piece called At Leopold Cafe while the others focus on transvestites,cops,dance bars,prostitutes,psychopaths and pimps,all reflective of the locality it is based in. Altaf Tyrewala’s piece,The Watchman,is set in Worli and is a compelling commentary on social patterns based on the observations of a security guard as an invisible observer. The other stories that stand out are by two veterans of Mumbai’s crime beat,Sonia Faleiro and Jerry Pinto. There is variety here but that makes the literary quality somewhat erratic. The anthology does,however,succeed in reflecting the dark side of Mumbai with a great deal of authenticity.