Mumbai Fables

I experienced my first taste of Bombay when I read Louis Bromfield’s best-selling novel, Night in Bombay. Years later, when I finally visited the city, I discovered an exhilarating metropolis, far more complex than the one described by the American writer.
Bombay has been officially renamed Mumbai, a move signifying the abolition of the city’s colonial past. Many public spaces, now, bear the name of Mahatma Gandhi, Bhagat Singh or Shivaji, the 17th-century warrior. Victoria Terminus, the famously crowded, late 19th-century railway station built in the Gothic Revival style, is known as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
Nestled in a sheath of multi-cultural layers, Mumbai expresses India’s genius at its best. The city conjures images of Bollywood, the mythical Taj Mahal hotel or even the Dharavi slum. Gyan Prakash, professor of History at Princeton University, reveals the stories behind these images and takes us on a fascinating journey into the heart of this unique city.
“My goal is not to strip fact from fiction, not to oppose the “real” to the myth, but to reveal the historical circumstances portrayed and hidden by the stories and images produced in the past and the present. I am interested in uncovering the backstories of Mumbai’s history because they reveal its experience as a modern city, as a society built from scratch” says Prakash.
The iconic Taj Mahal Hotel was opened in 1903 by Sir Jamsetji Tata, in retaliation to the insult of being denied entry to a Europeans-only hotel. Incidentally, France’s president Jacques Chirac insisted on staying at the Taj Mahal Hotel during his February 2006 state visit to India.
In complete contrast to the hotel’s show of luxury, the Dharavi slum displays an incredible entrepreneurial energy. People are working hard and certainly not waiting idly for a chance to be on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”. Living in a Mumbai slum provides pathways out of destitution for thousands of poor people. As Gillian Tindall explains so well, Mumbai’s problems are not caused by its weakness rather by its strength and the dynamism which are drawing people like a magnet. Moreover Mumbai’s slums are far safer than Rio’s favelas because residents look after each other and watch the streets. Any misbehavior is immediately noticed and taken care of, not by the police but by the community.
“Dharavi is a zone of booming free enterprise and a tribute to the ingenuity and hard work of the migrants, who come from everywhere in India. Tanners from Tamil Nadu, leatherworkers and artisans from Uttar Pradesh, potters from Gujarat, and migrants from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Bihar, and elsewhere, work in Dharavi’s amazing variety of trades, legal and illegal… It is a cosmopolitan mix brought together by “dhandha”, business deals clean and shady. Dharavi is pure Mumbai” writes Prakash.
The author acknowledges that the desire for the city was largely due to the influence of Bombay cinema. Hindi cinema symbolized Bombay even though the city hardly appeared on-screen. Bollywood triggered a desire for modern life, holding the promise of exciting newness and unlimited possibilities. And the cinema with its thrill and excitement, made the city look even more attractive as it became the country’s leading center for film production.
Everyone in India loves Hindi movies and the author who grew up in Patna tells us how the young women imitated their favorite actresses and the tough boys dressed in the same flashy clothes as the film villains even learning by heart their lines like the actor Ajit telling his associate: “Robert, Usko Hamlet wala poison de do; to be se not to be ho jayega” (Robert, give him Hamlet’s poison: From “to be” he will become “not to be”).
Intellectuals, artists, journalists, writers, poets, musicians have also been drawn to Mumbai’s intense cultural life.
Mumbai Fables is a wonderfully entertaining introduction to the city’s rich cultural history. When the writer Abbas came to Bombay for the first time in 1934, he expressed his feelings:
“As the train thundered past the local station platforms, there were dark clouds in the horizon. It was raining somewhere. Excitement piled upon excitement as we recognized, from hearsay, some of the suburban stations, Andheri, Bandra, Dadar… Bombay, it has been said, is not a city, it is a state of mind. It is the state of a young man’s mind, exciting and excitable, exuberant and effervescent, dynamic and dramatic."
Manto, another famous writer who wrote some of the most poignant stories on the Partition, also felt strongly about Mumbai. Long after he left for Pakistan, he wrote an ode to the city and concluded: “I am a walking, talking Bombay…I loved that city then and I love it today”.
The journey across Mumbai, the city of layers, reveals an amazing city. After a ten year search, the author describes Mumbai’s history as a tapestry woven from “different, overlapping, and contradictory experiences, imaginations and desires”. The city’s vitality and uniqueness is drawn from its urban ability to create a collaborative brilliance and produce ideas which go beyond borders to enrich the rest of the world.

Mumbai Fables
by Gyan Prakash
Published by Princeton University Press
Hardback, 396 Pages

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