Bombay Novels:

Some Insights in Spatial Criticism

Bombay Novels:

Some Insights in Spatial Criticism

By Mamta Mantri

With a Foreword by Amrit Gangar

Bombay Novels: Some Insights in Spatial Criticism

By Mamta Mantri

This book first published 2019

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2019 by Mamta Mantri

All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-5275-2390-X ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-2390-6

For Vinay and Rajesh

TABLE OFCONTENTS

Acknowledgements ...... ix

Foreword ...... xi

Introduction ...... xxvi

Chapter One ...... 1 The Contours of a City What is a City? The City in Western Philosophy and Polity The City in Western Literature The City in India

Chapter Two ...... 30 Locating the City in Spatial Criticism The History of Spatial Criticism Space and Time Space, Place, Site and Cultural Geography Textuality of the City City, NarrativeFlâneur and the Postcolonial and the City Novels as a Sourceormation of Infand Knowledge

Chapter Three ...... 72 Mumbai: History and Literature

Chapter Four ...... 121 Mumbai in Literature and Cinema

viii Table of Contents

Chapter Five ...... 177 Describing the City Introduction Description of the City The Sensorial Experience and the City Cinema and its Bearings Conclusion

Chapter Six ...... 217 Flânerie and the Novel of the City Flânerie The Novel as a Literary Device Conclusion

Chapter Seven ...... 258 Identity and the City Identity and the Self Identity and Naming Within the ‘isms’ Conclusion

Chapter Eight ...... 300 Conclusion

Bibliography ...... 327 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is the outcome of mybest intention of to contribute, to the my abilities, to the academic atdiscourse continuously developing the Department of English, Universitych of Mumbai, a place to whi I owe my thought process and critical abilities.

It is only because of the blessingn of my parents, Shri Brijmoha Mantri and Smt Shakuntala Mantrie a that I could research and writ book.

My Ph.D. Guide, Dr (Mrs) Hemangi Bhagwat provided me with much-needed researchleads toacumen convert andch my thesis, whi is now a book,obust into aand more well-rounded r k. piece of wor

My heartfelt gratituded film historian to renownee and one of th leading authorities on Mumbai,t Shri Amrit Gangar, for taking ou time to write themy book foreword and contextualizing forn the it i larger gamut of city literature.

My brother Mr. Vinay Mantri hasg the been a pillar of strength durin writing of this book, and thend book and is dedicated to him. My frie flatmate, Mr. Rajesh Kumar, this is also for you.

I also sincerely thank Dr. Nilufer Bharucha, Dr. Shridhar Rajeshwaran, Dr. Coomi Vevaina, Dr. Yasmeen Lukmani, Dr. B x Acknowledgements

Rangrao, Dr. Ram Bhau Badode and Dr. Shoba Ghosh, at the Department of English, University of Mumbai. FOREWORD

Two decades have passed by from the time I had first coined and used theRuralopolis word for Mumbai in one of my essays published inThe Speaking Tree columnThe ofTimes of India (Lemon & Chillies for Dreams & Deceptions, Amrit Gangar,18 August 1999). Twenty years is fairly long timecularly for a city to transform, parti so for a city with a monetizing mindset, where Stock Exchange happens to be one of the important cultural institutions. Bombay/Mumbai has undergone a substantial physical and behavioral change with a generationalnot. turnover. And yet it has To my mind, she, in her arteriesns a and interiorities, still remai fascinating symbiosis of theities, rural and the urban. In her curios Mumbai keeps beckoninger strange you intoburgeoning h suburban ‘places’ and ‘spaces’ carryingor nomenclatures such as Lankapada Kharodi Gaothannagars all amidst around and mushrooming plush gated communities.nagars (cities) Mumbainagar iswithin (mega- a city). The word ‘nagar’ has different connotations and many big Indian citiesnagars are, e.g. known Ahmednagar, as Bhavnagar, etc. Nagars have been part of ancientnagar urban experience or the sanskriti, the urban civilization. In its fold, this book comprehends the intellectual and emotional immensity of the megalopolis Bombay/Mumbai within its primaryr engagement of four fictional o xii Foreword semi-fictional literary worksres and of different tenors, times, textu temperaments.

Nomenclaturally, unlike Indian rivers (almost all of them are feminine, except a very few withr masculine names such as Damoda or Brahmaputra), Indian citiesuter absorb all genders: feminine, ne as well as masculine.nagar, Besides e.g. Kushinagar being a (in Uttar Pradesh, where Buddha is believed to have attained his parinirvana or freedom from physical existence and suffering), it couldnagari be, vatia , purama orpura a /pur , patnama orpattam or anabad , e.g. Amravati (in Maharashtra), Meenakshipuram (in Chennai) or Nagpuro be (considered the political t capital of Maharashtra), Puri (in Odisha),h) Machilipatnam (in Andhra Prades or Ahmedabad (inese Gujarat). names become Th crucibles of cultures and politics of power and possession.

The ‘suffixes’ could indicatetemple the or character of the city: port, garden. Besides gender, as sarilya ‘polis’, size- these terms are not neces specific (geographic or demographic).eresting ‘Pura’ could evoke an int real, utopic or ideal imageaidas, of a city 1398- that Saint Ravidas (aka R 1450) had imagined and poeticized. The city is Begampura:

बेगमपुरा सहर को नाउ । दू खु अंदो नही ितिह ठाउ ॥ नां तसवीस खराजु न मालु । खउफु न खता न तरसु जवालु ॥ Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxiii

Begampura is the city without without suffering or sorrow; it is a city troubles or taxes on commodities, she knows no fear, blemish or downfall.

And then he says:

अब मोिह खूब वतन गह पाई ।

“Now, I have found this most excellent city.” He uses the word ‘vatan’वतन) of ( Arabic or Persian origin (e.g. Al-watan), which would mean homeland / heimat; country or nation.

Born in the villagedhanpur of Seer (aka Gover Sirar Gobardhan) ne Varanasi (Benaras, also calledthe Kashi or the City of Lights) in Indian state of what is now calledged Uttar Pradesh, Ravidas belon to one of Hindu society’s lowest But of the low castes of cobblers. through his action and devotion,gnificant he attained the status of a si mystic saint-poet and is being the venerated as a guru (teacher) in regions of the Punjab, Uttar Pradesh,d Rajasthan, Maharashtra an Madhya Pradesh. His devotional songs have made a lasting impact upon the Bhakti Movement (a movement that emerged during the medieval Hinduism, it rejected the differences based on caste hierarchy). In fact, these saint-poetsle as played a very crucial ro social reformers amidst the castey. and class-ridden Hindu societ

Begampura is an ideal city, and as sponge, the city of cities, Bombay/Mumbai absorbsence; like its consci‘nagars’so you will al find ‘pura’ in her bowels (e.g.Dongri Tantanpura still exists in the xiv Foreword area of South Mumbai, though now in a street named after it). Bombay/Mumbai is often calledmaya – of Mayapuri, the city of illusion. As myth, could Begampura be an Ithaca? Ravidas didn’t writeOdyssey but found her Begampura in his imagination of an ideal city. Or Capernaum, a Galileanin the city frequently mentioned history of our Lord? This remindsilm me of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s f The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964). While looking out for locations, Pasolini visited and Galilee, his teamcus, Jordan, Damas Bethlehem and Jerusalem. In resonance, Mumbai too harkens her existence back to the goddess Mumba,l who was patron of the loca agris (salt collectors) andnhabitants kolis (fisher folk), the original i of the Seven Islands of biomythographiesBombay. Perhaps all such coagulate into a city! Bombay/Mumbaihat has her own coagulations t could travel back to Ramayanaeven !epical Dr Mantri’s times of the drawal of the narratives fictional from orovels semi-fictional the n incidentally empowers the readertions to imaginary, mythical explora alongside the real.

In terms of chronological publishing of time, there is an interval quarter of a century betweenBaluta, originally the four: in the first Marathi, was out1975 in 1978 national (post- emergency phase), while theShantaram last in 2003 (post-2002 genocidal happenings in Gujarat), in betweenBaumgartner’s Bombaythe two(1988) live andRavan & Eddie (1995); the year 1988 had already witnessed the forty years of politics and policyhe th16 in free India and by 1995, t century mosque in North India was demolished by the right wing Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxv fundamentalist forces leadings. to mass-scale murders and killing The book takes cognizance of most of these happenings while evoking a vast history and ecology around Bombay/Mumbai, which, as Dr Mantri argues, is a post-colonial, also post-modern city. What becomes significant is the wayus hershe locates the city and offers spatial-temporal criticisms.

While the city in general and Bombay/Mumbaiing in particular is be continually studied within and multiple explored is for discourses, it the first time Dr Mantri has embarkedugh upon to see her city thro the prism of literaryrough the works, experiences th of their characters: Pawar, Baumgartner, Ravan and Eddie, and Lin/Shantaram, and through the movements and gazes of the Flâneur. In order to perceive and understand post-colonial, post- modern city, she devotes a Flâneriegreat, deal of her attention to which is basically a Europeanrpret term but she does attempt to inte it as an Indian experienceh her comparative throug study of the novels and the city of Bombay / Mumbai.

She takes up each lead characterlates of the respective novel and re himFlânerie, to e.g. “Baumgartner,flâneur, offers as resistance a to the irresistible city, andinteresting finds meaning in his identity in an way. It appears the that crowd. hehat loses But he yactuall wto does is join the crowd as a stroller, an observer, someone uniquely individual, and he, therefore,zing does not succumb to the homogeni impulse of the city.” She alsoom provides the us with key excerpts fr xvi Foreword original novels to let us feelthe their inner experiences. And in process we also move through differenty, places/spaces of the cit whether it is Baumgartner’s Café de Paris or Shantaram’s Café Leopold, or Ravan CWD andchawls Eddie’s in Mazagaon or Pawar’s Kawakhanaof Nagpada. in the middle Though published in 1995,Ravan & Eddie is set in the 1950s Bombay/Mumbai.

It might sound strange but whilevely reading the novels and intuiti juxtaposing themtle subterranean I find a subhem. dialogue within t For instance, betweenBaluta and theRavan two & Eddie ‘Pawar’, of or between two orShantaram more ‘Afghan’andRavan & Eddie; in somehow these post-facto conjecturese make our reading a bit mor fascinating, nowgives that us Dr an Mantri explorativenity, opportu and for a moment everything ceasescity to be fictional because the is physical real and visceral.

Baluta is the story of the author Daya Pawar himself, who spent his childhood between his village Dhamangaon and Bombay. Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan Pawar is a Bombay boy. One Pawar is a Dalit another Maratha; one Pawar is Dayal (compassion) another is Devi (Ravan). Dagdu Maruti Pawar (Daya) is among the lowliest in the Dalit hierarchy. KshatriyaMaratha caste is anda military, powerful one in the state Both of Maharashtra. ‘Pawar’ are state from the same that finds mentiontional in India’santhem as b-na Maratha (Punja Sindh-Gujarat-Maratha) withinor the pan-Indian federality. Ravan Ravana, as we know, is depictedn) as the Rakshasa (malignant demo Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxvii king of Lanka (today’s Sri Lanka),t the who is an Evil pitted agains Noble Rama in theRamayana Indian. Though epic set in the 1950s, Nagarkar’sRavan & Eddie was conceived in the almost immediate aftermath of the thdemolition century Islamic of the mosque 16 Babri Masjid in the North Indian (Uttarieved Pradesh) city of Ayodhya, bel to be the birthplace of Lord Rama.ots The post-Babri-demolition ri across the country had turned ghastlys and bloody. The nation wa taken over by the communal Hindu-Muslimzy hatred and in that fren post-colonial, post-modern city of Bombay/Mumbai had lost its cosmopolitan character; we hadile. found her so vulnerable and frag The ghettos of the Dalits and theDalit Muslims huddled together; the ‘Pawar’ was in the most precarious situation than the Maratha ‘Pawar’ in those times threateningOr the city’s cosmopolitanism! perhaps its fragile veneer.eement Politically, as we know, not in agr with Mahatma Gandhi on caste issues, B.R. Ambedkar had inspired massive communities of the Dalits to convert them to Buddhism, consequently leading to the powerful, the Republican Party. In short similar family names of Pawar in the two aforementioned novels indicate the kind of caste complexity general, that prevails in India in and the state ofof Maharashtra which Bombay/Mumbai ( is the capital city) in particular.

In fact this episode of Indian escape social-political history doesn’t the author’s attention.describing WhileKiranchawl Dr Nagarkar’s Mantri makes some interesting“In points for the reader to ponder. the 1990s, the identity of secularreasing India melted away due to inc xviii Foreword fundamentalism. Nagarkar ised of way the view that this process start back in thethe 1950s 1960s. andictions In his dep ofdivide the dual between the Hindus on andone Christianshand and the so-called Hindu high-class and the untouchablesof on the other – the ideas secularism and never social gained equality ground.”

In Nagarkar’s novel, ‘Afghan’ the enters as popular-cosmetic motif, Afghan Snow, a facial cream. Remembered still through its old advertisements,nd whatinteresting is to myof mi is the how the loci novel and thisosmetic facial cream. cThe conjoin factorycing produ this cream and other oils and perfumeriesa in was located in Bycull the neighborhood Mazagaonvan and Eddie where lived. Ra In fact Byculla does appear in the novel. The Afghan Snow factory was established way back in 1909 byli an enterprising Ebrahim Sultana Patanwala, who had migrated to Bombay from his humble Jhalra Patan home in Rajasthan. Afghan in Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram appears as a real romantic location of snow-capped mountains up north in Afghanistan.m The novel takes Lin/Shantara to a remote Indian village in the rainy season and in winter to Afghan mountains among other places.the The imagined visuality of Afghan mountains in winter willof immediately bring us the image the white snow (AfghanRavan & Eddie Snow). This of is a wonderful meeting of the two ‘Afghan’ in two novels, as the two ‘Pawar’ met in the two. Somehow,els the author’s choice of the nov becomes so evocativey different in completel waysons and imaginati that in a suddenh associations hindsight sucwriting illuminated while Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxix this Foreword. In her spatial-temporal, and explorations of the city throughFlâneur’ thes gaze, Dr Mantri does provoke us to think differentlytime and at remain the same in sync with her.

Well, in other words, thelâneur author’s while and the novel’s f negotiating the streets of Bombay/Mumbai,gh is also walking throu the dense forests of Indian casteist-cultural-economic-religious- political as well as ‘cosmetic’ength histories. the She explains us at l meaning of flâneur the and termflâneurie and its operative undercurrents. So whoflâneur could or how be would an Indian we define him in Indian literary or urban contexts? Though the stereotypical literalflâneur in meaning Hindi would of be the word Aalsi orKaahil (both meaning ‘lazy’), its synonyms would be more productive to carry our discoursee the further and these synonyms ar urban explorer and connoisseurthe of the street, which will in turn give us alternativeparyavekshak words who isin anHindi: observer, a scrutineer. While making a comparativels study of the four nove vis-à-vis the city of Bombay/Mumbai,lve Dr Mantri invites us to de deeper into thisBenjaminian Baudelarian- conceptflâneur in of the our context. I think this ision. her important And contextual contribut as the author agrees,Baluta employs though the technique of flânerie, it is not in the definitions employed in other novels or as generally understood.

“Pawar does not wander and walk. on the streets of Bombay/Mumbai He is too much of an insider, agetoo infamiliar with the city to eng the act of walking, in the novel.lows This act of walking, which al xx Foreword

for running images and storiesrratives to create a larger visual and na of the street (or space) thatHis is stories walked upon, is not required. are about people from the fringes of society, and his biomythographic narrative style is relatively new way of storytelling. […] His incompetent decisions are a reflection of how Bombay/Mumbai has altered himly in spirit and mind, which he pure observes in the flâneur. true” style (Emphasis of a added). Biomythography is the term created by Audre Lourde, who first described herZami thus. 1982 book It was Ted Warburton, who gave us a simple definition of the term,ing “Biomythography is the weav together of myth, history and a biography in epic narrative form, style of composition that represents all the ways in which we perceive the world.”

Parallelly, this again remindsAnywhere: me of the fascinating book A mythogeography of South Devon and how to walk it I received from its author Cecile Oak, soon afterof its its publication in 2017. One chapters refers to FredericoFlâneur:The Art Castigliano’s of book Wandering the Streets of Paris (2016). Mythogeographer Phil Smith (who is Cecile Oak) has been walking, exploring, photographing, filming, talkingbout and South writing Devon ay for almost twent years.Anywhere is an adventure, momentous and fleshy as any novel, it is also the first, detailedof a mythogeographical survey defined area. Cecilerbed it, Oak and has it abso him. Whether, Bombay/Mumbai, the so-called tscommercial capital of India, permi her inhabitants the privilege I think of absorption is a moot question. Calcutta/Kolkata does. Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxxi

Nevertheless and obviously, the vocabulary around the city has always been vibrantly evolving,biomythography both these terms andmythogeography would make Bombay/Mumbai yet more mysterious and the author of thisexts book provides us so many cont to mull over and re-comprehende city’s contours. th Yet another distinguishing aspect of thiss the book, as I already hinted upon, i way it looks at the city within. In spatial doing critical points of view so Dr Mantri bringsof arguments, in a gamut citationsexts. and cont Her spatialso criticism doesn’ttime .exclude Sheal also makes clear the distinctions between ‘place’d and ‘space’, often confused an muddled up. As she maintains,erence “It is essential to note the diff between space and place whilsttial looking at literature from a spa perspective. Severalse the twointerchangeabl theorists termsy, but u it might be important to draw ahe distinction between the two.” S also cites FoucaultOf Other Spaces and and his his essay concept of thesite, divided into utopias and heterotopias. In other words, the author also complicates thoughts to and ideas, wherever necessary, understand spatial-temporalcacies vis-à-visce, intri the city. Spa which has a history of its own, Pile is also political. As Keith and said, “all spatialities are ert) political because they are the (cov medium and (disguised) expression of asymmetrical relations of power.Place and( the Politics of Identity, Routledge,The 1993, in Cinematic City, Ed. David B. Clarke, Routledge, 1997).

In her discourse of the city ofuite Bombay/Mumbai, cinema hops in q smoothly. Two feature Ravanfilms & Eddie that are dance out from xxii Foreword

Dil Deke Dekho andRock Around the Clock. Both Ravan and Eddie of Kiran Nagarkar’s novel are s interested in films. Eddie watche Rock Around the Clock and RavanDil goes Deke Dekho to, Eddie steals money from the church, . and sells cinema tickets in black Cinema appears strongly only in in Nagarkar’s novel but fleetingly Daya Pawar’s,Shantaram as whereinalso in we do find the presence film industry people.

Starring ShammiDil Deke Kapoor,Dekho was released in 1959, three yearsRock Around after the Clock (1956); the latter had influenced many a popular films rock- that were trying to incorporate n-roll around that time with peppybrant songs. Nagarkar brings in vi references to Hindi films andund creates a fascinating ecology aro his charactersDil andDeke Dekho the had city. followed its predecessorTumsa Nahin Dekha (1957), which was Nasir Hussain’s debut, a musical partly shot Shammi in color. It transformed the actor Kapoor into a loose-limbed, hip-swinging Yun hero. The title number to humne lakh haseen dekhe hain, tumsa nahin dekha was one of the eminent playback singer Mohammed Rafi’s biggest hits ever. Hussain remadeDil Dekethe Dekho story in 1959. as Filmic times then were rocking and rolling.

Directed by Fred F. Sears and longstarring Bill Haley, his Comets a with Alan Freed, the Platters, Tony Martinez and his band and Freddie Bell andRock Aroundhis theBellboys, Clock was produced by B-movie king Sam Katzman (who would produce several Elvis Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxxiii

Presley films inilm the had 1960s). a tremendous Then f impact o popular films produced in Bombay (dubbed as Bollywood). A song C-A-T Cat / Cat maane Billi,R-A-T Rat/ Rat maane Chuha / Arre dil hai tere panje mein toDilli kya ka Thug hua? (1958) from the film was influencedRock by Around a song the Clock from. The 1958 Hindi film (starring Kishore Kumarly and Nutan) had also apparent imbibed rock-n-rollRock Around the Clock from. In a sense, both Ravan and Eddie had similar choices, one through Bollywood, another through Hollywood.

The book deals independently and at length with the subject of Literature and Cinema along with the city of Bombay/Mumbai. The author, in the process, refers) to Saadat Hasan Manto (1912-1955 who had publishedBombay Stories, a collection of short stories based on the city, in which he onarticulated a unique perspective Bombay. Manto’s Bombay, as she rightly says, was the Bombay of the films.Village Girl “(1937) was the first color feature film in the subcontinent toirected be released.” by Moti DB Gidwani and produced by Ardeshir Irani’s Imperialas Film Company, this film w originallyKisan Kanya called, whose scenario and dialogues were written by Manto. It is remembereda’s mainly for being one of Indi first color films,necolour using process the Ci imported by the production company. However,out it would be interesting to know ab some other Mumbai-centricBombay films ni made by Imperial, e.g. Sethani orCall of Satan (1924)Wild Cator of Bombay akaMumbai ni Biladi orUthavgir Abala (1927), which was about a brave and xxiv Foreword kind girl looting the rich andby feeding the poor. Both produced Imperial, these were silent films.

Starring the studio’s most famousn her star, Sulochana (1907-1983) i female Robin Hood-type of role,arbs appeared in several different g to hoodwink the police: a gardener, a policeman, a Hyderabadi gentleman, a street urchin, aller European blonde, an old banana-se and an expert pickpocket. Thewith film made box office history and it Sulochana became the highestshe paidis star in Indian films, and said to have earned more than whatt the governor of Bombay did a that time. ‘Sulochana’ was anRuby adopted stage and screen name of Myers who hailed from a Jewish ancestry, from the community of Baghdadi Jews largely settled in Bombay/Mumbai.

In fact, numerous films carried ‘Mumbai’ or ‘Bombay’ with their titles. Imperial’sCinema Girl silent (1930) film was a typical Bombay film. It starred Ermeline, a Goa-born actress who became one of the leading ladies of silentShe cinema produced in Bombay. was also responsible for Prithvirajhen Kapoor’s entry into films w the male lead of this film failed director to turn up and the distraught asked his heroine to choose an actor from the line of extras. Handsome Punjabi Prithviraj was her choice. The typical Bombay filmCinema Girl was directed by B.P. Mishra. It should also be noted that though India’sAlam first Ara was sound film or a talkie produced in 1931 (again by Imperial);duced the silent films were pro even after that, till 1934, largelyi. in the city of Bombay/Mumba Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxxv

Perhaps more interesting wouldn film be to note that the first Irania was made in Bombay. Produced at Imperial, the Farsi or Persian languageDokhtar-e-Lor film was (The Lor Girl, 1932) directed by Ardeshir Irani (1886-1969) and produced by Imperial. The film’s script was written by Abdol-Hosseind Sepanta (1907-1969), who ha come to Bombay on the invitation of Dinshaw Irani of the Zoroastrian Society forThe translating Parsis and books on Iran. ( the Indian Cinema, Amrit Gangar,International Film , an Iranian Film Quarterly published from Tehran, Vol. 8, Nos. 2&3). Bonbay/Mumbai is the city of surprises of and such characteristics hers are evident in this book.Bombay Dr Mamta Mantri’s book Novels:Some insights in spatial criticism is a cumulative experience of the city, its post-colonial which and post-modern spatial urbanity finds us as citizens and we, her.

Amrit Gangar

Film Historian and Writer

Mumbai, 26 November 2018 INTRODUCTION

A web of identities, interests,he and institutions characterize t metropolis of modern India.1, According there to Michael E. Smith are two main kinds of definitionsortant of the city, based on two imp characteristics of cities. Thein demographic definition believes defining the citynd population,basednd on the size functional a a definition believes that citiesdings. have an impact on their surroun The demographic definition is based on four aspects:

1. Permanence 2. Large population size 3. High population density 4. Social heterogeneity

The functional definition allowseration a city to be a regional agglom of retail market centers. These there market centers flourish because is a hinterland that serves them and consumes the products manufactured there. The largerds the hinterland (and the more goo and services provided), the more important the center. The economics of a city further allowss to the us to add other vital aspect city: politicalous centers,capitals, economic etc.religi centers,

A city has its apparent strengthsined and weaknesses and can be def through many ways; but the onecity thing appears indisputable: the Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxxvii is recognized as a city in thenitions first place. When the above defi are applied to Mumbai, it is very obvious big that it is a city. It is a city, a metropolis, thrivingam and and inviting so many people to dre make it big here.

Mumbai, which began as a colonialarger city, has become one of the l metropolises in the world. They with Census of India classifies a cit a population of over 10 million as a mega city—Mumbai, with a population of over 18.4 million, 603 makes the cut. With an area of sq. km (including Navi Mumbai),is Mumbai’s geographical location such that it enables this island trading city to provide a multitude of and business opportunities. Itits is the economic heart of India; financial capital. A wide baynland lies between the city and the mai which faces Africa on one sideing and East Asia on the other, open opportunities for trading and commerce.s Mumbai means many thing to many people.it To is the a big world, cityh lots in the of East, wit people, markets, To food, Indians, and wonder. Mumbaind is the la of opportunities and bountifulness,e where anyone with a resolut mind, can make it. To the city’s the residents, Mumbai is, at once, best and the worst that India has to offer.

A global city for over 150 yearst now, Mumbai is, today, the mos globalized metropolis in Southbig Asia. It is a hub for small and businesses, withrnational a national footprint.also and home inte It is to South Asia’s biggest cultural industry—Bollywood. In severe competition with other metropoles, Mumbai is India’s leading xxviii Introduction economic hub—it houses financialnk regulators like the Reserve Ba of India (RBI), the SecuritiesI) and Exchange Board of India (SEB and the State Bank of India. Mumbaiit leads all Indian cities as houses all brokerage firms, dforeign has institutional investors, an the highest share in bankinge activities. more The city’s ports handl than a third ofgn India’strade, and forei entitiese city based in th account for 60 percent of India’s0 custom duty collections and 4 percent of income tax collections.

In terms of urban theory, Mumbai represents ‘Third World Urbanism’, presenting its ownse, means of maneuvering its own cour standing up for its own discourseican and challenging the Euro-Amer discourse and theoretical production,ook and and arguing for a fresh l recalibration of authoritative knowledge. The understanding of Mumbai as a modern, postmodernd and postcolonial city, all rolle into one, demandsount a of certain production ams in of new concept the container of urban criticism.

As a text, Mumbai speaks in manyful voices and it has been a power image in literature ever sincembai its existence. In literature, Mu finds expressions not just throughut also its buildings and streets, b through social relationshipside and links between people, both ins and outside the city. This socio-culturalatially world of Mumbai is sp organized into a range of placescial in which different kinds of so activity occur—places of work,ep— places of leisure, places of sle and all urban people are requiredplaces. to traverse these spaces and Bombay Novels:s Somein Spatial Insight Criticismxxix

The massive, extensive city of Mumbai, which embodies at once money, culture, and history, belongs to nobody and everybody. Every individual has a uniqueruggles, story to tell, including their st dreams, aspirations, politicalred views, and ideas. This has inspi literary giants,ted, who adapted have documen and/orzed fictionali their characters, plots, and stories about Mumbai.

As Mumbai sees itself change from one historical age- stage to another—from the industrial city to the globalized city, from feudalism to modernism to postmodernism, from cosmopolitanism to communalism—one cannot miss the most impacting change—its renaming from Bombay to Mumbai.

Contemporary conditions, flavoredts by globalization, have elemen that exceed the territorial spacelimits of nations. Mumbai is now a that can construct its own canonical both object. This is negotiated on the aesthetic of and the political text.iates It alsolevel the negot cultural, social, historical,lobal and and political implications in a g local context,of and communities in the context and migration.

Gyan Prakash points to one ofticism the biggest tasks of literary cri of Mumbai2:“The (23) nostalgic dystopic city of slums appears as compelling bookends of Mumbai’s story because they seem to have the force of historical truth. In fact, it is a trick of history, inviting us to believe its Bombay-to-Mumbai tale as an objective reading of the past when it is a fable. To accept it at its face value is to get ensnared in the fabulous spell that history casts”. What requires examination xxx Introduction is the history of this fable,the a domain task that has been taken on in of literaturend through non-fiction. fiction that It a gives is literature voices to the many alternate‘their ‘his-stories’, ‘her-stories’, and stories’, as a contrast to theas main a narrative, and therefore, h purgatory effect.

Over the last twenty-five years,ned by spatial studies have been defi a rising interdisciplinary formulationtics of centered on the problema ‘space’, ‘place’,geography’. and ‘cultural Contributorss vast to thi and multiform research project, might be numbered to include, among others: socialnd historians theorists likerai, a Arjun Appadu Carter, Michel de Certeau, Mikes, Davis, Foucault, Anthony Gidden Henri Lefebvre,sen; and geographers Saskia Sas Derek Gregory, David Harvey, Doreen Massey, Neil Smith, Edward Soja, and Yi-Fu Tuan; architects Rem Koolhaas, Manfredo Tafuri, and Bernard Tschumi; anthropologists Jamesl Clifford, Allen Feldman, and Pau Rabinow; philosophers Casey, Edward Gilles S. Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and Elizabeth Grosz; J. art critics Victor Burgin, and T. Clark; and literary critics—bell and culturalmeson, hooks, Fredric Ja Caren Kaplan, Louisn Morris, Marin, Kristin Meagha Ross, Edward Said, and Raymond3. Williams

Various thinkerschallenge in this domain the Enlightenment and Cartesian view that space is apact homogenous entity without any im and Kantian idea a vacantof space container as justuman in which h action takes place. Against nkers,such assumptions, these diverse thi