Book Review | Unselfconscious Chronicle of an Overlooked City
This is neither a sentimental nor a self-conscious book, although it is redolent with the author’s memories of the city and stories about older, other times
Mumbai’s unique history, its mercantile character, its development as a melting pot, its unique architecture, its glamour and work ethic, you name it, it’s been written several times over. Sidharth Bhatia’s Mumbai: A Million Islands makes a strong case for one of the best books written about Bombay and Mumbai in the 21st century. It looks at the changes that the city faces now, and how that impacts its historical nature as well as how its past finds a way through and ought not to be forgotten.
It is also one of the most empathetic books I have read on this giant city in a while. Much of Mumbai’s inequalities are taken for granted — the slums, the abhorrent living conditions, the filth — and indeed are presented as positives, as markers of Mumbai’s great spirit of work and somehow ingeniously coming up with solutions to get by.
Bhatia writes without those convenient traps. He presents the horror as it is. But not from shock or disgust. Rather, he introduces you to the people who suffer the city and how and why they live as they do and the chances they take to improve their situation. Minus schmalz, you meet a variety of people who live on the edge.
Like Nainesh Thakkar, who lives on the roof of a building in the Fort area, in a flat that is not strictly legal, even though he has documentation, nor even real. But it is his family home, where he was born, like most of his neighbours. Or Bombil bai or Aapa, called that because she sells the dried fish the fragrance of which suffuses the air of Mumbai, squeezed between a steel cupboard and a plastic drum full of clothes in the slums of Behrampada. Or Shanti Ravi, who lives on Port Trust land, where her family has lived for generations working for the Bombay Port Trust but whose presence has never been officially acknowledged. Shanta Ravi however works in the area to send children to school, to get young men into gainful employment and generally look after the area.
All of them are likely to be affected by the direction which Mumbai is now taking, and which is the backbone of Bhatia’s book — rampant, constant building and “development”. Which translates to gentrification of the city’s hidden areas, so that the very rich have their playgrounds and the poor are moved out of sight. Bhatia also tackles issues we don’t want to remember like growing Islamophobia and the targeting of Muslims. Or what has happened to the sex trade as the former red light district of Kamathipura gets reworked.
This is neither a sentimental nor a self-conscious book, although it is redolent with the author’s memories of the city and stories about older, other times. The book traces the city’s history, but largely from the development perspective, from British colonial to post-Independence efforts. The base of the story however is human. The people who made and continue to make Mumbai the city it is, but people who are being forgotten and pushed out.
For what is a city without its people. For them, this is a chronicle so they will not be forgotten.
Mumbai: A Million Islands
Sidharth Bhatia
HarperCollins