Muses Over Mumbai, Murzban F Shroff’s collection of 17 short stories centred around the city he calls home, captures the many moods of the Maximum City. My Kolkata caught up with the author for a quick chat. Edited excerpts from the conversation follow…
Why do you consider Mumbai the ‘story capital of the world’?
Let us look at the bare essentials of storytelling: character, place, conflict, and resolution. Mumbai is a city of livelihoods and enterprise. It supports a multitude of characters: from migrant workers and street tradesmen to small-time traders, corporate executives, public sector officials, businessmen, industrialists, and jet-setting socialites. Each of these has their own peculiar character traits and aspirations which drive them. Each of these has issues they have to deal with. More often than not, these issues are created by a system that is riddled with inefficiency, apathy and corruption. So Mumbai, a historic city now in the throes of seismic modernisation, has conflict built into its DNA. This conflict must be resolved. Either through human perseverance or through providence. This conflict also lends itself naturally to storytelling. And that’s what Muses Over Mumbai is about: characters in conflict with their environment, the circumstances it imposes on them. In the first story, ‘Ruffled Feathers’, a proud war hero is forced to pander to the whims of the municipality and to the idiosyncrasies of the housing society members he serves. In ‘Mehrunissa’s Story’, a Muslim woman recalls the consequences of the 26/11 terror attacks on her family. In ‘Hafta’, an underpaid police constable must make a moral choice when confronted with a pressing financial situation. In ‘The History Lesson’, a patriotic builder wakes up to the insidious motives of his collaborators and is reminded of his attachment to the city. And in ‘The Earth Shall Be Enjoyed by Heroes’, a philanthropic doctor suddenly finds himself at the receiving end of a bogus rape charge; he must either cooperate with the police or see his carefully constructed reputation destroyed. These personal sagas, set against the unpredictable backdrop of a city fast losing its sanctity and heritage, provide the perfect canvas for compelling storytelling.
People either love Mumbai or hate it? Why do you think the city evokes such sharp reactions?
As a chronicler of the city, and one who was born and has grown up here, I myself have had to deal with mixed feelings about Mumbai. For one, the city inspires a deep sense of love for its history and heritage, for the sense of opportunity it provides, for its innate sense of safety, and for the sheer diversity it supports. For another, and with equal intensity, there is a deep sense of frustration with the overcrowding, the human density, the ceaseless construction work, the lack of sanitation and public utilities, the misuse of public spaces, and the uncontrolled traffic. What we need to realise, though, is that the ethos of the city, what it allows us to achieve, is very different from the agendas of its custodians. Mumbai is a precious city in the wrong hands. It is the greed, the civic apathy, and the mismanagement that disturbs and angers us. But the city is nothing less than a sanctuary to our hopes and aspirations, and our human potential.
What draws you to the short story as a literary form? Does it have any inherent advantages over longer forms like the novel?
It is always the vision of what you are saying or attempting to say that determines the form. This is decided naturally and organically by the work itself. Muses Over Mumbai unfolded as character-based, issue-based fiction. Each of the stories has one or more issues it addresses. Issues like the veg/non-veg divide, alcoholism, terrorism, caste prejudice, communal prejudice, class snobbery, corporate apathy and greed, public sector incompetence, destruction of green cover, and conspiracies of urban development. A novel would not have allowed me to cover so many issues with equal strength. But the short story format gave me that latitude. I could take one important issue, explore it comprehensively; then move on to the next. Through a repertoire of stories, I could also show the diversity of Mumbai. I could capture not only various characters, events, and themes, but also draw on different styles of writing like memoir, essay, and whimsy. And I could vary the tone and tenor of the story depending on the characters and the subject matter. Mumbai is a polyphony of classes, cultures, and communities. This is best captured through a series of stories that makes up the grand tapestry.
While Mumbai, the city, as a physical entity, has clearly devolved, my own sense of involvement with it has increased considerably, says the author Shutterstock
How has your literary muse Bombay/Mumbai evolved over your lifetime?
While the city, as a physical entity, has clearly devolved, my own sense of involvement with it has increased considerably. When I started writing, I had to understand various unseen aspects of Mumbai, the lives of its migrant workers and street vendors. For this I had to do intense research and get my facts right. This led to my debut, Breathless in Bombay. Thereafter, I worked on a novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, which enforced the multicultural roots of the city, the emotional and intellectual bonding between five friends from different communities. Then came Third Eye Rising, my India collection, where I expanded my vision to the rural-urban divide and explored country-specific issues such as caste, dowry, displacement, child apathy, female exploitation, and migrant identities. By the time I came to Muses Over Mumbai, I had imbibed enough of the city to speak up for it. Where I was once a learner and explorer, I became a chronicler, one eager to capture the ethos of the city as much as its changing landscape and the emotional responses of its citizens. I was eager to cull out the good in it, as much as point to the bad things happening; and by this I mean the glimpses of humanity which shine through all the chaos, the mismanagement, the corruption, greed, and lack of vision. Perhaps I see more, feel more, for the city of my birth that is being slowly dismantled. Or perhaps I am just a legacy collector, anxious to freeze a city on the decline, through the only art I know: the power of words.
Over what period of time were these short stories written? Is there an overarching theme connecting them?
The first story in Muses Over Mumbai was written in 2008, during the 26/11 terror attacks. At that point, I did not know there was going to be a collection; I just poured out my angst and outrage in a lyrical essay titled ‘Conversations with a Terrorist’, where I demanded answers from the last surviving terrorist. A majority of the stories kicked in after the pandemic, once the universal terror itself was removed and I could see what my city had become and what it meant to its various residents. I don’t think there is an overarching theme as such. Mumbai is too big and layered a subject to support a single theme. But yes, there is a sense of what I want to convey—just how much this city is losing out to commercial anxiety and mindless growth.
You’ve created a portrait of Mumbai through your collection of short stories. Can you describe Mumbai in a paragraph?
Here, I would like to quote from one of the stories in Muses Over Mumbai, where the central character, the wife of a rich tycoon, is returning home from Dubai. This best expresses my own feelings for Mumbai. “But awaiting her (Anu), right now, was the thrill of homecoming. Dirty, filthy Mumbai, with its veneer of slums, rushing to meet the slow-descending aircraft, had the power to stir her heart. It did not matter what the city looked like from the sky. Something in it had the tendency to raise in her a leaping excitement. She felt like this after every single vacation. Felt excited beyond words.”
What are you working on next?
I have two projects under progress. One is a novel on a hugely marginalised community, hitherto voiceless; the other is a collection of stories inspired by the litigation against my work.
Muses Over Mumbai
By Murzban F. Shroff
Bloomsbury India
Rs 699; 264 pages