05 January,2025 11:39 AM IST | Mumbai | Fiona Fernandez
Nana Chowk skywalk is the backdrop for one of the stories in the book. File pics
Muses Over Mumbai (Bloomsbury), reads like a love letter, a love song to the original version of Mumbai. Authors find stories in what they love, experience, and relate to. What are this city's qualities that inspire you to write about it in the guise of fiction?
Murzban Shroff: WHEN I started writing the book, I wrote out an admission. It flowed spontaneously and went like this: "Call it Bombay or call it Mumbai, my city remains the story capital of the world. There are no limits to the inspiration it delivers, no end to its generosity." I could afford to feel this, and say after two decades of writing about the city, understanding what it represents to its people, what it delivers, and what makes it tick. The special thing about Mumbai is: it will test you to the hilt, it will thwart you, frustrate you, confuse you, overwhelm you, but it never fails to deliver a sense of realisation, a modicum of personal and spiritual growth.
To live in Mumbai is to be conscious of a larger design of life and illumination at work. It is this illumination that finds its way into my stories that unravels through the personal conflicts of its characters, and becomes the epiphany on which one thrives. It is fiction born out of reality, to reveal a deeper reality of the self and of your environment.
From Breathless in Bombay to Muses over Mumbai, we've witnessed a metamorphosis, beyond a name change. It's visible in its streetscapes, its socio-cultural fabric and its changing neighbourhoods. As an author, how did you navigate these shifting plates to ensure its soul is somewhat intact?
MS: Let's first understand the changes. The maalishwallas have almost disappeared; the horse-drawn Victorias have been banned; kaali-peelis are facing competition from private cab companies; BEST has reduced its fleet to two-thirds its original size; the dhobi ghats are being eyed by builders; our racecourse is being considered for redevelopment; Marine Drive promenade has been truncated; our middle-class neighbourhoods are fast morphing into gated communities. So how do I - who feel so strongly about Mumbai's traditions of inclusiveness - navigate these? By reminding myself that the soul of the city is different from the agendas of its caretakers. By soul I mean its diversity, its bonhomie, its empathy, its humanity. And this is what shines through in each of the stories in this book. I take a character, a thought, an issue, a conflict, and journey with it. In the bargain, I explore certain key aspects of the city. Man in relation to his environment. Man in pursuit of his identity, his goals. What is important then is not what this city puts you through, but what it makes of you - a more aware, more sentient human being.
Amidst this change, do you find subtle or obvious changes in the people who you meet every day?
MS: Post the COVID 19 pandemic, I see a mercantile opportunism in some people; a kind of defiant insurance against what they went through. This becomes more pronounced because Mumbai is, after all, a mercantile city. The cost of living is often borne in human terms. Yet, it is mercantile without being aggressive or violent; it has a largely âlive, let live, and let earn' attitude. Amongst the moneyed and upper crust, there's a marked hedonism, an anxiety to make the most of the time left. But on the whole, there is also a greater awareness of one's priorities; things that matter, things that count. I am hoping that this awareness sustains and that it leads to more stories of self-actualisation.
Your stories are raw with the open wounds and hard knocks. Yet, your characters, including the protagonists, display resilience and offer hope. Are these stories your way of celebrating the famous âspirit' of Mumbai?
MS: You are right about my characters. Take Shraddha, the mochi's wife: her dilemma is to preserve her dreams for her daughters, and she will do anything to make that happen. Or Sushila, the orphaned ragpicker girl who wants to extricate herself from the squalor of the streets, and become an Uber driver. Or Sikander, who wants to save his stray dogs from extermination and makes that his mission. Or Inspector Bedekar, who must redeem himself in his own eyes, before he can return home to his children. Or even Hyder Ali, a dying drug addict who must perform one good deed before he dies. It's not so much the spirit of the city I dwell on, as the city itself, which - through its complexities and challenges - raises the spirit and elevates human consciousness.
Why such a long gap to write the sequel of Breathless in Bombay?
MS: Breathless⦠released in 2008. From 2009 to 2012, I faced intense litigation against the book, which slowed me down; it occupied all my creative energies. A lot of my time went in drafting legal petitions, interacting with lawyers, and attending court hearings. It was 2012 by the time the cases were resolved and the courts had ruled in my favour. In 2015, I published my Bandra novel, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy. This was a light, jocular novel that kept me going through the dark days of my litigation. The book was later published in the US and in China. In 2019, I came up with an experimental series, Fasttrack Fiction, a collection of shorts for the cell phone reader. But this digital series couldn't find an audience in India and the rights were returned to me. Then, in 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, I published Third Eye Rising, my India collection of stories dealing with issues such as caste, dowry, displacement, child apathy, female exploitation, and migrant identities. Muses Over Mumbai kicked in post the pandemic, although two of the stories were written earlier.
Without revealing much, can you recall the most challenging stories?
MS: Surprisingly, some of the shorter stories like Neighbors (where I explore the slow death of a gaothan), or Mental About Mumbai (where an environmental activist takes up cudgels against the hacking of trees) or The History Lesson (where we feel the moral dilemma of a builder who is asked to sell out his city) called for intense re-writing. Short as they are, these stories are vital to the collection. They are strong âpoint of view' stories, intended to reflect the Mumbaikar's state of mind. They show us where the city is headed, what is lost and what can be further lost. The longer ones like Hafta, Accidental Karma, and The Earth Shall Be Enjoyed by Heroes were relatively easier because I was working in scenes; I conceived them as mini novels. For the longer stories, I had to do ground-level research. For Scent of a Meal, I had to learn how newly-arrived migrants adjusted to the city. For The Earth Shall Be Enjoyed by Heroes, I had to learn about police procedurals during a rape investigation. This quest for information and accuracy makes the writing that much more pleasurable.
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The issue, the questions or concerns are always real - those are your points of identification with your reader. Your characters could be drawn from memory or from imagination, but they need to be well-thought-out and relatable. The storyline is where you indulge your imagination and push the boundaries of fiction. Here, you use devices like conflict and chaos - to arrive at answers you are seeking; answers that must manifest, first to the writer, then to the reader. Fiction is the pursuit of truth - with knowledge as your body and imagination as your wings.
