Bombay Novels: Some Insights in Spatial Criticism A review by N Chandra published in Muse India

 Evolution of a city across different periods

Bombay Novels: Some Insights in Spatial Criticism by Mamta Mantri attempts to recreate the spaces of the metropolitan Mumbai city through literary representations which include both past and present. It also explores the motif of how Mumbai is a confluence of ‘imaginary geography’ and ‘literary images’. Select literary texts are used by the author to cull out and comprehend the influence of social, economic, and material factors in refashioning spatial history: “The metropolis of today is the chameleon, changing shape and size. Margins evolve into the center; centers turn into frontiers and regions become cities.” (60)

By employing an interdisciplinary approach, the author has attempted to trace the history of Mumbai chronologically from the 11th century AD. Significant events inclusive of the impacts of 1905 Bengal partition and the riots during 1920-22 Non-Cooperation movement are recorded. Mamta Mantri ably chronicles the evolution of the city across different periods, ranging from the industrial to the globalized, from feudalism to modernism to postmodernism, from cosmopolitanism to communalism.  The momentous event of the city being renamed Mumbai from Bombay is succinctly enumerated. Not only does the metropolitan city become an icon of the experiences related to modernity, postmodernity and postcolonialism but also of fragmentation and disorientation. The book construes how identity (ies) in a modern city and the relationship between city and the senses are deliberated. While relating how urban fantasies preoccupy modernist literature Mantri questions notions of the inside vs. the outside haunting the city dwellers. It further delineates the nexus between the metropolis, performance and its depiction in visual cultures.

The author firmly believes that the city has connection to its dwellers through the olfactory senses; the people are very familiar with the places and the senses when they pass through the streets of Mumbai, which brings familiarity of the space and also identity as a ‘Mumbaikar’. The writer has accounted four kinds of writing: the native literature which uses vernacular language Marathi as the medium of writing, the native literature which uses English as the medium of writing, the diasporic literature which uses any language but written by the natives of Mumbai and have been settled to other places and the last one, the multiculturalist literature which uses any language of writers from that represent the city of Mumbai. In the context of spatial criticism, the book argues that the modern city influences urban writers to develop certain literary-visual practices that translate urban experience into poetry and prose.

Citing widely from Foucault, Marx and a few postcolonial critics, the book justifies how the city could be read using spatial criticism. Foucault’s ‘space and time’ concepts are used for the purpose. The concepts ‘space’, ‘place’, ‘site’, and ‘cultural geography’ is distinguished from each other using postcolonial theories & theorists. It delineates the fact that place is a cultural construction and plays a significant role in the social process. It further establishes the textuality of the city where the city itself becomes a text and the writers use two levels of writing– the primary level is what they have seen or experienced and the imaginary level is what they dream about their city. The French word ‘flaneur’ is experimented in the book widely as this flaneur is part of the city. He is the part of the city as well as the outsider of the city, “For the flaneur, the crowd is an essential element, yet he is not a man of the crowd” (54).

The list of writers and their respective works are provided along with creative genres of literature and the cinema that originated in Mumbai. The literature and cinema become a medium to interpret several issues and incidents varying from different periods and spaces such as criminal life in Bombay and the influence of Guajarati literature.  The novels chosen describe the city through different perspectives in various narrative styles. Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988) is one among the four texts selected for the study. It describes happenings during II World War and representations of Mumbai in 1970s partition that lead to displacement and search of identity. The second text, Kiran Nagarkar’s Ravan and Eddie (1995), is about the two boys in Bombay who lead different lifestyles due to two different cultures. The first Dalit novel Baluta (1978) by Daya Pawar, translated by Jerry Pinto is the third text chosen for study, which describes yet another angle of Mumbai. Gregor David Roberts’ Shantaram (2003) is the fourth novel taken for study. The character in these novels confront situations of anxiety, displacement, dislocation, alienation, despair, and absolute fragmentation, which anyone in Mumbai could experience and empathize with. These four novels can be read as postcolonial rendering of the personalized narratives. While glorifying the city, the novelists have portrayed the hard realities of it such as crime, poverty, casteism, prostitution, politics, and such issues.        

The writer concludes by categorizing the city into three slots – the Mirror City (the reflection of Bombay/Mumbai is seen in every character’s state of mind), the Fragmentary City (the writer/character has to position his/her own impression on the city along with the impressions of the others) and the Contemplative City (by counting the past the present things too are incorporated to construct the city). The book has connected the intersection of cultures using modernism and postcolonialism and the identified space is actively employed to construct and deconstruct social identities.  This identification happens between the self and the city through socio-cultural-political entities. As an interdisciplinary study, the book gives an accounting of history of Mumbai and Spatial Criticism than to the analysis of the selected novels, yet it has done the validation of the proposed work. One of the limitations of the critical study is that very few literary texts are selected, which has narrowed down the research as spatial criticism to be effective needs a bigger canvas. One novel that could have given great depth was Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games. Overall, this research has the scope for those who are engaged in working on spatial criticism in literature as well as for those who are interested in historical and cultural studies using literature. 

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