Book review: 'Mumbai Noir'

Book: Mumbai Noir
Author: Edited by Altaf Tyrewala
Publisher: Harper Collins
Pages:  274
Price: Rs350

There is no story about Mumbai that hasn’t been told. Especially the Mumbai of bombs, dons, crime, punishment, fear, money, the Mumbai of shadows, of the other, of the ‘underbelly’. Through Salaam Bombay, Satya, A Fine Balance, Maximum City, Slumdog Millionaire, right up to Behind The Beautiful Forevers, popular culture has captured — on film and in word — all that is murky and macabre about Mumbai.

Yet, Mumbai Noir, a new collection of short stories, springs a few surprises. Edited by author Altaf Tyrewala, this anthology is the latest in a series of original noir stories set in a distinct location around the world, including Delhi Noir, published by Akashic Books.

In his introduction to the book, Tyrewala writes that “What inoculates the stories in this collection from the hyperbole of ‘maximum city’... are the restraints set by the noir genre, which stipulates, among other things, an  unflinching gaze at the underbelly, without  recourse to sentimentality or forced denouements”. 

Tyrewala’s claim is not entirely true: There is sentimentality in the book, in the use of ‘Mumbai characters’ like corrupt cops, tough-talking detectives, hijras and dance bar girls, and there are forced denouements as well, when a terrorist’s wife meets a victim, or a depressed housewife snaps. But what is true is that this is an unflinching gaze at Mumbai that makes you, sometimes, flinch.

This anthology is sprinkled with sinister but familiar themes (familiar to noir and familiar to Mumbai) of terrorism, corruption, underworld crime, but it is when the stories expand to a different kind of darkness and fear, that the city and its people resonate.

Like in Jerry Pinto’s ‘They’, a story of the habits and politics of a neighbourhood gym that are uncovered when a gym trainer is murdered. Or Paromita Vohra’s ‘The Romantic Customer’, a first-person narrative of young love and betrayal, set in the ubiquitous cyber café. 

Tyrewala’s ‘The Watchman’, about a building watchman waiting for an impending death, captures a sense of the irrational fear that can sometimes swamp us in a city where death is ever-present.

And then there’s the horror of the home, like in Namita Devidayal’s ‘The Egg’, a satirical tale on what happens with the discovery of a single egg in a ‘vegetarians-only’ building.

This being a book in the noir genre, there is a lot of crime and death, but in that overcrowded space, the stories that stand out are the ones that have the most authentic voice: ‘By Two’ by Devashish Makhija, a gritty story about twin auto-rickshaw drivers and what they do to survive in Mumbai; and ‘TZP’ by R Raja Rao, which gives us an insight into the lonely and desperate world of an older gay man.

The collection is let down by some stories with hackneyed characters and uninspired plots, but the ones that entertain are, fortunately, more than the ones that don’t, even for all of us weary, cynical Mumbai people.