Bombay: Meri Jaan [Sep 02, 2003] Pinto, Jerry and Farnandes, Naresh

Pages: 348 (17 B/W Illustrations)

From the Flap
When King Charles II of England married Princess Catherine de Braganza of Portugal in 1661, he

received as part of his dowry the isles of Bom Bahia, the Good Bay. Reclaimed from the sea, these

would become the modern city of Bombay. A marriage of affluence and abject poverty, where a

grey concrete jungle is the backdrop to a heady potpourri of ethnic, linguistic and religious

subcultures, Bombay, renamed Mumbai after the goddess Mumbadevi, defies definition.

Bombay, Meri Jaan, comprising poems and prose pieces by some of the biggest names

in literature, in addition to cartoons, photographs, a song and a Bombay Duck recipe, tries to

capture the spirit of this great metropolis.

Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Dilip Chitre, Saadat Hasan Manto, V.S. Naipaul,

Khushwant Singh and Busybee, among others, write about aspects of the city: the high-rise

apartments and the slums; camaraderie and isolation in the crowded chawls; bhelpuri on the beach

and cricket in the gully; the womens compartment of a local train; encounter cops who battle the

underworld; the jazz culture of the sixties; the monsoon floods; the Shiv Sena; the cinema halls; the

sea.

Vibrant, engaging and provocative, this is an anthology as rich and varied as the city it

celebrates.

Introduction: The Live City
Jerry Pinto and Naresh Fernandes
Once Bombay lodges itself in your eye, youre doomed to a lifetime of tunnel vision. Exploring the

damp delights of Brussels one morning not so long ago, we made our way to the Cinquantenaire, a

triumphal arch erected to commemorate Belgiums golden jubilee. We peered at its drizzly outlines

for a few seconds and almost simultaneous