Customer Reviews

Breathless in Bombay

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This is a book of literary fiction that should be mandatory reading for anyone who has ever loved the city of Bombay (or Mumbai, whatever you prefer). Easily the most arresting fictional biography of a city and its inhabitants in a long, long time, Shroff's short stories crackle with a sort of nervous energy that makes the familiar, endearing and the seemingly unknown, fascinating. All fourteen stories sing, dance and catapult their way into your heart with a richness of cast and detail that literally takes your breath away.

As with any book of short stories, it's difficult to agree upon the universal gems that everyone loves. In my opinion, the title story Breathless in Bombay along with The Queen Guards Her Own and This House of Mine can hold their own in a galaxy of the finest short fiction you would have ever come across from some the most astute practitioners of this art form.

A word of caution though. This is most certainly NOT India Exotica, what the West, ordinarily loves to peddle in the name of Indian Fiction (and which justifiably irritates the living daylights out of serious readers). This is fiction in all its rawness; contemporary in telling, compelling to read, rooted firmly in the Indian milieu and throbbing with affectionate and intelligent humour.

Shroff's bond with his fellow citizens from all walks of the society, his growing unease with the changing social equations, his unsparing eye on the hollowness that drives the city's prima donnas and his tireless concern for the way the world around him is reshaping to accommodate society's fresh set of rules, permeates through every pore of the story and is in fact a recurring theme that haunts its characters (and as a result of that, his readers) over and over.

The city of Bombay has got herself a stellar storyteller. Take a bow, Mr. Shroff.

Avid readers of fiction have their favorite Indian authors. The sub-continent has provided English readers with some of the best fiction of the last 30 years: Rushdie, Mistry, Desai, Seth to name a few. These authors have opened our eyes to a fascinating culture and landscape, seemingly another world. We will soon be adding Murzban F. Shroff to the list of exemplary fiction writers and his first collection of short stories, Breathless in Bombay, will prove that his inclusion is deserved.

Murzban provide characters, backgrounds and story lines in14 deftly expressed stories. One story, titled The Queen Guards Her Own, contains as many vivid characters as if it was written by Dickens: Chacha the carriage driver, Simran the young prostitute, Amir Jwaab the beggar. This House of Mine, tells the story of a houseful of tenants who unite to save their homes from demolition, each tenant a completely portrayed individual. In Maalishwaala, the Hindi term for masseuse, we learn the complex story, past and present, of a young man from a rural village trying to earn money to support his wife back home. Each story delivers, none disappoints.

The most fascinating character of course is Bombay itself, the city that is the home to these characters and millions of others. Dense neighborhoods that were rural 30 years ago are now being leveled for high-rises. Many thousands live and work in slums with corporate headquarters as the backdrop of their labors. The new Indian and the India of centuries of tradition rub shoulders continuously every day. The tension and the contrast between the ancient and the modern, rural and urban, Muslim and Hindu, affluence and poverty are all here. Murzban F. Shroff is a skillful and accomplished writer who has won recognition for his short stories. I believe that this collection heralds the wider arrival of his unique voice and ample talent. He is deserving of taking his place among his worthy contemporaries.

BREATHLESS IN BOMBAY by Murzban Shroff is a stunning collection of stories, linked by a love of the city and a truly unusual and diverse portrait of its inhabitants. Each story tantalizes, captivates, lingers because of the unresolvable conflicts that haunt the characters' lives, conflicts as much part of culture as character. The richness and depth of the collection left me feeling as though I'd journeyed through a novel, rather than a story collection, which in my experience are usually uneven. Part of this was the unity created by the city - oh, the city! -- and the motif of clash between the rich and the poor, but most was the empathy of Shroff's narrative voice, the love he instilled for his characters in whatever emotional or moral dilemma they floundered. The dhobi Mataprasad struggles to keep the collective life of his laundry trade afloat; the Bollywood producer's assistant, Vicki, contends with her love for an artist who disdains all she does; the masseur Bheem Singh finds his talent greater than that of his wealthy clients on Chowpatty Beach; the victoria driver, Chacha, risks everything to rescue the daughter of his friend from the neighborhood brothel. What made BREATHLESS IN BOMBAY novelistic, not to mention a page-turner, was how much I cared for the characters and their fates, along with the beauty of the language. Shroff made me yearn to stroll through Bombay, like I might stroll through Paris, as no other Indian writer has been able to do.

This is a solid, well written book that offers a series of short stories and vignettes about life in contemporary Bombay. The writing is for the most part strong and straightforward, with the tone mixing the tragic, the melodramatic and the amusing.

For me, the best parts of this book are the places where the author lets himself go and takes a few risks. The best example is a story ("The Queen Guards Her Own") that revolves around a retired champion horse that now pulls a tourist cart and his owner, as well as a couple of small girls lost in the world, one the daughter of a wealthy tourist who the cart driver has in his carriage and one who is the daughter of a prostitute whom the cart-driver has befriended. This story weaves from image to image, a sort of verbal montage, to build toward its conclusion. It deftly mixes humor, sometimes ironical, sometimes slapstick, to keep the situations from declining into the overly melodramatic. This writing has the mark of greatness on it.

On the other hand, in the title story and in other stories Schroff indulges himself in an excess of melodrama; the rich/poor contrasts and comparisons become too easy to anticipate as you read through the stories. He needs to take them a level deeper in a number of places. The result is a series of good stories with occassionally memorable images that, in the end, fall a bit short of what we hope for them.

I enjoyed this book; I hope to enjoy his next even more.

and why did you write 'babu baarah takka'. Why did you end it like that? Loved it so much anyway.

If you are okay with that totally unadulterated feeling that seeps near your heart. Go for it.