Customer Reviews

Love and Longing in Bombay

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY, Vikram Chandra builds upon the extraordinary promise shown in his first novel RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN. This is a collection of five stories (actually three stories and two novellas) that are very loosely connected. (I did not buy the connection, by the way.) Each is set in a different social milieu, revealing a very broad spectrum of modern Indian life. The first story, about an amputee army veteran exorcising a ghost, is expendable. The second story, a comic take on Indian high society, is much more entertaining. The book really takes off, though, with the third story (really a novella), which is a riveting sex/noir police story. But the best selection is the long story dealing with a gay computer mechanic and his nouveau riche business partner (a female programmer) and their tangled love lives in Bombay's bohemian and business worlds. The final entry is a melancholy story set in 1945 which tells how an innocent village man woos a young war widow who will not give up hope of finding her missing (and presumed dead) husband. The collection's total effect is pretty dazzling. I hope Mr. Chandra will continue to write in a realistic style. This book is far more interesting than the fantastical RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN, which became tiresome because there was no earthly logic involved in its development. In this collection Chandra is also more focused than he was in the novel. This is incisive and poetic language from a mind that has observed two cultures both objectively and empathetically. The book is not without its flaws. The first story, apart from the descriptive language, is a string of cliches. The final story has a Chinese-puzzle structure similar to RED EARTH AND POURING RAIN's that would have become very tiresome had it been any longer. But I think Chandra has the potential to be a great writer. He's on the right track. I very much look forward to his next book.

Between 1925 and 1965, the force of Ernest Hemingway's prose ravaged two generations of American writers by seducing them into pathetic imitation of the inimitable. In India, over the past twenty years, the success of Salman Rushdie's writing (all surface brilliance, not-so-magical-realism, and an underlying condescension toward all living things other than the author) has corrupted the style of far too many Indian writers--faced with a dynamic reality to equal any on earth, they slip into silliness, excess and metaphor. Vikram Chandra is a remarkable, startling and very welcome exception. Mr. Chandra is a marvelous storyteller. This matters, because telling a good story, not cleverness and fireworks, is what fiction is about. Writing in the handsome, clean prose that seems effortless to non-writers (while arousing jealousy in fellow writers), Chandra seduces the reader quickly and doesn't break the spell until the last page of his tales. These novellas of life in Bombay from the Independence era to the hi-tech age have the old-fashioned ability to make the reader neglect other matters until he or she finds out what happened. Unlike Mr. Rushdie, whose main characters never seem more than sly intellectual constructs, Mr. Chandra's characters live for us. We CARE about their fates. We believe that they are real. Their wounds are, faintly at least, our own. I recommend this to any lover of good fiction, and I look forward to future volumes from this wonderful, dauntingly-talented author.

A year ago, I read the Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy's _The God of Small Things_ on a whim and - I'll admit it - on its wave of accolades. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It heralded for me a year of informal study of South Asian literature written in English. The next book I happened to pick up was Vikram Chandra's _Love and Longing in Bombay_, a collection of three short stories and two novellas that left me with an even stronger sentiment, one of being simply "blown away".

The five tales in this collection are, at several levels, linked to one another and though the title of the collective work might suggest otherwise, they deal with nearly every aspect of contemporary life in India. If there is any one theme that stands out, I would submit that it is that age-old topic of literature: loss. These are "slice of life" stories that reflect upon the dazzling complexities, conflicts and vicissitudes inherent to life and they - like life itself - do not arrive at neatly packaged conclusions.

I found the prose to be at once simple, yet elegant and sophisticated. The storytelling prowess of Mr. Chandra is obvious from the get go, and though it is undoubtedly true that he has been endowed with a gift from the gods, it is also equaly true that the young author is a well-studied stylist. There are passages in this collection that I have committed to memory, simply for the joy of hearing the language in my mind. Mr. Chandra is an incredibly observant, psychologically-minded and sensitive author and his supremely well-rounded characters have stayed with me - shall I dare say? - for an entire year, such is the impact of his prose.

With the exception of the final tale ("Shanti"), they are all set in Bombay, the mega-metropolis of modern-day India. Each one is begun with the enigmatic storyteller, a retired civil servant named Subramaniam, uttering the enticing, "Listen," and each one may be considered a genre piece. So, for example, there is a ghost story ("Dharma"), a high-brow soap opera ("Shakti"), and a murder mystery detective story ("Kama"). If - as people have correctly pointed out to me - each one is a gem, then the two novellas, "Kama" and "Artha", I would argue, are very close to being nearly perfectly-cut diamonds.

Having given this collection as a gift to a number of people, I can state unabashedly that not one has uttered anything short of superlative to describe his time spent with this book. I, for one, started each story with a piping hot cup of chai masala and could hardly wait to come back to them after a long day's work. This one is a must read for anyone who enjoys that sublime pleasure of succumbing to the powers of a truly gifted and immensely talented storyteller.

I am a resident of Bombay, and I was amazed about how these perfect stories smelled and tasted of the streets of the city. I am away from home, and these stories made me homesick. They are captivating, heartbreaking, tender stories. I read them again and again, and each time they reveal something new about themselves to me. Anybody who loves Bombay or wants to know what the city is like should read these.

Rarely have I enjoyed a book of short stories as much as I did "Love and Longing in Bombay" I was so captivated by all the stories that putting the book down once I started was impossible!....and infact have re-read the murder-mystery and climbing up the social ladder in Bomday stories twice! He captured emotions and the energy in the characters superbly! The vivid style of writing made me feel like I was living in Vikram Chandra's Bombay. I felt the surges of pain, love and excitment he portrayed through his cahracters. Loved the book so much that I immediately raced to the store to get his "Red earth and pouring rain" Highly recommend to anyone! I am sure you will enjoy the enigmatic path he paves as much as I did!

I took this book with me on a 10-day tour of Europe. As beautiful as the sights we visited were, I found I couldn't wait to get back to my hotel room at night to pick up where I left off reading it. Each story is magical in its conception. One cannot help but be drawn into an intricate web of emotions skillfully woven with vibrant prose. The dilemmas faced by the characters are universal, forging subtle yet powerful connections with the reader's own life and forcing reflection on one's own raison d'etre.

This book will be an interesting read for anyone who has ever lived in Bombay. The stories are contemporary and the modern-day Bombayite would find himself/herself in one of the characters. A good attempt by Chandra. - Proma Ray

Many of the other reviews seem to concentrate on the fact that these stories take place in Bombay...and now that I think about it, I see why...

However while reading Love and Longing in Bombay, the city itself didn't strike as particularly important...as one reviewer notes, this could've been any city in the world.

What I liked best about the title were the characters themselves, stunningly unique...you'd be hard pressed to assign them any sort of archetype.

Also, Chandra's writing makes this book worth reading, verbose but it all seems so necessary in context...I love this stuff. Can't wait for his next piece.

The eerieness and macabre of Dharma and Shanti (first and last stories in the book) are reminiscent of Saki, the great Hector Hugh Munro. The personality of the protagonist & narrator and how it reveals itself in the end are reminiscent of Yann Martel's classic Life of Pi. The subtle connection between all short stories and yet their aloofness from the theme are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. However, well before this review sounds like a ploy to put Vikram Chandra amongst the greats and this work amongst classics, I must resign that his casual and careless writing style sets it apart from any other. Who says you have to be out of the box to think out of the box. For someone who has formal training in creative writing and teaches it as a professor, Vikram Chandra's style is surprisingly original and open-ended.

I did not have any prior expectation from the book and my initial reaction to the book was indifferent-to-negative. The grammar seems to be filled with convolution and localized incorrectness. The selective filtering of important detail is frustrating when it misleads you far beyond any point of easy return. However, the writing style turns out to be quite clever when you start paying close attention and that can be hard when you are reading page after page of prose.

The book never obviates this thesis, but Vikram Chandra breaks out the social life of the city into five characteristic components: Dharma (religion), Shakti (power), Kama (sex), Artha (money), Shanti (peace). The stories do not seem to have any direct connection with Bombay, yet they reveal the essence of life in Bombay. It is neither Chandra's methodical construction of dots that connect to give a bigger picture, nor a work of genius broken into jigsaw pieces that all fit together in one coherent truth. Instead the artistry of this book is in its impressionism. The reason why the whole adds up to be more than the sum of its parts is that the parts are beautifully suspended in Bombay's society, painted with the views of a keen observer. It is yours to love, or not.

if you're expecting a travel guide to bombay city, this is most certainly not one. what you will find are some beautifully crafted human studies of that peculiar creature called the bombayite. probably every city will produce a corresponding city-ite, thus bombayites with their particular idiosyncracies and that's what seems to me to be the heart of this book.

what struck me about this author is how he combines vividness of narrative with an economy of words - paradoxical. but delivered here.