Since ancient times, Mumbai has been muse to writers, poets, artists and filmmakers from across the world. Some are drawn to the potent brew of communalism and cosmopolitanism in the city’s melting pot, while some to its dangerous dalliance with the underworld. Even the chaos and stench of Mumbai’s streets have featured as characters, as have its drug-drenched street corners. Like they say, different people, different strokes.
The City of Devi by Manil Suri, much like his two previous books, too chooses to be inspired by Mumbai. The author is keen that we should not look at these three books as a trilogy but as a triptych, a set of three thematically connected works of art. The city of Mumbai becomes the central theme set against the metaphor of the divine trinity, Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, with Brahma replaced by “devi”, the goddess, in the final of the three books.
The use of “devi” as a unifying force is meant to evoke the lore about the city’s origins, which say Mumbai derives its name from that of its patron goddess, Mumbadevi. This is, of course, a disputed fact. Many scholars have pointed out that the name Bombay, which was later changed to Mumbai by a political class looking to assert its rights over the city, has nothing to do with gods or goddesses. And the book refers to the controversy over the name briefly by arguing that naming the city after a “devi” was denying the city of its true secular roots. Still, the “devi” is a powerful image that looms large not only over the city in the book but over us as a nation, which is reflected in the title as well as the plot.
As it does with the “devi” imagery, the book is dutiful in the way it depicts the city. It brings out the religious divisions that have claimed its culture of tolerance, the allure of Bollywood, the familiar hangouts of Mumbai residents and its rapidly changing landscape. It is faithful to the facts. But does all of this transform into a story, into a novel that carries the reader away from the humdrum into the fantastic? Unfortunately, that does not happen.
The story falls short on several counts, the most important of which is the quality of writing. The plot is plausible and ambitious: a unique love triangle set against the backdrop of a disintegrating nation has the potential for an interesting read and, in the hands of a master craftsman, could have transformed into a blurb writer’s dream. But this is not that book. The characters are never fully sketched in and, at their best, they appear exaggerated gestures or, worse still, the painted faces of actors in television soaps. For instance, Sarita, one of the angles of the love triangle, conforms to the role of a conservative woman in modern attire. And, strangely, though she lives in the Mumbai of the present, she speaks and thinks like a person who grew up in the city in the 1980s.
Like Sarita, several characters and even parts of the plot appear to be caught in a time warp. It is as if we are trying to look at the future of Mumbai through an old lens. If that is a deliberate ploy on the author’s part, its import is lost on the reader. The other flaw with the storytelling is that we do not get close to the story or its characters. Although we make the connections the writer wants us to – for one, we can identify with a city in uproar over a movie, having faced the threat of angry mobs ransacking art galleries and book stores over an imagined slight to their religious affiliations – the story does not build on them.
One can also understand the fear that the book tries to evoke when it talks of a crowd running out of control, splicing the city into halves that can never meet. But the horrors that the author tries to bring alive stay cold on the pages of the book.
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One reason we are unable to identify and absorb the story could be the overdose of explanations. The author writes with the zeal of a kindergarten teacher, repeating his theories and pulling out metaphors that would have worked better if they had been left hidden. The same is true when the characters speak to each other, to us or to themselves. They say too much. For instance, one of the characters describes the train that she has stumbled on to and the people she finds inside the compartment in so much detail that one can’t help but wonder whether brevity may have served her cause better.
What is disappointing is that the details do not lead to anything extraordinary. The book races past many promising turns and, in its rush to take the reader forward, it loses its way. We never get within spitting distance of the loathsome characters, nor do we feel the pain of a lost love. The City of Devi comes across as a caricature of a story that is still waiting to be told.
THE CITY OF DEVI
Manil Suri
Bloomsbury India
Rs 499; 381 pages