Tales of many cities

of a book, where diverse elements come together to make a mouth-watering and enlightening whole.

Before you ask about it, yes, indeed, there is a piece in this book on Mumbai's most famous contribution to India's culinary tradition; where writer Rahul Srivastava draws a parallel between this humble street food and Mumbai's innovation, adaptability and enterprise.

Bombay, meri jaan, published by Penguin, is a collection of articles, features, poems and cartoons put together by Jerry Pinto and Naresh Fernandes. Pinto, who's the executive editor of Man's World, is also a poet and author, while Fernandes worked with the Times of India and the Wall Street Journal.

It took over a year of research for them to put together this anthology, and it contains some of the biggest names in writing: Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Khushwant Singh, Rudyard Kipling, Nissim Ezekiel, Aldous Huxley... and Paul Theroux and V S Naipaul (their names shouldn't ideally be mentioned in the same breath, what a spat!). Plus, there is Farrukh Dhondy, Kiran Nagarkar, Vilas Sarang, Andre Malraux among others, and of course, Pinto and Fernandes.

That's not all. Other pieces include some of biggest Indian achievers: birdman Salim Ali, cricketer Sunil Gavaskar, editor Busybee aka Behram Contractor, film personality K A Abbas, and believe it or not, the great jazzman Duke Ellington himself (no, he didn't Take The A Train, too crowded perhaps).

The editors say in their introduction, "everyone has a Bombay story." Well, not everyone's Bombay story may be readable, but here, with such star contributors, it's quite a list of stories, all right. And like the city, the anthology encompasses all extremes.

On the one hand, you have Nagarkar's visceral and hard-hitting story on the daily, deadly water wars that take place in the chawls and on the other, Pico Iyer's gentle and smile-inducing observations of Mumbai's signboards, banners, notices and hoardings in 'Bombastic' language.

Scenes from the life of a Parsi grandee's hoity-toity wife in 1911 co-exists in the book with the matter-of-fact report on the pitiless demolition of slums at Cuffe Parade in 1986.

Mumbai is not just about its brilliant Gothic and Indo-Saracenic architecture. It's not just about the rain-swollen Arabian Sea that inundates pedestrians along Marine Drive.

It's not just about the hyper-dense local trains that empty out entire suburbs into the business districts. It's not just about the presence of money and absence of time. Mumbai is all about people. A unique 13-million strong bunch of individuals who populate millions of cities within this city.

Among them are encounter cops who follow their own dangerous rules, classical Hindustani singers from the Bhendibazar gharana "" an area close to the arterial Mohammed Ali Road that gave rise to its own unique strain of music, Bene Israelis in search of an identity and trying hard to bridge the divide between their promised land and motherland, Irani Shias who violently mourn the death of one of their prophets annually, textile workers who have to face new, harsh realities with the closure of the great mills, sons of the soil staking a violent claim to what they perceive as their own rightful inheritance, young basketball players from Nagpada who find an outlet in the game and Goan Christians who keep the city rocking to the beat of their bands.

All their stories have been put together with remarkable sensitivity by individual writers, and even if you are an old Mumbai hand, some of them come as revelations. They make you explore all the cities that co-exist in Mumbai and meet the people who belong there, cocooned as you are in your own.

Highlights of Mumbai, meri jaan include Salim Ali's piece on his childhood years in Mumbai and the turning point when he went on to become India's acknowledged authority on birds, Naipaul's frustrating experience with the bureaucracy, from his An Area of Darkness, Khushwant Singh's frank experiences in the city, the late Nissim Ezekiel's poem 'Island', and film-maker Paromita Vohra's life as a rent-paying, single woman in Mumbai's western suburb of Andheri.

The last especially, is a recognition of the fact that Mumbai is not just south Mumbai "" the part that everyone visits and talks about. And it also offers a brilliant insight into the lives of people in non-south Mumbai, both funny and sad. Vohra's piece is a neat short film in words.

The only disappointment here is the editors' choice of Rushdie's contribution "" an excerpt from his not-so-brilliant The Ground Beneath Her Feet "" Dekho, Dekho, Art Deco. His description of Mumbai from Midnight's Children perhaps would have been a better inclusion over here, it came from his heart.

If Mumbai's polluted and stinking air for you is the very breath of life, go ahead, pick Mumbai, meri jaan up, you'll love it. Even if you are not a regular reader of books on Mumbai "" not that there are too many of them anyway "" it is indeed a great effort, bringing diverse people and talents together in one volume.

It's also an opportunity to sample writing which perhaps you wouldn't have picked from the bookstore shelf. This anthology brings alive stories from the city's past and present (Pinto prefers historical pieces, while Fernandes is partial to journalistic features), but there are millions of more stories to be told. But where's the space?

BOMBAY, MERI JAAN
Writings on Mumbai

Edited by Jerry Pinto & Naresh Fernandes
Penguin Books India
Price: Rs 395