Why I won’t write a novel on Bombay

Yesterday I was reading William Dalrymple’s interview in which he said that he would never write a novel on Bombay because Suketu Mehta had done such an exhaustive job. That got me thinking, would I ever write a novel on Bombay? And I decided I would not either. But not for the reason mentioned above.

I wouldn’t write one because 90 per cent of Bombay is a slum and slums or slum dwellers don’t interest me. Excreta piled up waist high and people wading through it may excite Mehta and Boyle’s creative juices but it doesn’t do anything for me apart from conjure up a distasteful image.

I don’t identify with slum dwellers, have nothing in common with them and they are not my audience. So pray, why should I care? What if some day you have to live in slum, a friend asks me. This is, of course, accompanied with the usual deterrent to the evil eye of god forbid and crossing of fingers. To that I have to say, why would I ever have to live in a slum? I do my bit for society. I pay for my maid’s child’s education, I stop my car to let pedestrians cross the road and once in a while I treat a beggar child to whatever he/she wants to eat. So why, and where, would I pile up enough bad karma for such a thing to happen?

Another aspect of Bombay which finds prominent mention in all written works is the underworld. And I realise I’m too much of a coward to venture into those areas to do any research. Recently I had occasion to visit Dongri. For those who’re unfamiliar with the area, this is where Dawood Ibrahim and other big gangsters come from. Apparently, Ibrahim’s sister still goes around intimidating people and collecting hafta.

I was looking around apprehensively, expecting gunfire to erupt any moment. I was behaving much the way first timers to Bombay do when they ask, “Have you seen Shah Rukh Khan?” (And no, I haven’t. I’ve seen Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, Sanjay Dutt and even Aamir Khan, but I haven’t seen SRK. Tip: the best place to spot these guys is the airport.) The high point of my visit? On the way back, I got to see some whores (oops, sex workers. Sorry.) on Falkland Road.

And that brings me to the point of this post. And that is, I’m too safely ensconced, too comfortably numb in my middle–class cocoon to attempt to step out of it. Not even to write a potentially seminal work.

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