Experiences

Suppuni thatha— I heard that when you died of cancer in 1961, all you had in your possession was a small trunk containing a few clothes. What then of the 75 acres of land, houses in three towns, and three-lakh rupees in cash that you seem to have had inherited in your 16th year? I know your dissipation has the romance of a Bimal Mitra-esque cliché. You were one among the rich landed gentry in the Tanjore district, loyal to the British Raj, who were caught unprepared in the maelstrom of a social revolution accompanying the nationalist movement. But why did you abandon everybody in your life? Why did you live alone in Tanjore, while your widowed mother waited for you interminably at your ancestral village and your family at Pudukkottai? What was that demonic hunger that made you whittle generations’ worth of wealth in 40 short years, leaving your children practically destitute and saddled with the loans you had taken? I hear that 10 generations ago, our ancestor Nana Iyer came riding thr...

I just started reading Maximum city by Suketu Mehta. I am sure the “brilliant”, “lyrical” and “the best bit of journalism to come out of the country” parts will reveal themselves to me eventually. At this point, I am mulling my way through his “Country of No” and “fucking city”. It is not that I am bristling at these epithets. I am sure if a shit-laden diaper flew into my house, I would also be forced to find succor in the four-lettered word. The thing is, Mr. Mehta’s Mumbai seems to extend only up to the Mahim creek. However, as an “aspirational middle-class immigrant” to the city, the area that the author defines as Mumbai is well nigh inaccessible to me. I am a child of the suburbs. Hell, when I came here first, I got down at the Kurla station—not even the famed Mumbai Central or VT. I am proud to claim that I landed in Mumbai like the millions of immigrants do—with one suitcase full of personal belongings, 2000 rupees in hand, no job, and no prospect of one either. I am also proud ...