mumbai – Readiscovery

The uproar in Singapore against Pastor Rony Tan, who was questioned by the authorities and had to apologize for mocking the religious beliefs of Buddhists and Taoists, reminds me of the controversy surrounding a famous writer.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Mumbai, in the JJ School of Art, where his father was the dean. The bungalow is being restored and will be turned into a museum, but it will feature paintings by local artists instead of showcasing Kipling memorabilia. Local officials frowned on plans to include a Kipling room because he is seen as an imperialist, reported the Telegraph. Young Indian students interviewed by the BBC World Service, however, said they were proud he was born there.

I heard it on the BBC arts programme Strand on the day the Straits Times reported the pastor had been questioned by the authorities. You can still hear it here.

Kipling also glorified Christianity at the expense of other religions. He wrote the poem, The White Man’s Burden, and about “lesser breeds without the law”. Racism is blatant in that line from his poem, Recessional.

And yet it is a surprisingly poignant poem. Written in 1897, during Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee, it reflects on the decline and fall of empires and is a prayer to God to spare the British and forgive any sins of vainglory:

Short stories that add up to a novel

Tales from Firozsha Baag by Rohinton Mistry

Tales from Firozsha Baag is a charming collection of short stories – and unusual too. Published in 1987, Rohinton Mistry’s first book describes an India I remember all too well. An India where it took years to get a telephone, months to get a refrigerator. Now even slum dwellers have mobile phones and television sets.

But life was more laidback then. People once they found jobs could expect lifetime employment. Workers were seldom fired. Companies that went into the red were taken as “sick industries” by the government, which kept on the workers. That might have made the economy sluggish, the country poor – and the bright and ambitious emigrated in droves – but there was a stability, which seems enviable amidst the uncertainties unleashed by globalisation.

Mistry describes the lives of Parsis living in a rundown apartment complex in Bombay, now called Mumbai. They include clerks, salesmen, lawyers and a vet. Few own cars, residents use their neighbours’ phones and fridges. But they like their drinks, send their children to English medium schools, celebrate Christmas and New Year while at the same time maintaining their own Parsi traditions.

Each short story centres on the occupants of one apartment. One is about a Goan maid working for a Parsi family, another about a widow, a third about a lawyer.

Mistry describes their lives in intimate detail. He describes the interaction between neighbours, the escapades of their children who play in the compound, the interaction between the children and the adults.

The stories flow from one into another, documenting life in the apartment complex with the passing of years. A mischievous boy is sent off to a boarding school, a popular resident dies, his wife adjusts to widowhood, another boy goes to college, finds a girlfriend and then realises he is gay. Another boy becomes a social activist.