Yella OK, Bengaluru Yaake?

A review of Multiple City: Writings on Bangalore, a Penguin anthology edited by Aditi De

A city's architecture may be its flesh and blood, but only from art and literature can it obtain a soul. What would London be without a Dickens, a Conan Doyle, a Wells, Wodehouse, Amis or Hornby? Of what joy is New York if not for its Fitzgeralds, its Capotes, its Puzos, Bellows, Morrisons and Doctorows? What, indeed, might be the colour of a Mumbai shorn of Salman Rushdie, Rohinton Mistry or Suketu Mehta? The reason my examples are mostly of fiction writing may be because, aside from the obvious fact that I'm not as well-acquainted with the landmarks of city-centric non-fiction, the identity (or identities, if it so pleases you) of a living thing can only be forged from a strong experience of it.

While there have been many books written about or set in Bangalore in the past, most have flown well under the bestseller radar: a combined result of the city's constant evolution, a dirth of interest in such writing from mainstream publishers, and the lack of ambition in these definitions. For the idea of a city to grow in scope it first needs to cultivate a healthy ego, along with an even-tempered voice with which to express that ego. And perhaps for the first time, a very such voice has emerged in the form of Multiple City: Writings on Bangalore, a new Penguin anthology of vividly Bangalorean experiences.

This city's writerly past has always been rather uneasy of purpose and context. While its resident pessimists are unanimously cynical of its deplorable infrastructure and politics, the optimists are divided over two popular notions. The technocentricists like to believe that Bangalore really is a future megalopolis in chrysalis, that it is soon going to burst out of its shell in a flurry of giant wings and colour. Characteristically contrarian, the older Bangaloreans often seem to continue nurturing the more convenient view of a quiet cantonment town that is currently afflicted with a temporary, if tiresome, bout of culture shock, and that this too shall pass (as if progress were a rash of ticks that need only be shaken off – ah, well). The reality that Multiple City points to combines all of these images into a vibrant cyclorama that, rather than relying on absolute definitions, instead acknowledges the greater need for discourse. It is in the frenzy of opinion that a city is made.

Bangalore is in a transitional phase, caught simultaneously between having no identity at all and being, as it were, somewhat of a paranoid schizophrenic. Multiple City reveals a number of the viewpoints that form the Bangalore debate, but instead of presenting them clinically from an academic high tower, the book is, rather, like an informal conversation you might have with a group of friends. A conversation in which each person describes the same larger event from a unique angle, each with its own inflections, ideas and narrative drift directing the city's collective story.

The contributors to Multiple City come from different backgrounds, cultures and eras. The book itself is split up into seven parts. It begins with 'Once Upon a City', which looks at Bangalore's past through the eyes of folk balladeers, historians like Fazlul Hasan and old timers like R.K.Narayan and Kerooru Vasudevacharya. 'The Cities Within', my favourite section, tells you just why Bangalore comes in multiples, derived from the memories and recollections of a motley crew of authors comprising Winston Churchill, Ramachandra Guha, Zac O'Yeah, Shashi Deshpande, Janaki Nair, U.R.Ananthamurthy and many others. 'City Scan' and 'The 24/7 City' charts Bangalore's growth, anxious phases of development, and its possible futures, with inputs from William Dalrymple, C.K.Meena, Mahesh Dattani, Thomas Friedman, Aditi De, blogger Anita Bora and several more suprises. These four chunks of writing are relieved by three 'Coffee Breaks', for those who seek to rest their eyes, with photographs, illustrations and cartoons (in that order) from Clare Arni, Paul Fernandes and Maya Kamath. While this whole giddy array of contributors talks of different aspects of the city, employing vastly different instruments to that end, their writing, like the aboriginal creation myth, imaginatively coalesces to sing the city into being.

The popular success of Multiple City is most apparent in its belated launch function, conducted at Crossword, Residency Road on the 13^th of this month, even though it's already been available at all city bookstores since October at least. Since the recession began, all the major economic dailies have been carrying articles on the diminishing confidence of publishers in traditional marketing concepts, how most new launches and book tours have been canned for paucity of funds. Having read some of these dire editorials, I already knew the answer when I picked up Multiple City a month ago and asked myself why a book like this wasn't getting a nice loud launch event. But of course, one can never underestimate the power of public opinion. Subsequent reviews and interviews in the dailies, and heated discussions in coffee houses around the city about the book, made it apparent that Multiple City was starting to finally find some resonance in the junta. And surely enough, a month later I found myself by turns energised, entertained and enlightened at a highly original launch event where a masterfully assembled line-up of authors and performers read and spoke about their idea of Bangalore. One hopes, now that the city has been provided with a new mirror, that this is only the first of many introspective conversations to come.

This article appeared in The Bengaluru Pages dated 1st January 2009.

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