You cannot catch a city in words. You cannot catch a city at all,’ write the editors of this anthology. So how do you get the spirit of India’s great metropolis, the Maya Nagari, the city of dreams, between the covers of a book? Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto decide to bring together their favourite short stories about the city they call home, and hope that a narrative will emerge. And it does—a rich, varied, vibrant portrait of the republic that goes by many names—Bombay, Mumbai, Momoi, Bambai and many others.
In the twenty-one stories of this collection, there is the city that labours in the mills and streets, and the city that sips and nibbles in five-star lounges; the city of Ganapati and Haji Malang and the Virgin Mary; the city that is a sea of people and speaks at least a dozen languages. There are stories translated from Marathi, Urdu, Gujarati, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, and stories written originally in English. Among the writers are legends and new voices—Baburao Bagul, Ismat Chughtai, Pu La Deshpande, Urmila Pawar, Mohan Rakesh, Saadat Hasan Manto, Ambai, Jayant Kaikini, Bhupen Khakhar, Cyrus Mistry, Vilas Sarang, Tejaswini Apte-Rahm and Anuradha Kumar.
Maya Nagari is a majestic book on a majestic city. It will be read and cherished for years.