Vikram Chandra: Love And Longing In Bombay

[Max Cairnduff]

Before going on holiday at the end of last year, I wrote up Love and Longing in Bombay by Vikram Chandra over at my blog (Love and Longing in Bombay Pechorin’s Journal). I thought I had also done a write-up here, but if so I can't find it and my suspicion now is that I ran out of time before going away.

So, as ever my full write up is over at my blog, but for those not wishing a commentary as detailed as that here are some briefer thoughts on this work.

Vikram Chandra is in my view based on this work an exceptional writer, one of real talent. Love and Longing in Bombay is a work I enjoyed hugely and probably one of my favourite reads of the last year (though last year was a damn good reading year, so it's hard to call).

Love and Longing contains five short stories, each around 50 pages or so long, the first four of which are set in contemporary Bombay (or Mumbai, if you prefer). Each story is titled with a word from Sanskrit that references a quality which will be explored in that story, though an utter ignorance of Sanskrit is no obstacle to engaging with the work (I googled the titles myself, out of curiosity). In the stories we meet a general who encounters a ghost, a conflict for dominance between old and new money society hostesses, a policeman investigating a murder and in the course investigating the truth of family life and love, a software developer faced with a key project going inexplicably wrong and finally a post-WWII love story.

The stories are linked by the framing device of an unnamed Bombayite listening to stories told to him in a bar by a man who is a font of such tales, and overall the novel is a hymn to the importance of life as a value in itself and to the importance of storytelling as an art. The book is in the main realistic, but not wholly contained by realism (the first story contains a ghost, the second contains nested stories within stories as a couple fall in love through the act of storytelling).

Chandra explores a range of Bombay life, conjuring with immense skill a city crammed with vitality and life. A quote is, I think, in order here:

"He had Katekar and the jeep waiting below, at Beach Candy, but he wanted to walk for a while. A van passed with that ugly throbbing American music that Sartaj could feel in his chest. A school bus passed, and three girls in blue uniforms smiled toothily at him from the rear window. Sartaj laughed. He twirled his moustache. In the blaring evening rush he could feel the size of the city, its millions upon millions, its huge life and all its unsolved dead. A double-decker bus ground to a halt at the stop across the street, and people jostled in and out. On the side of the bus a poster for a new movie proclaimed: ‘Love, Love, Love.’ Somewhere, also in the city, there was [ ] and his partymen, with their building full of weapons and their dreams of the past, and Sartaj knew that nothing was finished, that they remembered him as much as he thought of them. A light changed just as Sartaj was about to cross the road, and the stream of cars jerked ahead madly, causing him to jump back, and the sidewalk vendors and their customers smiled at him. He smiled also, waiting his moment. Then he plunged in."

Love and Longing in Bombay is lushly, yet carefully written. Chandra is as at ease with a single finely honed sentence as he is a lengthy passage such as the above. The quality of the writing is consistently high and I found the stories benefitted from being brought together in this way, with the cumulative effect being greater than the sum of the parts and with each story gaining force from those read immediately before. This is a collection to read straight through, not to dip in and out of.

Equally, Chandra brings India to life in a way I found convincing and rewarding. Much use is made of local words, which are not translated, to Chandra's credit however one can always deduce their meaning from context and no translation or glossary is required (other than perhaps for the story titles themselves). The complexities and contradictions of Bombay life are brought out and while reading I did feel steeped in the city in all its vastness. Chandra is not, however, an exoticist and at no point did I feel I was reading an India packaged for me as a Western reader.

As the foregoing hopefully shows, I thought this an interesting and rich work, skilfully written and with a fine grasp of the importance of storytelling as an art close to the essence of what it is to be human. It is a novel filled with stories that are true in all particulars, except perhaps the facts.

[Mirabell]

"lushly written", huh. his most recent novel,which I am in the progress of reading, is sparsely written, one might almost call the style functional. the book, so far, is excellent though and yr write up is whetting my appetite for its predecessor.

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

"lushly written", huh. his most recent novel,which I am in the progress of reading, is sparsely written, one might almost call the style functional. the book, so far, is excellent though and yr write up is whetting my appetite for its predecessor.

Oh yeah, you should definitely read Love and Longing in Bombay Mirabell. You'll like it a lot. Sartaj Singh, the protagonist of Sacred Games, is introduced in the story Max quoted above. Chandra's first novel Red Earth and Pouring Rain is also very good. Chandra studied under John Barth, so you know he had a good teacher.

Nice review Max.

[Max Cairnduff]

Originally Posted by Mirabell

"lushly written", huh. his most recent novel,which I am in the progress of reading, is sparsely written, one might almost call the style functional. the book, so far, is excellent though and yr write up is whetting my appetite for its predecessor.

You don't think the bit I quoted above runs to the lush? It seemed to me to do so.

That said, if Sacred Games is sparsely written, that will probably help in getting through it. It is rather huge. In all honesty, I read this to see if I liked him enough to attempt Sacred Games, conscious also that as Funhouse notes Sartaj Singh pops up in Love and Longing first.

Definitely looking forward to Sacred Games now, and Red Earth and Pouring Rain.

Who's John Barth?

[Funhouse]

Originally Posted by Max Cairnduff

Who's John Barth?

The John Barth Information Center

Who Is John Barth?
John Barth is the author of Giles Goat-Boy, The Sot-Weed Factor, and Chimera, among many others. His short story collection Lost in the Funhouse and his essay "The Literature of Exhaustion" have been required reading on college campuses since the '70s. Barth is widely considered to be among the most important American novelists of the 20th century and one of the foremost practitioners of postmodernism and metafiction.

See also my own page on him here: Scriptorium - John Barth

That's the last few lines of his seminal story "Lost in the Funhouse" in my signature.

[Max Cairnduff]

Originally Posted by Funhouse

The John Barth Information Center



See also my own page on him here: Scriptorium - John Barth

That's the last few lines of his seminal story "Lost in the Funhouse" in my signature.

The Sot-Weed Factor, that rings a bell. Thanks for the links.

[Igu Soni]

I just finished it. Here is my review.