Love and Longing in Bombay:
Stories by Vikram Chandra
A Masterpiece Of, And On, Storytelling
Welcome to the Fishermans Rest, a little bar off the Sasoon Dock in
Bombay where Mr. Subramaniam spins his tales for a select audience.
This is the setting for Vikram Chandras collection of seven short stories,
Love and Longing in Bombay, and Subramaniam is Chandras
Scheherezade. In these stories, Chandra has covered the gamut of
genres: there is a ghost story, a love story, a murder mystery, and a crime
story, each tale joined to the others by the voice of the elusive narrator. In
Shakti, a discussion about real estate leads to the story of a soldier who
must exorcise a ghostly child from his family home. In the final story,
Shanti, a young womans despair about the state of the country becomes a
springboard for a tale of love and hope. Love and Longing in Bombay is
a mesmerizing collection, filled with fully rounded characters and stories
that resonate long after the book is back on the shelf. Chandras prose is
luminous, his tales satisfying. Scheherezade would be impressed.

Personal Review: Love and Longing in Bombay: Stories by
Vikram Chandra
The eerieness and macabre of Dharma and Shanti (first and last stories in
the book) are reminiscent of Saki, the great Hector Hugh Munro. The
personality of the protagonist & narrator and how it reveals itself in the end
are reminiscent of Yann Martel's classic Life of Pi. The subtle connection
between all short stories and yet their aloofness from the theme are
reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. However, well before this review sounds
like a ploy to put Vikram Chandra amongst the greats and this work
amongst classics, I must resign that his casual and careless writing style
sets it apart from any other. Who says you have to be out of the box to
think out of the box. For someone who has formal training in creative
writing and teaches it as a professor, Vikram Chandra's style is surprisingly
original and open-ended.
I did not have any prior expectation from the book and my initial reaction to
the book was indifferent-to-negative. The grammar seems to be filled with
convolution and localized incorrectness. The selective filtering of important
detail is frustrating when it misleads you far beyond any point of easy
return. However, the writing style turns out to be quite clever when you
start paying close attention and that can be hard when you are reading
page after page of prose.
The book never obviates this thesis, but Vikram Chandra breaks out the
social life of the city into five characteristic components: Dharma (religion),
Shakti (power), Kama (sex), Artha (money), Shanti (peace). The stories do
not seem to have any direct connection with Bombay, yet they reveal the
essence of life in Bombay. It is neither Chandra's methodical construction
of dots that connect to give a bigger picture, nor a work of genius broken
into jigsaw pieces that all fit together in one coherent truth. Instead the
artistry of this book is in its impressionism. The reason why the whole adds
up to be more than the sum of its parts is that the parts are beautifully
suspended in Bombay's society, painted with the views of a keen observer.
It is yours to love, or not.
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