The Mumbai Muse

Mumbai, or Bombay, is a prodigious muse. Whimsical but generous, the city has inspired generations of poets, who have penned verses dedicated to its many moods. Five city bards talk about the poetry that is Mumbai and the poems that define the city

‘Bombay/ Mumbai has had many lovers and haters’

I hate the patently journalistic idea of reducing someone's favourites to only one poem or one poet. Bombay/Mumbai has had many lovers and haters and love-haters in its pluri-lingual population, and they include the great Marathi tamasha song writer Patthe Bapurao Kulkarni who wrote his Mumbaichi Lavani circa 1910.

Marathi, Gujarati, Hindustani, and English poets have all written memorable poems on Mumbai. Adil Jussawala, Dom Moraes, and Arun Kolatkar have each claimed their poetic niche in the city’s teeming landscape. The Dalit poet, Namdeo Dhasal has some memorable Mumbai poems right from his first collection Golpitha. In English, you have Arun Kolatkar’s entire Kala Ghoda poems. Years ago, the Gujarati poet Niranjan Bhagat wrote a long poem, Hornby Road, that I still recall. In another poem Pravaldveep (Coral Island), he wrote: Come, let’s go to/ Bombay city,/ That tallies crocodile!/ Grass will spring one day in every street,/ The coral build its home here./ Before that happens, you must go;/ Time invites you; you should go and see.

The same is true of Nissim Ezekiel’s A Morning Walk: Barbaric city, sick with slums,/Deprived of seasons, blessed with rains,/ Its hawkers, beggars, iron-lunged,/ Processions led by frantic drums/ A million purgatorial lanes,/ And child-like masses, many tongued,/Whose wages are in words and crumbs.

These poems say that Mumbai is hell and nourishment for those who have their roots in it, if their guts are strong enough for its toxins and effluents, and if their demonic eloquence can rise above the city’s deafening clamour as it struggles to stay alive.

One entire section of my first collection of English poems, Travelling In A Cage was devoted to poems from Bombay. And just before he died, Dom Moraes wrote a series of memorable poems inspired by Bandra.  

Dilip Chitre is a writer, painter and filmmaker. He spoke to Suparna Thombare

‘The obvious Bombay poem is Kolatkar's Khala Ghoda sequence’

I remember lines rather than poems. These two lines from a Dom Moraes poem recall exactly the stillness of a Bandra afternoon: Hardest are these slow/ tidal afternoons that, ebbing,/ slide me out, not quite to sea. The obvious Bombay poem of course is Arun Kolatkar’s Kala Ghoda sequence. I’ve spent a lot of time on the street corner he describes and can vouch for the accuracy of detail. The great thing in the poem is the narrator's voice. It’s the voice of a stoned, benevolent god who believes in man even if man does not believe in him.

Jeet Thayil is a journalist, writer and poet. He spoke to Divya Subramaniam

‘The train is portrayed as the microcosm of the city’

There are two poems that are really close to my heart. The first one is Sea Breeze, Bombay by Adil Jussawala. The poem is about the migrant nature of the city and I like it because it captures the city’s essence. Partition’s people stitched/ Shrouds from a flag, gentlemen scissored Sind./ An opened people, fraying across the cut country reknotted themselves on this island.

From the time that this city has come into existence, this process of division and unity has been an inherent part. The people who live here have been uprooted from some other place and have regrouped here. To me, this is the most poignant sentiment the poem conveys. Another favourite poem is Train of Thought by Charmayne D’Souza: Bone of bones,/ flesh to flesh,/ India travels in the same direction/ From 9 to 5 and survives together.

The beauty of this poem is that the train is potrayed as the microcosm of the city and the city is the microcosm of the nation itself. I have always been fascinated by poems on Mumbai’s local trains. This story of survival repeats itself in many poems that I have read and is one of the things that epitomise the city. This is a city where people come to survive.

Anju Makhija is a writer, poet and playwright. She spoke to Divya Subramaniam

‘This city is impossible. Only a poem could contain it’

No poet can have a single favourite poem about the city in which s/he lives and works and which impresses itself upon her/him each day. So I have many. I like the poem in which Imtiaz Dharker says that she collides with the city. I like the poem in which Arundhathi Subramaniam says she could either dice carrots or a lover but postpones the latter. I like the poem in which Arun Kolatkar talks about breakfast at Kala Ghoda. I like the poem in which Adil Jussawalla considers Partition and its effects. I like the poem in which Gieve Patel records the smell of the trains. I like Kamala Das’ poem about the joss sticks at Cadell Road.

I believe that these poems do not seek to capture the city but they seek to reflect an encounter with the city, a moment in which poet and city come into contact and when they both affect each other. I remember the poet H Masud Taj telling me that now Bombay Central station meant Gieve Patel to him. And I know that under my breath, I mumble “Unsuitable for song as well as sense the island flowers into slums” as I encounter the city.  For me the city is a beast that swallows everything you throw at it, including yourself.

The city is impossible. No narrative could capture it. No novel could hold it. Only a poem could contain it because a poem does not aspire to throw a net over an experience but only holds up a small mirror in which a fragment of reality is reflected.

Jerry Pinto is a poet and journalist. He spoke to Divya Subramaniam