About the Noir fiction, the well-known American publisher and
editor, Otto Penzler says, 'Look, noir is about losers. The characters in these
existential, nihilistic tales are doomed. They may not die, but they probably
should, as the life that awaits them is certain to be so ugly, so lost and
lonely, that they'd be better off just curling up and getting it over with.' In
other words, noir fiction can be defined as a subgenre of crime fiction which
is characterized by its cynical characters, the unsentimental depiction of
violence and sex and the bleak denouements. In the recent years, Brooklyn based
Akashic Books has popularized this genre by bringing out the series of noir
short stories. Each anthology in this series is based in a particular city and
explores the dark underside of that city. Earlier we had Brooklyn Noir, London
Noir, LA Noir, Chicago Noir, Paris Noir, etc. And the accent of India on the
horizon of the global economy inspired the publishers to add the Indian cities
to their list and Delhi Noir was published in 2009. And, now, it is the turn of
Mumbai.
Edited by author Altaf Tyrewala, the opening story of this anthology,
'Justice', is about a man called Ashagar Khan, who has been convicted by the
court for his involvement in a bomb blast. He has committed that crime to seek
some sort of revenge for losing almost everything in a communal riot. The
author has weaved the narrative quite credibly telling us how a single act of
violence can start the chain reactions of violence and counter violence. But,
he is not able to carry the story till the end and the denouement appears to be
hurriedly made up. It also breaks the basic principle of noir fiction by having
a sentimental ending. Then, there is a story of twin brothers, both auto
drivers, titled 'By Two'. The brothers suffer for being Muslims (at that poor
Muslims) in this post 9/11 and post 26/7 world. The twins are tortured by the
police each time a terrorist act happens in the city. The author, Devashish
Makhija, has been able to invoke the sense of horror in readers: What if I were
in their places? The descriptions of police brutality and helplessness of the
main characters are heart -rending. True to the noir genre, the protagonists of
this story have no chance. This is a though-provoking and
probably the best story of the collection which raises questions about the way
we are fighting terrorism. There are a handful of extremists who perpetuate
this kind of atrocities on the masses and then there are innocent victims of
these attacks. But there are even larger numbers of people who are neither
involved in terrorism nor are direct victims of terrorist attacks but have been
suffering more than the victims. They are the scapegoats. It has become
customary on part of the police and intelligence agencies to pick up and
torture Muslim youths (tribal youths in case of Maoist extremism) when terror
strikes the country. The twins in this story, in short, are the victims of the
shortcuts taken by the biased law enforcing agencies.
Later,
two interesting stories take us to the darker alleys of the ‘Maximum City’
where we are told about the hijra culture, transvestite groups and their involvements in a
different kind of flesh trades. The first one, Corpse in the Gali by Smita Harish Jain, is so stark in its description of the process
of a man being initiated into Hijra community that it might induce nausea in the readers. Here the writing is very powerful and Smita is a talent to
watch out for. Another tale about the Mumbai Hijra Culture, Lucky 501, by Sonia Faleiro is equally impressive.
In The Watchman by Altaf Tyrewala , a guard has an intuition that somebody in
the housing society he guards, is going to die. And that troubles him so much
that he begins to behave irrationally. This simple but fascinating story has
grave and serious underlying meanings. It symbolises the restlessness and uncertainty of the megapolis life. On the
other hand, Chachu at Dusk by Abbas Tyrewala is a sentimental journey of a former Mafiosi
in to the old world of smugglers and bhais. The
protagonist in this story reminisces about his golden days when even underworld had
some semblance of ethics and principles. Though beautifully written, it hardly
fits into the category of the genre of noir stories.
Besides
all these, there are many more stories, each of them confiding some dark secrets
about Mumbai to their readers. Some stories, four to be exact, disappoint but
the rest are decent offerings. The editor could have been a bit more discriminnating while selecting
the stories for this anthology.
