Encapsulating a city within the pages of a book is no mean feat. And for a great city like Mumbai, a veritable land of dreams, a Maya Nagari—almost impossible, considering what a thriving microcosm it is as a whole. But Maya Nagari: A City in Stories, a vibrant anthology of short stories both in multilingual translation as well in original English curated, edited and translated by Shanta Gokhale and Jerry Pinto, longtime residents of the city, seems to have achieved this. These stories portray a living, breathing Mumbai in all its multifaceted glory through the ages. No other city has been immortalised in popular media as much as this one, and it only makes sense that such an important work should exist. 

‘You cannot catch a city in words. You cannot catch a city at all,’ says Jerry Pinto in the introduction. ‘It is not meant to be caught. It was not designed to be caught. And this city resists even more because it was not designed at all; it just happened and it keeps on happening’, he thoughtfully adds, decoding the idea behind the collection in the introduction of the book that takes place in the form of a conversation with co-editor Shanta Gokhale.

Maya Nagari takes us on an exploratory journey through varied landscapes and moods of Mumbai that have been witness to immense change over the years, through its different neighbourhoods. The stories in this collection include translations from diverse languages like Hindi, Marathi, Urdu, Kannada, Gujarati, Malayalam and Tamil as well as stories written originally in English—a testament to the city being a veritable melting pot, each with its own perspectives and traditions. And with all its different names, can a city such as this one really be shoehorned into a single language, a single identity? It is as Jerry Pinto says, ‘And because the city is multilingual, every language here is also multilingual.’

Maya Nagari —’City of Illusions’—has always been a popular moniker for the metropolis. The glittering lights and the promise of dreams draw visitors to the city like a spellbound moth to a candle flame. But the other side of the coin is realising it is all an illusion —maya, and there isn’t a more fitting title for this anthology. 

The editors mention that ‘they did not set out to capture the city in a book, saying that it was a rather grandiose idea’. Instead, as a starting point, ‘they compiled a list of stories about the city that they had read and loved, to feel their way towards an anthology that would, in time, throw up its own narrative’. This led them to ‘picking stories from different languages’, stating that ‘the city is defined by its multilinguality’. Shanta Gokhale adds that ‘they decided to stick to the doable – short stories about Mumbai.’

The stories in the anthology are ‘not organised according to chronology or geography’, owing to the editors’ belief of ‘the city living in several time zones and spaces at once, and also because there is something essentially chaotic about its nature’. Citing an anecdote from an elderly visitor from the village, Jerry Pinto talks about ‘how the people in crowds were on the verge of bumping into one another, but at the last moment, they always sheared off to avoid collision’. And this is where they found a thoughtful metaphor for the table of contents— that of the stories ‘echoing and bouncing off each other instead of colliding’, observing ‘a Brownian motion to these patterns.’

He also says that ‘human muscle was another aspect of the city that came through to them as they were picking and choosing the stories, saying that Mumbai is a city that lives on a margin, turning its back on the impertinence of the rising sun and saluting the possibility of the outsider.’

Shanta Gokhale then adds that she remembers suggesting ‘Stories from the Margins’ as a title for the anthology. The stories the editors were picking were ‘almost without exception, hard-eyed looks at the street-level life of the city, at its underbelly, its ironies and absurdities, its fears and negotiations, and occasionally its helplessness that goes by the pretty name of resilience’. She then goes on to mention that  they also had to ‘include other realities’ (referring to Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s story Mili) about ‘the Bombay that sips and nibbles in a five-star lounge at the southern end of the city.’

What is unique about Bombay is its diversity. Referred to by a range of names—Bombay, Mumbai, Mumbai, Mhamai, Momoi, Boa Bahia, the city has its own teeming world full of experiences. These stories help to make sense of this ‘Bombay-ness’—this elusive diversity that exists in popular narratives of the city.

The spectrum of stories that the editors have selected are at once striking and all-encompassing. A non-resident will be granted a glimpse of the city’s beating heart through its intensely chequered history, and for a resident like me, a chance to experience home in a completely different light by exploring the many everyday worlds  hidden in plain sight.

Stories by the greats Ismat Chughtai, Saadat Hassan Manto, Eunice de Souza and Mohan Rakesh sit cheek by jowl with acclaimed Tamil writer C.S. Lakshmi alias Ambai, Marathi literary heavyweights Baburao Bagul and Pu La Deshpande as well as more contemporary authors like Jayant Kaikini, Bhupen Khakhar and Tejaswini Apte Rahm. The curation of the stories is thoughtful and masterful, each selection covering a slice of life in the metro that ranges from glittering five star hotel lobbies, modest middle-class flats, the rocks by the waters of the sea, and the squalor of chawls and brothels.

The stories in Marathi translated by both Jerry Pinto and Shanta Gokhale lay bare both Mumbai’s middle-class struggles as well as its gritty underbelly. Against the backdrop of the fervour and devotion of the annual Ganpati festival, Jayant Pawar’s Oh! The Joy of Devotion portrays a fierce battle between the workers and owners of a textile mill that takes an ugly turn, spurred on by intense devotional feelings towards the elephant god that this time of the year brings about in the common man. In the hilarious and masterfully translated A Cultural Movement is Born, Pu La Deshpande depicts life among the diverse residents of a Mumbai chawl who fight tooth-and-nail to get over their differences in honour of a Solidarity Week. Sex worker Girija receives a disturbing phone call in Baburao Bagul’s Woman of the Street where she is compelled to make some harsh yet unpleasant decisions, and the tension between municipal sweeper Sudam and his son Baban who aspires for a better, more respectable life reaches a boiling point in Urmila Pawar’s Answer!. 

Along with life in chawls, the closure of textile mills and theatres features prominently as a recurring theme in the collection. Symbolic of modernity systematically taking over and leaving immense socio-cultural upheaval, loss of identity and irreversible change in its wake, Jayant Kaikini’s Opera House is a story about theatres closing to make way for malls, leaving staff like its protagonist Indranil high and dry, and Anuradha Kumar’s Neera Joshi’s Unfinished Book, a saga of unrequited love against the backdrop of trade unions pitted against mill workers. 

Chawl life is further depicted in Bhupen Khakhar’s Vaadki set in the Gujarati enclave of  Khetwadi where a humble steel bowl—a vaadki—is passed from house to house, revealing the colourful inner lives and machinations of its residents. Udayan Thakker’s short and snappy tale Pandoba is a portrait of a washerman Pandoba— who even washes clean the rainbow, stripping it of its colours just as working-class life is in the city, devoid of colours, filled with monotony, and a constant struggle for survival.

Ismat Chughtai’s Quit India, Mohan Rakesh’s The Flat on the Fifth Floor, Manto’s Babu Gopi Nath and Jerry Pinto’s House Cleaning all centre on the deep loneliness and longing that the city brings with it, threatening to engulf you. These stories centre around enclosed spaces—flats, dancing salons and bungalows alike. Love and loss coexist, hearts are broken, loyalties are tested and epiphanies are had; while Tejaswini Apte-Rahm’s Mili delves into the complex dynamics of young urban relationships, marriages and intimacy, unfolding in five star hotels and bars while its protagonists grapple with mutual feelings old and new, navigating loneliness and alienation along the way.

This collection presents an everyday side of the metropolis that battles daily for survival, clawing desperately at any vestige of life, any semblance of normalcy. It does not attempt to or intend to glamourise any of these hardships. Instead it aims to present Mumbai through the ages as it is, through these experiences that have helped shape this City of Dreams. 

I was born and brought up in Mumbai of the nineties, a period far different from the one I now write and exist in. Maya Nagari allowed me to travel across my city anew, exploring places and  going back in time to places I had hitherto never been to. Reading these everyday tales of love and loss and redemption made me fall in love with my city all over again. 

In the ranks of great Mumbai novels of the ilk of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games and Suketu Mehta’s magnum opus Maximum City, this is a remarkable collection. Much like the city of Mumbai, it grows on you. Shanta Gokhale sees it as an invitation—in the introduction, she advises us to read it to know something of Mumbai, but to also know something of your own city, your own self.