The first thing you notice about Bombay Balch\u00e3o<\/em>, the new Bombay novel (which I think should be a genre in itself), is the striking cover design by Mohit Suneja. The tightly packed buildings, with people milling around in the corridors, took me back to my pillion musings while stuck in Mumbai traffic, something no one warned me about when I moved to the city. Peering into dilapidated buildings with shared corridors and quaint balconies that stood on roadsides was a hobby and now, I was finally inside one.<\/p>\n

Books set in apartments have a charm of their own because personal histories are shared\u2014often tangled and mangled\u2014and trivial episodes manifest as bigger events later on. Elif Shafak\u2019s The Flea Palace<\/em>, set in a decrepit Istanbul building is an example of eccentric apartment neighbours living a tragicomic life. Closer to home, Esther David\u2019s Bombay Brides<\/em><\/a>, about an Indo-Jewish housing society in Ahmedabad with matchmaking aunties, dream interpreters, Biblical kirtans sung in Marathi and dark-skinned brides, has a more histrionic flavour. In a similar vein, Bombay Balch\u00e3o<\/em> invites us into Bosco Mansion, a two-storeyed-six-flats-building in Pope\u2019s Colony in Cavel, a Catholic neighbourhood in South Bombay.<\/p>\n

At the heart of the novel are the Coutinhos, a Goan Catholic family. Among the elaborate cast are a widow who smuggles hooch to start a successful business, a recluse who finds solace in a lending library and becomes a crossword whiz, a single woman who learns to cook in her sixties, a flirtatious young lady who elopes on the day of her engagement swayed by the plots the future weddings of her kids, and many, many more people. Love (and lust)\u2014sudden, withered, unrequited and reacquired\u2014often cause havoc in the lives of the residents. There\u2019s uproarious humour\u2014the exorcism of Michael Coutinho over half-eaten chikkus made me shriek with laughter\u2014Borges says it was the same for her while writing it. Even the funeral of the Coutinho son-in-law was more hilarious than mournful, in a way only life in Bombay can be.<\/p>\n

Sandwiched between these comical developments are slivers of history that are a delight to bite into. Borges takes us through newer political and economic developments such as the Prohibition Act and Rent Control Act to disasters like the 1944 dockyard explosion to older, fascinating trivia like a bell with a crucifix adorning a temple as war loot, the bubonic plague in the 19th century, Tipu Sultan\u2019s seize of estates of Mangalorean Catholics and the immigration from Portuguese-owned Goa.<\/p>\n

With each chapter, I stumbled onto familiar locations and buildings which revealed their layers of antiquity. The Vasai suburbs, which are synonymous with cheap rented apartments, transformed into a battleground\u2014the Maratha vs Portuguese \u2018Battle of Bassein\u2019. The Smoker\u2019s Corner, a bookstore and lending library housing mostly popular fiction and comics, is a thriving, hidden gem. Irani bakery dates over keema pav and raspberry soda made me nostalgic about my own assignations there.<\/p>\n

Borges\u2019 Cavel, home to different communities, is a melting pot of culture, traditions and quirks. There are the native Christians (or East Indians, self-named to identify themselves with the East India company in the west-coast-Mumbai), Goan Catholics (laid-back, jolly, party loving types), Mangalorean Catholics (disregarded by Goans as shrewd and boring) and a few Hindus. The engagement party of Annette Coutinho felt like a scene straight out of the Pixar animated film Up, with Goan and East Indian women (bride\u2019s side) flaunting floral dresses, skirts with printed blouses and bouffant hairstyles while the Mangalorean side (groom\u2019s side) had women in heavy, embroidered sarees, and jasmine-wound hair in buns, (\u201clike they\u2019ve come for a funeral\u201d, the Goans tsk-ed).<\/p>\n

 
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