Sumedha Raikar-Mhatre: Mumbai's low past

Shuklaji Street in Kamathipura is one of the places that takes centre stage in Ajith Pillairsquos Junkland Journeys which takes us through the Mumbai of the eightiesSit back and imagine yourself solving a crossword puzzle on a weekday afternoon at Colabarsquos Goks bar A hundred rupee note will be enough for beer fish curry and rice waiters can be instructed not to rush the servings After lunch you walk across to the Gateway of India and gaze at the ships coming into the harbour If you want to catch a few winks matinee shows in Regal or Strand offer perfect spots No text message will vitiate your peace no ringtones to remind you of an imminent appointmentDelhibased writer Ajith Pillairsquos debut novel Junkland Journeys mdash published by Authors Upfront mdash has a feel of the leisurely afternoon in the Mumbai of the eighties where action or the lack of it takes place at Shuklaji Street in Kamathipura Sunshine Country Bar in Mahim and the dingy flats of CGS Colony at Antop Hill Pillai catches the city at a time when it was not a swanky megapolis with multiplexes and malls smartphone gadgetry did not govern every lived moment and Topaz Chitrahaar song clips epitomised television entertainment In a lowtech preInternet space Pillairsquos hero Hari Menon finds life in the bylanes of Colaba and Ballard estate Menonrsquos journey of selfdiscovery takes him places mdash Kavil Kerala to Lonavala and then to Lucknow But the soul of Pillairsquos book is firmly placed in a preglobalised Mumbai a city which he says now exists only in peoplersquos memoriesPillai 58 is ferociously fond of a specific period in Mumbai eighties and early nineties up to the 1993 serial blasts before which he was based in Kochi as an ad copyrighter As per his world view the 1992 communal riots robbed the maximum city of its old world charm and it was also a defining point for the escalation of communalism and regionalism He is convinced that his protagonist a recovering drug addict couldnrsquot have existed in any other milieu than the one provided by a city on the cusp of change Menon a confused young man from the upper echelon takes to Idukki Grass because he believes that dope expands the mind and reveals a perspective unknown to a nonsmokerHe leaves a respectable advertising agency job and his parents to rent a pokey flat in Antop Hill only to be surrounded by some who are waiting for a work permit to the Middle east and some deliberately living below their means slumming in a fit of revolt against their capitalist parents Pillai feels younger people now ldquocanrsquot drop out of life and claw backrdquo also that the old Bombay gave people second and third chances His views are of course to be assessed on a relative scale because successive generations have found Mumbai kinder during their timesPillai now an independent writer worked for The Sunday Observer now defunct in the mid80s and the current work of fiction draws sustenance from the intriguing people he met mostly heroinbrown sugar addicts pushers selling the dope parents and rehabilitation professionals In fact he had gained a reputation as a Low Life correspondent covering the redlight areas especially after journalist Dhiren Bhagat called him by that name in the Spectator magazine Pillai conducted guided tours for fellow journalists in the addas where druggies gathered around the pusherman He has also taken author V S Naipaul to one such spot in Dadar early 1989 which figures in Naipaulrsquos lsquoA Hundred Mutinies NowrsquoThe drug stories took Pillai in several directions mdash including Dr Yusuf Merchantrsquos Drug Abuse Information Rehabilitation Centre on Palton Road near Crawford Market where he served as a volunteercounsellor of sorts for a while A chance meeting with a recovering addict from a wealthy business family proved educational Pillai never reported the story or alluded to it as by then ldquosuch stories had become passe with editors who were no longer interested in the travails of drug addictsrdquo The lsquorich kid misunderstood by parents and lured to drugsrsquo stories were cliched for the reader too says Pillai But 24 years later mdash sometime in 2007 mdash the addict tracked down Pillai He was now a transformed swami in saffron robes mdash a guru with small ashrams in Canada Australia and a few other places in europe His trajectory became the basis of Junkland Journeys just as Pillairsquos earlier book Off the Record was a reporterrsquos diary a compilation of the untold stories behind the stories mdash an insiderrsquos view of journalism His next anthology of short stories is set in the India of the future also a book on Indian Rock in which Mumbai of today and yesteryear will figureJunkland Journeys needs to be taken note of mdash not just for the social documentation of Mumbai mdash but because it traces the growth of parochialism of all shades Pillai has been unsparing in baring the insularity and conceit that Indians harbour for each other knowingly and unknowingly mdash a Kutty declaring everything about Kerala as the best in the world Rajan Mishra ridiculed as a lsquoBiharirsquo by his Tamilian inlaws Chandrakant Borde and Avinash Mane being killed for not lsquolookingrsquo Hindu and Marathi lsquoenoughrsquo during the riots Prejudice comes naturally to a society divided by class caste and religionPillairsquos book underlines Indiarsquos high gullibility rate in the matters of religious faith His hero thrives as a GodDog Man who communicates to the world through a dog with divine powers The dog idea brings home the clever networking with which a religious cult can take root in Maharashtra or anywhere in India People seek spiritual masters because gurus double up as counsellors Pillai empathises with those who need psychological help without being seen as needy Todayrsquos Mumbai has no dearth of cults that provide succour but without being seen as rehabilitators Pillai goes back in time to show a juncture where the mental wellness industry joined hands with the spiritual establishmentsSumedha RaikarMhatre is a culture columnist in search of the subtext You can reach her at sumedharaikargmailcom