Writer Amit Chaudhuri opens up on his love-hate relationship with Mumbai

Amit ChaudhuriCan The city be your friend Can its people teach you to love and hate at the same time Can its roads nooks and crannies leave you yearning for more each time When we read writer Amit Chaudhuris latest offering Friend of My Youth Penguin India we see these questions emerge from within his incandescent prose like tiny fireflies lighting up Because at the heart of this book which on the surface is a candid account of the writernarrators relationship with his childhood friend Ramu we also notice a slow lament about a city in this case MumbaiThere was a time when Chaudhuri was a Bombayite long before the city became Mumbai The writer was around a year old when his parents moved from the surreal rhythm of Kolkata to the posh artifice of Kamala Nehru Park in Malabar Hill He went on to study at the Cathedral and John Connon School and attended college at Elphinstone before finding his raison decirctre in literature and shifting to Oxford in the mid80sChaudhuri who shuttles between the UK and India doesnt deny any of the confessions he makes about Mumbai in his book I wasnt happy in the city It made me uncomfortable he says I wanted to leave that life adds the writer who is also professor of contemporary literature at the University of East Anglia UKIn the book the writer revisits the Taj Mahal Palace hotel post the 2611 attacks recalling how the place had changed post the incidentYet hidden between the chapters is a friend that the writer appears to be slowly reconciling with This friend is both metaphorical and real mdash the latter being Ramu whose character Chaudhuri admits to have fictionalised in parts in this semiautobiographical narrative The book begins with Chaudhuri revisiting Mumbai for a reading of his novel The Immortals 2009 a year or two after the 2611 attacks On arriving he learns that his friend wont be able to meet him because he is at a rehab centre in Alibaug fighting a drug addiction From here on we see the writer look for excuses to visit the city again sometimes on the pretext of readings on other occasions research Why There were three things that were converging in my head he explains The first was returning to the city where you have grown up and where you now live in hotel and club rooms because its no longer your home The second is the idea of the friend from that city who is the one person from the narrators childhood whom he still keeps in touch with and who is suddenly unavailable The third is revisiting the Taj and seeing it seemingly in this pristine condition untouched and bustling when just some time back it had been utterly destroyedA lot has changed since the writers parents moved back to Kolkata in the late 80s permanently severing ties with the city of Chaudhuris childhood I grew up in corporate Bombay Obviously the mad spiralling of money did not exist then but it was still an oasis a makebelief one recalls the Sahitya Akademi Award winner But the writer always remembers being wary of this privilege I saw it with a degree of reservation he recallsThis lovehate for the city translated into a more affable bond when he began visiting Mumbai in the late 90s and the early turn of the century He became more aware of the sights and sounds of this place whether it was the narrow gullies of Apollo Bunder or the backalleys of Kala Ghoda and Ballard Estate to eat seafood at Trishnas or beri pulao at Britannia amp Co Then there are places like Joy Shoes located inside the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel mentioned in his novel The Immortals which the writer keeps coming back to first because of his mum and later his wife who wont wear shoes from anywhere else His scooterriding school friend Ramu whose name we presume has been changed becomes one of the many wheels to help him see the city differently Today Mumbai suits me greatly he admits jokingly adding that he desperately waits for someone to invite him hereI now recognise that I didnt know the city as well as I thought I did My relationship with this place is like that of a friend whom one has known for many years and is still to discover Its confrontation continuity and discovery at the same time he ends