Analysis Of Love And Longing In Bombay

LOVE AND LONGING IN BOMBAY-RE-VISITING THE WEAVE OF LIFE

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to elevate and examine the Indian English Fiction.The main focus is placed on Vikram Chandra’s Re-visiting, Love and longing in Bombay. Love and Longing in Bombay (1997), is a fine example of story-telling and fable-weaving. Set against the backdrop of a smoky Bombay bar known as the Fisherman’s Rest, Chandra’s five stories are recounted by Subramaniam, a retired civil servant. This enigmatic story-teller even manages to captivate the imagination of Ranjit, the novel’s main narrator who is an unfailing skeptic, belonging more to contemporary Bombay than to the city’s tradition and intrigue. The stories within Love and Longing in Bombay could be read

Shakti tells us about a love story, between the son and the daughter of two powerful business families, which in the end are able to overcome the conflicts, due to appearances, power and money that only love seems to make disappear. The story is a telling portrait of the gossipy nouveaue- riche of Bombay society. It is about a social climber Shiela Bijlani, “the daughter of a common chemist- type shopkeeper growing up amongst potions and medicines” (1997:33), who infiltrates the Malabar high society. Chandra’s narrative explores the intricacies, hypocrisies and intrigues of a life behind the façade of glamour and glitz. But he is very astute in painting an equally stark picture of the seamier side of the glittery city with its chawls and brawls. The house in which Shiela lives is a ‘White two-storied mansion’ with paintings of M.F. Hussain on its walls. The Kholi in which Ganga, the counterpart of high society lives,is in lane that is “narrow, and whoever walked by had to brush close to the door. Across the lane, there was a narrow gutter which flooded in the rains, and behind that more shacks of wood, cloth, cardboard, and tin.” (1997:49), but “like all parents”, Shiela “never really believed” that her son “would fall in love” bitchiness and drollery, Chandra probes deep into the psyche of his characters in Shakti”, and lays bare the longing for love in a child that can turn even the best-laid plans of an astute mother topsy-turvey, and along with it, the social order too. And after the grand wedding of Sanjeev and Roxanne, and “a curious moment of silence” in it, we are whisked back to the present, as Subramaniam comments “I think of that moment silence whenever I realize how much changed because of that marriage” (1997:74) “Shakti” thus refers to the strength inherent in a women who we believe, has the power