Macaca matchmaking at Artwallah
A long and fascinating Vikram Chandra interview in the Hindustan Times contains this nugget:
Vikram and Melanie are newlyweds. They met a few years back at an Asian festival in LA called Artwallah, at a cocktail party… “She’s Jewish, so we did a Jewish ceremony in LA, then came to Bombay and did a Hindu ceremony here.” [Link]
Which means that Abhi, one of the Artwallah organizers, can claim some credit for introducing the couple, and tangentially for the 900-pager which kept my local café rolling in rupees the last couple of weeks.
Chandra throws in a shout-out to The1Shanti, the Brooklyn rapper on the addictive Dum Dum Project track ‘Supafly Bindi’. It’s like the Rushdie-U2 collaboration on ‘The Ground Beneath Her Feet,’ only, you know, hipper:
… [which] songs he’d like played at his funeral… “A hiphop artist in the States, the1shanti, he’s Indian? he actually read Love and Longing in Bombay… and did a song of the same title on his album Indian Bambaataa.” [Link]
Listen to ‘Love and Longing in Bombay’ here. It’s The1Shanti’s second Chandra reference after ‘Punjabi 5-0,’ a hat tip to Bombay cop Sartaj Singh.
He loves socializing in Bombay:
… when Melanie first came to Bombay, every second person she met would tell her that Vikram was going to take her to all the great parties. She knew him as a quiet academic who went to bed by 10:30. So she asked, “Who are they talking about?”…
“Anuradha Tandon, to whom this book is dedicated, and I love going to these ‘high society bashes’ and to strange filmi parties in the middle of nowhere, where you meet all kinds of really interesting people.” [Link]
His first love is sci-fi:Bombay is the gateway facing west
When he was in class six, Vikram started writing science fiction stories. “They were worshipful imitations of Isaac Asimov… I think genre fiction in general is often more alert to conditions of contemporary living and more willing to deal with it than literary fiction. Thrillers will often directly attack ideas about political situations, the most obvious example being Tom Clancy’s book in which he prefigured 9/11 and the use of airplanes as weapons.” [Link]
He’s generous to the Bindis and Brides and Opal Mehta genre:
“I’m really glad that we’re starting to see Indian pulp fiction, even thrillers and chick-lit. I think that in order to have really healthy literature you need lots of good pulp.” [Link]
Chandra on his famous forebears:
… his mother, Kamna, [is] the scriptwriter who has Prem Rog and 1942: A Love Story to her credit. “My mother wrote Chandni…” [Link]
On why Bombay is a writer’s city:
“Bombay has, like certain other cities in the world, a very specific sense of the metropolis, with a certain amount of self-mythologising and narrative-making. Like New York and London have a self-image and the loyalty to that idea, Bombay has that. For a writer, it’s a very rich place… “It became a crucible for a sense of self… Even the immigrants who come in, a year or two later they identify themselves as being from Bombay…
“… [Bombay is] the gateway facing west. Style, for instance, its first experiment is on the streets of Bombay, filters across the country… Sridevi was memorably outfitted in white chiffon in [Chandni]. A couple of months after it was released we went to meet relatives in Lucknow, and we were told yahan pe white chiffon ki shortage hai [there's a white chiffon shortage here], because every girl in UP, or at least Lucknow, wanted the same outfit.” [Link]
And why not Delhi:
“Again this is an immigrant city, where people have come in and made something of themselves… So I would think that there would be a Delhi novel that would come energetically. I don’t know why somebody’s not writing it…” [Link]
Probably for the same reason that NYC is more a writer’s city than D.C.: the dominant industries generally have more gripping stories in the sense of mass-market fiction.
on Sunday, August 27th, 2006, 5:45 pm in Bombay, Literature › 
Email this
› 
Retweet
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
thanks manish, interesting article..
cities that inspires writers hmm..I always thought gender makes people write the way they do..like women mostly write chik flicks and emotional novels since they are more emotional, their exposure is limited they are more into inner worlds, because they dont get to see the outer world that much as men..while men write more adventerous kinda of novels because of their exposure and the pace of the novel is also much faster and the arena of the novel is also much broader when men write novels…
cities more conducive to writing/creativity thats interesting..probably u see more diverse population and more interesting characters in these cities… I need to check that out…I never lived in bombay or Delhi or NY or Dc..may be I need to check them out…
u are living in mumbai right, does it make any difference to ur writing style or creativity?
You be the judge :)
Manish, where ever u write , u have unique style of writing I enjoy reading a lot and u are great at looking at humor side of all issues somewhat like jon stewart poking fun of some serious issues is great..and I keep learning new words all the time from ur blog entries..ur vocabulary is excellent , great word/verb usage at right places…
I liked ur musings and blog entries on ur website (vij.com) a lot…now a days I dont see u writing there at all…
I love ultrabrown too a lot but I miss reading those musings and detailed articles on issues that interest u..
ultrabrown is more of short articles helping us catch up with all things brown and about brown people which is great but I like more literary long articles or musings of urs..ur style doesnot come through that much in ultrabrown as much as it used to come on vij.com site..
I love ur observations and photographs of life in india and ur cute taglines on ur photos a lot..I liked the article u wrote on salon about bombay trains where ur unique observations and style comes through, I miss detailed articles/blog entries like that in the literary sense..ur movie reviews are great too, I skip all movies that u think are bad…
and would love to read more of ur poetry too..and ur literature reviews on books more…
Iam a book worm and love anything related to literature and detailed musings..may be Iam baised that way..
On the whole thanks for writing on blogs and sharing ur talents with us, I enjoy reading ur blogs a lot…and will definetely buy ur novel once its out…
If u are interested in discussing about books , would love to discuss on novels/books, my email cerebralbirdie@yahoo.com thank u.
@ Prakruti: Cities do inspires writers, I think. A Delhi writer is more likely to write about politics and a Mumbai writer about crime and the underworld. A novel based in Mumbai is likely to be less introspective and more fastpaced than one based in Kolkata. All the last three big books about Mumbai - Maximum City, Shantaram and Sacred Games - are similar in themes.
@ Manish: Loved the Vikram Chandra trivia. Here’s some more in a piece I wrote after attending a book reading by him.
Yup, there’s definitely a frequency/depth tradeoff.
A frightening responsibility! Thanks for all the good vibes :)
Gaurav, cool post, thanks.
“A frightening responsibility! ”
Nope did not intend to frighten u that way :-)
I liked ur reviews of Devdas, Yuva etc., and realised my movie and book tastes match with urs..I saw KANK before u wrote that review and even I didnot like that movie at all…its just based on similar tastes..so if u dont like a movie probably its not my kind of movie..thanks to u I discovered Hari kunzru and vikram chandra and I like both the writers, ofcourse Aynrand, Rushdie and others are in that list too which I started reading way back ( though reading the 50 pages of sacred games that ur review included, sacred games is not my kind of novel though its too early to judge)..
u are right.. quantity/frequency vs depth…its hard to write a lot if u are blogging frequently…
ur unique writing style comes through so well in deep articles which I enjoy a lot more than these short frequent ones…may be mixture of both will be great….readers request :-) aap ke pharmaish kind..
Manish, have a question more out of curiosity as someone interested in going back to india sometime in my life.. since u lived in US and mumbai..
what are five things that u like about mumbai and five things which are bad about living in india..
what are five things that are special about US and not that good about US..
just curious..
Thanks Gaurav..
interesting..I didnot read all those three big mumbai novels..May be Iam wrong all those 3 books were written by men right ..how about three books written by women writers in mumbai…are they also are in the same lines of sacred games? Is shobha de from mumbai? And I didnot read any Delhi writers, any famous ones? Any difference between Delhi men and womens work? I read Amrita pritams poetry in hindi, never read any Delhi writers..is upamanyu chaterjee from Delhi ?english august about IAS officers journey…I read a few pages of Anita Desai’s novel voices in the city on calcutta and ofcourse there is this famous “city of joy”…Arundhati Roy is another famous one, dont know if she is from Delhi or calcutta.
I remember a couple of manishs blog entries on new NRI women writers and (mangoes, red carpet etc., )their themes, except for zadie smith most of them write on more emotional feminine topics…Interesting observation..thank u.