Kiran Nagarkar writes about Mumbai much in the manner that the city's manic taxis are driven. You're off to a spluttering start, the words spewing out like so much exhaust smoke; there are enough twists and turns to make Michael Schumacher dizzy; you're turning corners dangerously, changing gears constantly, weaving in and out of tight spots; and at the end of the ride, you are left with a mixed sense of exhilaration and exhaustion.
Ravan and Eddie (1995), for my money the most evocative book about Mumbai written so far, gave you little time to think: you simply had to surrender to its virtuosity, its outrageousness, its magically shabby world. You could smell Mumbai in its pages, be swamped, like its citizens, by its excesses and deprivations.
Much of the above is true of The Extras , Nagarkar's sequel to Ravan and Eddie . If the original explored the world of the chawl , that classic symbol of life in Mumbai, the sequel zips to the other end of the glamour scale — to Bollywood, that other enduring Mumbai condition.
The two protagonists are now hot-blooded young men, Look Ma, we've grown up. The soul brothers, pushed apart by tragedy and pulled together by destiny, have finally broken free of the dreary tyranny of the Central Works Department chawl in Mazagaon, where it has always been Mumbai, not Bombay.
It's the era of the 1960s and 70s, of Prohibition, Ambassador cars, Radio Ceylon and Elvis wannabes. Eddie works as a bouncer at an Auntie's bar (Mumbai lingo for a speakeasy), Ravan is the shaky leader of the Cum September Jai Bharat Band, specialists in marriages. Both dream of escaping the miasma of the CWD chawl , but one is stymied by the Auntie's failed seduction and consequent suicide; the other by surrendering to a nymphomaniac bride. Ravan turns to driving a taxi, Eddie is determined to become a Hindi film star. Ravan yearns silently and unilaterally for Eddie's distant sister Pieta, Eddie is caught in the web of lust that the cheeky, lusty Ango-Indian Bella weaves around him.
Their parallel tracks finally converge in Bollywood, where they start off as extras, invisible beings forever condemned to languish in the shadow of the stars. But what's a mere filmi barrier for two spirited young men who have vaulted over the crumbling but near-unconquerable walls of the CWD chawl? Some dreams do come true, even in soul-destroying Mumbai.
Echoes from the past
Their paths are peppered with some spillovers from the cast of characters in Ravan and Eddie : Mount Parvati, Ravan's implacable mother; her husband, Shankar-rao, “a scrawny, seedy-looking spider with spindly, hairy legs”; Eddie's sour, dour mother Violet; his sister Pieta and their family priest Father Agnello D'Souza, purveyor of largely ineffectual spiritual guidance.
In addition is a whole new set of figures: Sapnaji, the minor film star who promises to hand Eddie a leading role but only gives him venereal disease; Aasman, the poet trapped in a battered body; the morose habitués at the Auntie's bar; Three Point One, the money-lender so named because he hiked the unwritten maximum lending rate of three per cent a month by a historic decimal point.
It is a cast that zig-zags over the area between reality and absurdity. Most of them are generous with their words, in true Nagarkar style, each captured in a distinctive voice. They help take the story through a series of escapades that like, the cast itself, start off real, then segue into fantasy or absurdity. Quite a few are as bawdy and scatological as you might expect of Nagarkar. Many are also hilarious: a doctor and his students examining Eddie's swollen penis; his matter-of-fact seduction by Sapnaji, the Cum September's band's valiant efforts at immortality. One scene in which the band, driving to a wedding in a garbage truck, achieves an exquisite harmony amidst the stink and muck, is exceptionally beautiful.
A dark humour pervades this tragi-comic tale of those who long to be more than mere extras in the theatre of life, who try to claw their way out of penny-pinching anonymity, who dream.
But is it as good as Ravan and Eddie ? Answering that inevitable question is unfair to this book because it is marvellous in its own right. Few writers get Mumbai better than Nagarkar and his exploration of the shadowy world of film extras holds both truth and tenderness.
But if justice be damned and truth be told, one would have to place this a notch lower. Nagarkar is in fine form, but by the end of the book, one could weary of the ever-gushing torrent of adjectives. There are spots of indulgence, especially with Three Point One's letters. The ending seems contrived and uncharacteristically happy. But one is inclined to forgive, for, there is great despair but also, illogical hope in Mumbai.
Extract
.. he was in need of urgent rescue because they were now taking turns scrutinizing his ding-dong, his cannon, his pride and purported passport to Sapnaji and to ‘Zuperstar' status in Hindi flicks, his rack and ruin, his song and anthem, his overdue punishment, his peace pipe, his fall and folly, his agony and ecstasy, his probe and periscope, his joystick and flag, his cinnamon stick, his Chinese torture, the vengeance of God, his sin, his crime, his nemesis, his payback time, his judgement day. He should have hung a placard on it. Fragile. Handle With Care. Not that they would have given a damn.
The Extras, *ing Ravan & Eddie,Kiran Nagarkar, Fourth Estate, p.467, Rs. 599.
