Is there a parallel you have drawn between opium and Mumbai?Ī: “That’s kind of hinted at in the book where the change from Bombay to Mumbai takes place. In “Narcopolis”, words seem to come from under a cloud of smoke. Q: In an interview you used the word “seductive” for Bombay. One thing after the other has been chipped away.” Anybody with talent, ambition, with beauty, with brains you could make it in Bombay. These are the kind of things that one could have never imagined in Bombay. The way outsiders, people of other communities, are made to feel unwelcome.

And the whole right-wing thing that’s happening in Bombay. So the divide has become even larger than what it was. The way the rich have become constantly richer while the poor are exactly where they were. The political changes that have happened, the kind of changes that have happened in terms of money. Not saying purely in a nostalgic way, I mean also politically. It will bear a high-rise tenement kind of look uniformly.”Ī: “No question, for bad. The kind of variety you used to be able to find there like dockyards, for example. “At the end of ‘Narcopolis’, I have tried to draw that picture a little bit - that Bombay will become a very uniform-looking place. Those people who live there now of course won’t be able to afford to live there. So very soon that entire district will disappear, and with it a million stories. It is disappearing now - Kamatipura, Shuklaji street, (the) entire area between Mumbai Central and Grant Road is disappearing, being bought away by real estate sharks who are buying up all the broken-down houses and making tall buildings. I’ve been reading about that area, Shuklaji street. Q: Does this make you feel strongly about the city?Ī: “Bombay does that to people.

Narcopolis book review