Yesterday, I had the pleasure of being in the company of three distinguished Indian writers (and one Brit!) who had come to London as ambassadors for Indian literature as part of The London Book Fair.
In a discussion titled "Cities in Literature", part of the British Council sponsored India 09: Through Fresh Eye programme, writers including Sukhetu Metha (pictured above), author of the acclaimed Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found discussed what is it about cities that inspire so much writing. Each author spoke about their own experiences of city life and how it influenced their writing (novellist Shankar, who's penned 80 books in Bengali, has set all his books in Calcutta) and then read a passage from their chosen work. Austin Williams, the aforementioned lone Brit on the panel, spoke about London while Namdeo Dhasal's publisher, who attended in place of his awol client, read about the dark side of 70s Mumbai from Dhasal's radical collection of powerful poetry.
But it was Sukhetu Metha's shimmering account of contemporary Bombay life, a city of 21million people, that really caught my attention. Part reportage, part memoir, Metha's gift for capturing the spirit of the city was compelling to listen to and, I was told, even more fascinating to read. "The Londoners of the future are being born in Bombay today", he said, speaking of the relationship between global cities in the 21st century.
After hearing the panellists speak so eloquently and passionately about their cities and their work, I immediately went out and bought Metha's Maximum City (five years after everyone else it seems!) and read up on Namdeo Dhasal and Shankar. When I'm done with Maximum City, which is living up to the hype as an absolute page turner, I'll definitely go in search of other Indian writers and their words. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon.
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