Few tangents around the noir genre

[1]

By Altaf Tyrewala [2]

Rs 350

Bombay Noir was the informal name given to crime films made in Hindi during the 1950s. They were in the same mould as Hollywood noir films but had an Indian flavour, such as songs, dances and sometimes a comedy track. The basic ingredients remained the same — rich and powerful criminals who were outwardly respectable, a hero with his own code of honour, femmes fatale. Bombay Noir remains an understudied and under-appreciated genre.
Mumbai Noir is a collection of stories brought out as part of an international noir stories. Is this a contemporary echo of an old style?

Difficult to say, because the 14 stories in it fall in all kinds of categories, even if they have been bundled into three groups. And frankly, this could have been a collection titled “14 Mumbai stories”. The editor, Altaf Tyrewala who has a Mumbai novel under his belt, invokes the city’s entrepreneurial spirit, its criminal class which will do anything to make money, sectarian riots and terrorism, but it still does not explain why we should accept these stories as somehow collectively falling under the noir rubric.
The noir genre stipulates, he says, “an unflinching gaze at the underbelly without recourse to sentimentality or forced denouements.” The reader may still feel a little underwhelmed.
Left to themselves, without any forced qualifications, the stories are interesting enough, a mixed bag as any collection is. Almost all concern the lower middle-class, a category that provides endless fascination to our modern English fiction and non-fiction writers: the dregs who populate the distant suburbs or are subterranean creatures who come in our eyeline but do not matter in the larger scheme of things. Thus, eunuchs, roadside quacks, policemen, video parlour operators, watchmen, petty criminals; we know they exist but in the normal course of life we have little do with them. As subjects for our gaze, however, they provide interesting fodder and can be turned into wonderful, occasionally prize-winning books.
Sometimes this gaze is sharp — Paromita Vohra’s The Romantic Customer is more deeply observed than most others, in its delineation of relationships, romantic and otherwise, among youngsters. Namita Devidayal’s story about the gradual slide into madness of a lonely housewife is interesting enough, but could find itself in any other anthology; why is it here? It is also the only one based in a tonier part of Mumbai while all the others are set in areas that make it to the papers only when there is a crime. Kalpish Ratna’s story At Leopold Café is frankly mystifying, in style and content.
Most writers have undertaken their assignment with great seriousness of purpose except perhaps Ahmed Bungalowala, who resurrects Shorty Gomes, India’s answer to the hardboiled gumshoes of the Sam Spade, Philip Marlow and Continental Op variety. He is laconic and world weary in his expression, dead sure that the rich and corrupt will always win in the end. It is difficult to assess if Bungalowala has his tongue in his cheek or not; despite the inherent weakness of the plot and the style, one feels like giving him the benefit of doubt.
Mumbai readers may enjoy Jerry Pinto’s story on a murder of a gym trainer, not the least because of the local lingo that is liberally used. Plus, there is a mystery to be solved.
The noir world was inextricably linked with that of Art Deco. Mumbai has no dearth of buildings in that style. Bombay Noir captured that spirit seamlessly. Mumbai is an entirely different city and invoking noir today is trying to whip a long-dead horse. This is neither tribute nor an attempt to break new ground.