The streets of Mumbai are paved with gold; they are also awash with youngsters who come to the city in their hundreds, perhaps thousands, hoping that some of that gold dust will rub on to them.
Large numbers make a beeline for the offices of film directors and producers, ambition glowing on their faces, which gradually gives way to frustration and, finally, acceptance of failure. Some do make it big. But behind that tinsel success are often lies, deception and deep secrets that no one ever reveals.
Ravi is one such migrant, who comes to Mumbai partly because he wants to become a musician in the movies but also because he has nothing left in his life. His mother ran away and his father has been admitted to a sanatorium.
A kindly couple, who give him education and music lessons, is not enough to keep him back in his small town; he finds his new middle-class life stifling. He runs away from his home and boards a train for Mumbai.
Bhaichand Patel’s first novel, Mothers Lovers and Other Strangers, tracks Ravi’s life from his hovel in a village to a penthouse and beyond — from being a beggar to a multi-millionaire.
It is not an expansive, ambitious novel in scale, preferring to delve into the inner life of the protagonist as he struggles to understand his own success. Somewhere in that journey, the seeds of his destruction have already been sown, even if the denouement is not exactly his fault. For Ravi, despite reaching the pinnacle of the film industry and Mumbai society, is still a boy from a dirt-poor family of kumbhars (potters).
The novel begins promisingly and Ravi’s journey in a crowded, long-distance train has many tiny, well-observed details such as the dread among passengers about losing their seats if they get up to go to the lavatory. Ravi, a wide-eyed teenager, carrying with him the name of someone who lives in Dharavi, finds his way there and settles down with three other migrants.
It appears that either the city of Mumbai is full of kindly old souls — from the cabbie who gives him a free lift from Victoria Terminus to the residents of Dharavi — or that he is the luckiest young boy in the world, since everyone he comes across is nice to him. He encounters no hustlers or cheats in his initial days at all.
One such generous gent is a music teacher who sees talent in Ravi, who wants to continue learning the sitar, something he had done in his earlier adoptive home.
Ravi soon moves in with the master and before long, the master has moved into his bed. The sex scene is handled in a somewhat matter-of-fact way, hitting the right note, though the reader will remain mystified why the author remains coy about letting Ravi even kiss his mistress or his girlfriend; some sexual passion would have certainly added to the story.
Ravi continues to move up the ladder, becoming an assistant to a hit music director and then a composer, showing not a little enterprise and chicanery on the way. And, when his own musical compositions become hugely popular, it is only a matter of time before he gets to meet prized, much-in-demand beauties from the upper echelons of Mumbai society.
It is a gilded life till a voice from the past catches up. Unreasonably, this person wants Ravi to come back to the small town he had left.
This is the first of a few false notes in the novel; till now, Ravi’s life has been credibly delineated. But at a crucial juncture, one that will determine his future, the story stumbles. There on, in order to keep true to the logic of this convoluted twist, the story moves towards a somewhat unbelievable series of events, culminating in Ravi’s life coming apart.
There was much that he could have done to ensure this did not happen; he was, after all, very powerful and linked with extremely influential people. Besides, he was not guilty of anything, except poor judgement. Why did he have to suffer to this extent? It sounds implausible.
For a first-time novelist, Patel has picked up the knack of keeping the story moving. It is a breezily written novel, though the pace leaves little time for character development or for dialogue. Very few of the characters are given an authentic voice; they hardly get any lines.
Dolly Rai, the one-time actress-turned-call-girl and equally broken by her fate is perhaps the best fleshed out, showing genuine human emotions and the ability to love, but even she remains a supporting player to Ravi. It is not often that one wants a novel to be longer than it is, but in this case, some more detailing and few more scenes of interaction would have made a difference.
The author knows a lot about the Mumbai film industry — he could have set a few scenes there; one, in a film party where a drunk music director keeps asking for more songs while his chamchas give him booze is a good indicator of how Patel understands the nuances of Bollywood life.
This is a good book to pick up for a trip and it won’t disappoint the reader. Patel, who has earlier edited and written non-fiction books, may have discovered a long-hidden talent for writing entertaining fiction.