Mumbai Noir

By Altaf Tyrewala

“The stories in this noir anthology are as raw and diverse as the city of Mumbai itself, humming with the feel for the city’s pulse and patter.” —The National
 
Today Mumbai is like any other Asian city on the rise, with gigantic construction cranes winding atop upcoming skyscrapers and malls. Right-wing violence, failing electricity and water supplies, overcrowding, and the ever-looming threat of terrorist attacks—these are some of the gruesome realities that Mumbai’s middle and working classes must deal with every day, while the city’s super-rich zip from roof to roof in their private choppers. Abandoned by its wealthy, mistreated by its politicians and administrators, Mumbai continues to thrive primarily because of the helpless resilience of its hardworking, upright citizens.
 
The stories in Mumbai Noir depict the many ways in which the city’s ever-present shadowy aspects often force themselves onto the lives of ordinary people. What emerges is the sense of a city that, despite its new name and triumphant tryst with capitalism, is yet to heal from the wounds of the communal riots of the 1990s and from all the subsequent acts of havoc wreaked within its precincts by both local and outside forces.
 
Mumbai Noir features stories by: Annie Zaidi, R. Raj Rao, Abbas Tyrewala, Avtar Singh, Ahmed Bunglowala, Smita Harish Jain, Sonia Faleiro, Altaf Tyrewala, Namita Devidayal, Jerry Pinto, Kalpish Ratna, Riaz Mulla, Paromita Vohra, and Devashish Makhija.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Akashic Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2012
• ISBN: 9781617751127

Altaf Tyrewala

Altaf Tyrewala is the author of the critically acclaimed books No God in Sight and Engglishhh: Fictional Dispatches from a Hyperreal Nation. He is also the editor of the crime-fiction collection Mumbai Noir. Altaf's works have been published and anthologized around the world. He was awarded the 2011 DAAD Artist-in- Berlin literature grant. He lives in Mumbai with his family and works in the e-learning industry.

Book preview

MUMBAI NOIR

This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Published by Akashic Books

©2012 Akashic Books

Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

Mumbai map by Aaron Petrovich

eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-112-7

Print ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-027-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011902728

All rights reserved

First printing

Akashic Books

PO Box 1456

New York, NY 10009

[e-mail]

www.akashicbooks.com

ALSO IN THE AKASHIC NOIR SERIES:

Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

Barcelona Noir (Spain), edited by Adriana V. López & Carmen Ospina

Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane

Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adcock

Cape Cod Noir, edited by David L. Ulin

Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

Copenhagen Noir (Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaëlis

D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

Delhi Noir (India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney

Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

Dublin Noir (Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

Havana Noir (Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

Indian Country Noir, edited by Sarah Cortez & Liz Martínez

Istanbul Noir (Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

London Noir (England), edited by Cathi Unsworth

Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & Johnny Byrd

Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Denise Hamilton

Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

Mexico City Noir (Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

Moscow Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

New Jersey Noir, edited by Joyce Carol Oates

New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips

Paris Noir (France), edited by Aurélien Masson

Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano

Phoenix Noir, edited by Patrick Millikin

Pittsburgh Noir, edited by Kathleen George

Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom, Brian Castleberry & Tom De Haven

Rome Noir (Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

San Diego Noir, edited by Maryelizabeth Hart

San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

Toronto Noir (Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

Trinidad Noir, edited by Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

FORTHCOMING:

Bogotá Noir (Colombia), edited by Andrea Montejo

Buffalo Noir, edited by Brigid Hughes & Ed Park

Jerusalem Noir, edited by Sayed Kashua

Kansas City Noir, edited by Steve Paul

Lagos Noir (Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

Long Island Noir, edited by Kaylie Jones

Manila Noir (Philippines), edited by Jessica Hagedorn

St. Petersburg Noir (Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

Seoul Noir (Korea), edited by BS Publishing Co.

Staten Island Noir, edited by Patricia Smith

Venice Noir (Italy), edited by Maxim Jakubowski

For Y.T. and D.T.—

who missed each other forever by a single day

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Page

Introduction

PART I: BOMB-AY

PART II: DANGEROUS LIAISONS

PART III: AN ISLAND UNTO ITSELF

Glossary

About the Contributors

INTRODUCTION

THE TRAFFIC-CHOKED ACCIDENT BY THE COAST

Aboiling July afternoon. A monster traffic jam on Mumbai’s tony Peddar Road. My taxi driver peers up through the windshield. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s twenty-seven-floor home looms over the thoroughfare like a mammoth pile of Lego blocks. The cabbie remarks in the Bambaiya patois, "What building Ambani has made— right on the road. Some terrorist just has to drive by with a rocket launcher and buss! He glances at me in the rearview mirror with raised eyebrows: khel khatam, game over. Looking through the passenger window, I observe, Even an AK-47 would do a lot … The cabbie is skeptical. From the road? Angle will be difficult to sustain, saab, he says. Plus, vehicle will have to go very slow for gunman to do serious damage …" I look again. The man has a point.

The traffic lets up a bit, but we continue to analyze, without a hint of irony, the vulnerabilities of the Ambani residence. Between 1993 and 2011, Mumbai has weathered eight terror attacks. Its inhabitants—12.43 million according to Census 2011—have become unwitting authorities on all the ways that an ordinary day in the city can turn out to be one’s last.

Life in the island city wasn’t always so chancy. Until international terrorism cast its vague shadow over the metropolis in the early ’90s, the pains in Mumbai’s collective neck most often had a face and a fixed address. The city’s denizens knew the names and backgrounds of underworld majordomos. They were familiar with the bastions of extremist religious parties. And they tried their best to stay away.

Before the liberalization of India’s economy in 1991, perhaps the only thing worth striving for was one’s ability to stay on the good side of the law. Mumbai’s middle and working classes were easy to recognize back then: they toiled hard, wore polyester, and fantasized about migrating to the West. Their heroic struggle to choose a righteous life over an easy life often invoked the respect of those who had done away with such bourgeois moral anxieties. The outlaw narrator of Abbas Tyrewala’s story in this volume reminisces how the bhais of his time never harmed Mumbai’s common folk because they were awed by their courage to live honestly and bring up children.

This promise of a clean life has driven millions of people over several centuries to abandon India’s rural hinterland and throng Mumbai’s streets in search of employment and social equality. It helps that under its urban façade, the city comprises numerous villagelike communal ghettos where people of similar religious and caste backgrounds can flock together. In Namita Devidayal’s piece, the wealthy, pill-popping homemaker resides in an all-vegetarian Jain building, where the appearance of a single nonvegan egg can wreak havoc. Anyone who has gone apartment hunting in Mumbai will testify that the city’s communal boundaries are often as impermeable as national borders.

The provincialism dictating who one’s neighbors may or may not be doesn’t, thankfully, extend to Mumbai’s commercial life. When it comes to making money, the city has been by and large blind to caste, class, or creed, exalting productivity and wealth-generation above all else. History has shown that in its unabashed pursuit of profit, Mumbai can also be deaf to considerations of ethics and morality.

Through the early half of the nineteenth century, a large number of local Parsi, Marwari, Gujarati Bania, and Konkani Muslim businessmen were involved in the opium trade, shipping Indian-grown opium out of Bombay to China, in direct competition with the British East India Company, which exported the product out of Calcutta. While millions of Chinese sunk into the despondency of addiction, Bombay’s capitalist classes grew staggeringly rich. The success of the opium trade, followed by the cotton boom in the 1860s, sparked the ascension of Bombay from a barely profitable port town to a roaring trade center. Much of the city’s infrastructural development, including its lasting social and educational institutions, was paid for with the dirty money of these local businessmen. It is a historical ethical conflict that the city has never quite faced up to.

Over the centuries, crime has remained at the service of commerce in a city that was cravenly capitalist long before the rest of the nation followed suit. If a demand exists— even for something as wishful as the elixir of youth—you can bet some enterprising chap in Mumbai will move heaven and earth to fulfill it. Even if it means having to strip human corpses of their testes, as the elixir-peddling hakim does quite profitably in Kalpish Ratna’s time-warping tale. In Sonia Faleiro’s unsettling glimpse into the city’s transgender subculture, death isn’t even a prerequisite: the dai earns her keep by relieving sentient (and willing) men of their jewels.

Paisa pheyko, tamasha dekho. Throw the cash, watch the dance. These words from an erstwhile Hindi film song have become the de facto motto of Mumbai. Cash can get things moving in a rusty bureaucracy. Cash can help you get away with murder. Sometimes a little cash can help you save big money.

In Mumbai’s dance bars, whole wads of cash must be thrown to get the women moving. Outlawed in 2005, these dens of misogyny and exploitation still manage to scrape through under the euphemistic moniker of orchestra bars, where the concept remains unchanged: tantalizingly dressed women dance or sing in front of a lusty male audience. No self-respecting tome on Mumbai would be complete without a riff on this seedy city institution. Avtar Singh’s story fulfills Mumbai Noir’s dance-bar quota. To his credit, Singh infuses genuine romance into an overly romanticized setting.

Like its dance bars, Mumbai too has been heaped with exaggerated depictions in recent decades. The city’s chroniclers—its novelists, essayists, poets, journalists, and filmmakers—often seem overawed by the idea of Mumbai, rendering its quotidian realities in brushstrokes of grandiose narratives. What inoculates the stories in this collection from the hyperbole of maximum city—that much-abused term coined by the astute Suketu Mehta to describe Mumbai—are the restraints set by the noir genre, which stipulates, among other things, an unflinching gaze at the underbelly, without recourse to sentimentality or forced denouements. (But not without the courtesy of a glossary of Indianisms, to be found at the back of the book.) When viewed from a plane (or hotair balloon), any metropolis might strike one as jaw-dropping. For a majority of Mumbai’s residents, however, the city’s overcrowded public transportation and decaying infrastructure fail to provide even the minimum of relief.

Unending traffic. Sparse greenery. Corrupt governance. Mumbai always seems on the verge of a massive breakdown. What keeps the city somewhat peaceful and functioning is the very thing that makes it overwhelming: the population density, which is one of the highest in the world. Mumbai’s ever-present multitudes serve as eyes on the streets, pitching in during moments of crises, and at other times inhibiting acts of random violence. This has helped the city earn its reputation of being one of India’s safest urban centers.

While Mumbai’s civil society is remarkably accommodating to all varieties of lifestyles and individual preferences, perhaps the biggest threat to the city’s famed cosmopolitanism comes from its twin banes: Mumbai’s ultranationalist groups and its increasingly sectarian police force.

Bombay was officially renamed Mumbai in 1995 when an alliance of these ultranationalist groups controlled the state government. The renaming was meant as a symbolic undoing of the country’s colonial past. Ironically, other legacies of the British colonial rule were left untouched, such as Mumbai’s suburban rail system, its water and sewage infrastructure, as well as its enduring colonial-era architectural landmarks.

In December 1992 and January 1993, during the Hindu-Muslim riots that swept through Mumbai following the demolition of the Babri Masjid, the city’s police force, possibly for the first time in its history of serving the city, abandoned neutrality and sided with the Hindus, turning what would have been a routine communal skirmish into a catastrophic minipogrom. For the citizens of the city, and for its minorities in particular, the communalization of the police was the start of Mumbai’s darkest chapter. Devashish Makhija provides a heartrending depiction of cynical police officers let loose on Mumbai’s religious minorities. In this story, the international war on terror is echoed in Mumbai, turning every Muslim man into a suspect following a bomb blast. Riaz Mulla takes a converse approach, delineating how an ordinary businessman can turn into a bomb-planting extremist. Mulla looks unflinchingly at how events may have unfolded leading to Mumbai’s first terrorist attack.

In March 1993, in a misguided attempt to settle the score after the Babri Masjid riots, Mumbai’s Muslim-dominated underworld unleashed a series of thirteen bomb blasts throughout the city. The mastermind of these blasts, Dawood Ibrahim, was a Mumbai-born gangster operating out of the Middle East. Two hundred and fifty people lost their lives in the explosions and hundreds more were injured. (Those interested in understanding the often mundane genesis of headline-making terror attacks may look up Anurag Kashyap’s award-winning film Black Friday, based on S. Hussain Zaidi’s book Black Friday: The True Story of the Bombay Bomb Blasts.)

Since 1993, there have been no further communal riots in the city. Instead, in a kind of outsourcing of violence, Mumbai has been targeted by international terrorists no less than seven times. Each attack jars the city out of its intense commercedriven routines. But life resumes normalcy within hours, once the corpses and debris have been cleared out and the injured deposited in hospitals. Social commentators accuse Mumbai of a savage sort of indifference. Absolutely nothing seems to affect the city. Or maybe that’s a wrong way of looking at things. Maybe Mumbai isn’t just one city, but an organic conglomerate of innumerable subcities, each thrumming to its own vibe. A tragedy in one part of Mumbai barely registers elsewhere. People fall off moving trains, bombs erupt in busy bazaars, lives are made and broken in the city’s daily flux, and things go on as usual.

Altaf Tyrewala

Mumbai, India

December 2011

PART I

BOMB-AY

JUSTICE

BY RIAZ MULLA

Mahim Durgah

The court will now pronounce its verdict," the judge remarked plainly, as if he was going to read out the evening news.

Asghar Khan stood up in the witness box with the anticipation of a man in that twilight zone of hope when the decision has been made but not yet announced.

The defendant has been accused of planting a bomb in the crowded Zaveri Bazaar area which killed three people and injured many.

Asghar Khan wondered whether it was necessary to revisit the circumstances; does a doctor open the incision to check if the surgery has healed?

The court has been convinced that there was no motive behind this dastardly act but to kill innocent people and create terror.

The night came alive for Asghar and even today it seemed as unreal as it had seven years ago. He had watched terrorized from his hideout on the terrace as the distant sounds grew louder and the street was suddenly filled with a multitude of swords, tridents, and flames. The group first torched his scooter and in the light of the fire he could see them—known faces made grotesque by the flames. He had bought the scooter secondhand for twelve thousand rupees, the first vehicle of his life. As the tires and seat went up in flames, the mob broke open the shutter of his small travel agency office, Haafiz Tours and Travels. An enterprising insurance agent had once told him to get everything insured; but how does one insure against the betrayal of friends? They unplugged the phone and flung it to the ground and started to ransack his cupboards, throwing everything they could lay their hands on into a huge pile in the middle—passports and airline tickets and application papers—and he realized they were not just going to burn his office but also the small business he had successfully managed to set up. None of his clients at his budding Haj and Umrah travel agency would be able to perform pilgrimage that year; some, like his parents, probably never.

The court finds Asghar guilty of willful murder and damage to public property.

The passports, due to their glazed cardboard, were the last to catch fire and burned the longest. That night he wasn’t worried about the scooter or his business; one doesn’t worry about the future when the present itself is under threat. He was worried for his life and Salma’s and their first child still in her womb. She had tried to scream when they poured kerosene on the scooter. She had saved passionately for it and like every woman she was not good at taking losses. He had clasped her mouth firmly and tiny droplets of blood appeared on his palms where she bit him. She had probably realized that the present is of little significance if there is no future to look forward to.

The court understands that Asghar suffered losses to his business and property in the riots preceding this incident.

How does one understand something one has never experienced? Even he had not understood when they first came asking for money to fight for the homeless Palestinians. After that night, when he had lost everything, they became his new friends, the only people to lend him money to buy food and treat his wife. He had asked for tickets to go back to his village in far away Uttar Pradesh, where his brothers set up grocery tents in open markets, moving to a different village each day—Dariyapur on Mondays and Thursdays, Rahimgunj on Tuesdays and Fridays, Bidwai on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and their own village on Sundays. He had tired of setting up and closing down a business each day in a new place and had come to Mumbai in search of stability. What he had never thought of was what happens when the thing that brought this stability is suddenly taken away. It was not as easy as setting up a new tent in a new village the next day and he felt a sudden longing to return to that varying yet familiar routine. His new friends, though, refused him that getaway; he had business to settle in the city before he could leave.

But if every aggrieved person starts to take the law in his hands there would be anarchy. It is the duty of the state to provide justice.

What did the state mean by justice? Having to prove that the property which was burned belonged to him when all the relevant papers were destroyed along with the property? This was necessary to prevent fraudsters from taking advantage of the state’s grant, the presiding officer had said, but Asghar couldn’t decide which was a greater denial of justice: the state being cheated by a few opportunists, or the rightful being denied what was due to them. He had refrained from following the path of retribution his new sympathizers were advocating. Though he had lost all means of livelihood, the future still bode a small ray of hope: his unborn child.

The court would like to take a strong stance in this case so that this particular judgment acts as a deterrent to all such acts in the future.

It was the birth of his son that marked the end of the future for Asghar. He was born blind and Asghar was convinced it was due to the trauma of that night. He would hold his baby, looking intently at that innocent face, knowing the child would never see him, never see anything. He decided to put a black ribbon on his own eyes for a day to feel what it meant for his son, but he couldn’t keep it on for more than an hour. Salma felt it would not be as bad for their son because he had never known what sight was, but Asghar couldn’t decide which was a greater loss: of having found something and lost it, or never knowing what one had lost. Six months later when their son began crawling, Asghar and Salma realized the enormity of raising a blind child. There was little Asghar could do for his son, and that helplessness was far greater than his helplessness that night when they had burned down his office. There was no morning here, no returning to normalcy. He was a fool to believe that it was all over. Sometimes when he watched his son he could see them standing outside his door laughing, mocking his naïveté.

Justice cannot be the sole purview of a few, his new friends had told him, and now he realized they were right. Who would give justice to his son? He would have to do it himself. He met them the next day and they told him the plan. All he had to do was park a scooter in the Zaveri Bazaar area during the busy morning hours. It was ironic, he felt, that a scooter was going to be the vehicle to get back at them.

In order to provide justice to the innocent families who lost their beloved ones in this tragic incident, and to deter young people from taking the law in their hands, the court wishes to pronounce the strictest punishment in this case. Under section 302 of the Indian Penal Code, the court pronounces capital punishment for Asghar Khan; to be hanged until death.

Everyone heard the rap as the judge slammed the hammer purposefully on the desk as if hitting in the last nail. For a moment everything was quiet and then the whole courtroom erupted in a frenzy of mobile clicking; there would soon be a new segment on Breaking News.

Asghar sat back in his chair in the witness box feeling like he was the only person in the room; the judge, having delivered the verdict, stood up and left, the lawyers gathered into a huddle amongst themselves, the press

Reviews for Mumbai Noir

[artikaur · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I received this book free from the publisher in a giveaway here on Library Thing. The fact that I am giving it a low rating should suffice as proof that getting it for free in no way influenced my opinion. This book was just not my cup of tea at all, but that is not why I give it a low rating- many of the short stories in the book are poorly written. After reading some of the stories, one could stratch one's head and come up with no point to the story. Readers beware: this book contains graphic descriptions of genital mutilation. While I was expecting the book to be dark, was it really necessary to include more than one story about people's genitalia being chopped off? Simply uninteresting, unable to capture my interest, and the only reason I read it through to the end was so that I could give it a fair review.

[idj_3 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not overly familiar with Indian fiction, though I have read some and I am familiar with the Noir genre. This book of short stories is an interesting mix of corrupt police, crime and death, but the most appealing are those with more than a touch of suspense. The stories are a broad range of styles and subjects as would be expected, and some are more memorable than others, though not necessarily better written. The stories are all well written - the editor has done a fine job of their work in arranging this group - and some have a style that is more, I'd have to say "Indian" than others. By that I mean that they don't follow the usual format that Western noir literature does, consequently there is a different, and interesting flavour. I won't go into each story as I find that sort of review painful to read, suffice to say that, as a group, this is a very book, with the usual mix of stories, some better, some not as good, but all enjoyable. I really enjoyed it!

[mcelhra · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It’s always a challenge to adequately review a short story collection, especially when the stories are each by a different author, because the quality of the stories can vary so widely. That’s why I normally don’t review them. I made an exception for Mumbai Noir because I am intrigued by all things Indian and try to read as much about that country and its people as I can.The stories in Mumbai Noir are definitely focused on the darker side of the city, as the title implies. Some are morality tales and some are just melancholy. Overall, I found them entertaining and enlightening. There were a few stories about hirjas, which are sort of like what Westerners think of as transgendered people but not quite. I enjoyed these stories in particular because the hirja culture is both fascinating and confusing to me and I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about it.There were two stories that I didn’t understand at all – At Leopold Cafe and They. At Leopold Cafe is a Twilight Zone type story that has something to do with a fountain of youth elixir that was confusing to me. It jumped back and forth in time and I couldn’t follow it. They is a detective story about a murder in a gym. I couldn’t follow the detective’s logic as far as how he figured out who the killer was.A lot of the stories reference historical events in India that I don’t have a good knowledge in yet. I was still able to enjoy them but probably would have gotten more out of them if I was more familiar with Indian history. There was a glossary of terms in the back which I appreciated. Most of the unfamiliar words could be found there but not all of them.Overall, I think this is a book worth reading if you like stories about the dark and seedy side of big cities.

[yesssman_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thought the collection was successful in being an entertaining and immersive look at Mumbai. A few stood out in particularA Suitable Girl by Anne Zaidi: My favorite in the book. You have to work in the first few pages to understand the first person(s) structure, but by the time you realize what is going on things start to click right away. It builds inexorably and keeps you in a growing dread to an ending you can sense but is still very powerful. I will be looking for more of her work.The Romantic Customer by Paromita Vohra: The characters are developed extremely well for such a short story. We get several dark internal and external conflicts without relying too heavily on plot in this tidy and satisfying example of noir.By Two by Devashish Makhija: I got the sense of a fable from this one. You don't see many dark, gritty fables, but if there is one then this is it. Don't ask me what the moral is, I am still thinking about it, which is the great thing about this one.The Body in the Gali by Smita Harish Jain: This one was structured very closely to an American style hard boiled detective story, with the unique stamp of Mumbai's darkness. A nice part of the collection.

[andreablythe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't read much noir, so I don't have many expectations as to what it's supposed to be or not supposed to be. My understanding is of a dark, seedy underworld kind of story, usually with a detective lead into a dangerous, possibly deadly, situation by a beautiful and dangerous woman. There are a certainly a few detectives and a handful of dangerous women in this collection of noir stories set in Mumbai, but the range of seedy underworld stories stretches beyond that trope, many presenting plots and story lines that seem to be unique to India. There are stories about conflict between Muslims and Hindus, of terrorism, of the many layers of justice, of independent women, and much more. I was especially interested in the two hijra (transgender) stories, each with a different take on what it means to be transgender in India.The stories are entertaining overall, making it a fascinating and readable collection that rarely offers hope or happiness, which is, I suppose, fitting for the dark realm of noir.

[dpelaez_47 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love short stories and this book did not disappoint. I learned a lot about the life of a huge urban metropolis of Mumbai. Truly a good book.

[palmaceae · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mumbai Noir delivered the two things it promised: Mumbai and noir. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like it delivered much more than that. I was not impressed by the collection of stories, some of which I found I found too cliché or simply too hard to understand because they were written in oddly convoluted ways. Did I get a bit of a feel for Mumbai, a city I have never visited filled with people who live lives that radically differ from my own? Sure. But did I get a real sense of plot or character? Not so much. Some of the stories would have been better had they been longer and actually delved into their plots instead of pulling everything together as fast as possible. I’d say the only stories that stood out for me were The Romantic Customer, Lucky 501 (I can’t decide if this story caught my attention because it was actually good or it depicted such a horrific incident that I couldn’t stop thinking about it) and The Egg.

[reluctantm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The stories in Mumbai Noir are decent. Like in any anthology, some are better than others. Stand-outs for me were The Watchman by Altaf Tyrewala, The Egg by Namita Devidayal, and Nagpada Blues by Ahmed Bunglowala. Nagpada Blues especially channels the traditional noir story line with a down-on-his-luck PI. However, for a book that markets itself as noir, there's a griminess that's lacking in a lot of the stories. There's a sort of sunshine that pervades throughout - maybe because so many of the stories have daylight components. So a decent diversion for an afternoon, but if you're looking for a real gritty collection of dark stories, this isn't it.

[ebethe_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The collection certainly was about MUmbai, butI never felt like I was inMUmbai, a city I have visited a few times. The plots and characters didn't develop to the point that I felt I was part of it.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Akashic Books publishes a series of anthologies of noir-style short stories, each set in a different locale. I've just read Mumbai Noir, edited by Altaf Tyrewala, and what an excellent, atmospheric collection it was. Ranging from a classic hardboiled tale of a fast talking PI to a gently almost-hopeful story about the family of a convicted bomber, there was a enormous range of styles and subjects for a modestly sized book. Akashic includes a helpful map of where each of the stories take place within Mumbai. This was a good introduction to Indian authors and I've made note of several from whom I'd like to read more.

[amhamilt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Mumbai noir is a collection of stand-alone, short stories all set in Mumbai. Each selection in the collection is different and unique. Some of the stories were inspiring and a joy to read; such as 'Justice.' However, I had trouble understanding the context of some of the narratives. That is a failing on my part though, I simply am not versed enough in Indian social culture. All together, Mumbai noir is an intriguing collection, but its not fantastic.

[spacecommuter · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I confess, even though it makes me look dumb: When I saw "Mumbai" and "Noir" I immediately thought Bollywood and Bogart. Weird, but intriguing! This will surprise no one, but I was utterly wrong. The stories in this book are bleak and sad and move forward at a glacial pace and happy endings are as distant as the odds that one of these characters will break out into song. All fall far short of actual Noir - wry social commentary cut with a smooth chaser of wit and served in a lead-bottomed tumbler of patois. They're just bleak, depressing stories, though admittedly the writing is quite good. I think if you're up for good stories about hopeless cases, you'll like this book. But if you're still picturing Bacall seductively darkening Bogart's doorway, you're in for more disappointment than a city full of broken dreams.

[scrabblenut · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I hate to say this, but the best part of this book was the introduction by Altaf Tyrewala, telling a bit about the history of Mumbai (formerly Bombay). The stories themselves did little to engage me, and it's not because I don't like this type of story. I read murder mysteries from settings around the world, and enjoy them immensely. I also enjoyed the Toronto Noir book because I knew the settings, and some of my favourite Canadian mystery writers contributed to the book. I also plan to read Venice Noir when it comes out, as I love the mysteries of Donna Leon set in Venice.I did like the final story in Mumbai Noir called They by Jerry Pinto, which involved the investigation of a murder that occurred in a fitness club. Also the story A Suitable Girl by Annie Zaidi was very memorable, although I am not quite sure that I understood it, but it was creepy and engaged me and made me think about the characters. A lot of the other stories seemed to be about transgendered men and barbaric voluntary castration of said men. Not really my cup of tea.If anyone wants to read a couple of really good books set in India, I would recommend A Fine Balance, and Family Matters, both by Rohinton Mistry.

[freddlerabbit · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Mumbai Noir is a collection of stories set in or around Mumbai with a "noir" overtone - some are mysteries, some are personality stories, some center around tragic events. I find "noir" a bit hard to define - the introduction contextualizes is as a touch of seediness, darkness, and despair, which I think is appropriate - and if you accept that definition, Mumbai Noir belongs firmly in that category. The stories are mostly written in a sparse, efficient, Chandler-esque voice, as is much fiction in this genre, and the diction suits some stories better than others. I think there are one or two really solid gems, and one or two that I found rather poorly written, but most of them are solid, enjoyable short stories. I really appreciated in particular the gloss in the back of Hindi words used throughout; it can be hard to read fiction about India in English and feel like it has authenticity, and many writers throw in Hindi to help with the flavor, but without definitions, the reader ends up confused - the gloss here avoids that fate.I think any readers who enjoy noir or short stories will appreciate this collection. I think readers who are devotees of fiction about India may be indifferent to it - the settings and characters seemed as Indian as many works by native authors (Mistry, Desai), and yet, to me, the noir aspect Westernized them somewhat. Some stories have a reasonable depth of character and interiority for their length; others are much more externally focused, which provides a nice range that should have some appeal to many types of reader, but is unlikely to be uniformly satisfying to any given reader. Overall, a pleasant if not stellar collection.

[aeisen_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I got this book for free from librarything early reviewers. Overall, I thought this book was pretty good. I liked that the stories were about people that may not otherwise be written about. I love short stories. Some of the stories were great and I wished that they were books, not just a short story, and some stories were just ok.

[charlottem_63 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Noir is definitely my favorite film genre. I don’t know how I missed this series but I did until seeing it listed in the giveaway. If the rest are as good and as varied as this one I will have to try them all.

[mohitgoel_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received this book as part of the LT giveaway.The book is a collection of 14 short stories from Mumbai based writers. Each story is set in a different part of the city and the book is divided into 3 sections. Since I am not from Mumbai the areas and their significance mean less to me than they would to a Mumbaikar.As is usually the case with such collections, this one too is a mixed bag. There are some good ones and some which make you wonder whether the editor had a certain number of pages that had to be filled (Sonia Faleiro's story comes to mind). All in all quite a decent collection though. I personally preferred the first section to the last 2.

[anniemod · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The newest entry in the Akashic Noir series tackles one of the most interesting cities in Asia - Mumbai (or Bombay as it used to be called). The 14 stories span between genres (it may be a Noir anthology and most of them are crime/mystery related but they are not in the strictest sense of the word crime stories). And it is not just the genres that blend and mix. The authors are tackling almost any issue that you can think of - terrorism ("Justice" by Riyaz Mulla is a bittersweet story about choices and violence and hope for example), the white man that has his reasons to come to this country ("TZP" by Raj Rao), the Mumbai dance bars (that are now outlawed but had been one of the characteristic place for the city), the good old days when the city was called Bombay and the criminals had class (isn't this a pattern for all the old cities), the lack of choices, lost identities and the harsh reality of the big city ("By Two" by Devashish Makhija is heartbreaking in a way), the hijras - more than one story is concerned with this part of the Mumbai society - from different angles and with different messages, the blending of future, past and present (in "At Leopold Cafe" by Kalpish Ratna for example), the families (in all their varieties), the traditional marriage (or not so traditional if the man stalks his future wife I guess), the classes and the clash of religions. And if I did not mention all the stories, it is not because of any lack of quality on their part - it is more in an attempt to keep the review short and not to reveal a few of the stories surprises. It's India and it's Mumbai and it's very readable.The anthology is brutal in a way - it tackles terrorism (one of the good guys actually ends up blowing up a vehicle), homosexuality, the hijras (including the castration as part of the process), prostitution and murder - and still the styles remain light and not going into the grotesque. A few of those stories belong to the Noir; a few - not that much. But all of them are tied to the city with the invisible links of past and present. And in a lot of them you can either plainly see the longing for the past or you can feel it, somewhere deep in the story - in a look. a word, an action. And none of the authors is really shying from using words which may sound offensive to some people - the human anatomy is not shameful so it gets discussed. And then there is the police - a lot of the policemen we see through the stories are not exactly people you wish to see as your protectors. And there were a few stories that could have been left without the last parts ("Lucky 501" by Sonia Faleiro for example) - the story is not one of my favorite although it is a good story. But I could have lived without the last part -- which I am still not sure had any meaning besides the author trying to root the story into the surreal. Or something. The editor did not try to tame the stories by removing the Indian (and other languages) expressions that pepper everyone's speech. The anthology ends up with a short dictionary which includes most of the words you might not know, a lot that you might have heard if you had read about India, the few movie's lines used through the book. Knowing what you are reading but still having the phrase in place adds to the vitality of those stories.Overall - a good entry in the series. But it may be problematic for some people - it is too explicit in more than one way.

[minacee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I was looking for something different to read when I requested this book and that's what I got. I don't like watching film noir so what made me think I would try reading it is beyond my comprehension. I powered through the stories I was interested in (not many) and left the others unread. I had an easier time with Los Angeles Noir but not much and that was the last time I tried the genre.The series is clearly in demand judging by the length of the list of titles by offered by Akashic. Some are even a little absurd sounding: Baltimore Noir, Kansas City Noir, Phoenix Noir. Akashic has had some titles in the past I have enjoyed but their Noir anthologies are not my favorites.