CITY ADRIFT: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY ON BOMBAY - Naresh Fernandes

City Adrift: A Short Biography on Bombay by Naresh Fernandes is a book about Mumbai, about Bombay, and about the journey of becoming Mumbai from Bombay.

For many years India was in thrall because of Bombay. Reclaimed from the ocean and impropriety, a metropolis that manufactured the dreams effortlessly captivated a nation and drew fortune seekers. The seven islands that were conjoined had settled over time by the diverse people the Indian subcontinent ever knew about. They went onto create a culture that would reflect the heterogeneity to give Bombay city a unique verve.

Other cities have become more alluring with new trends like re-islanding into the luxurious ghettos and could spell into chaos and decay; Bombay charms have worn thin now. In this biography, the award-winning journalist and writer, Mr Naresh Fernandes, has written with a lot of exasperation, passion, empathy, poignancy, and great elegance about Bombay, giving the readers appreciation and deep understanding of one of the iconic cities of the world.

The story of seven conjoined islands of Bombay renamed as Mumbai, after Koli fishermen's goddess. Mumbai is engraved through its ruffled reclamation of land, town planning, and seclusion since it had come to the British as a gift in dowry with the wife of the British King, whom he didn't love. Naresh Fernandes's admiration has not slumped into nostalgia; instead, his treatment holds the flag flying of analysis of politics of cotton, opium, and textile business that has shaped the social ecology of land reclamation as an urban space.  

The working class and the nationalist Bombay city had lost their secular character under the protection of Navi Mumbai and Mumbai politicians. The architectural beauty and open spaces lost to urban adventure left hardly any hope of becoming a city in the 21st century. Naresh Fernandes has very succinctly portrayed all this in his award-winning masterpiece. It is an eminently readable text that must be possessed and read by urban planners, architects, cultural and political mappers, and general readers who have contributed to the needs of public voices, like the author.

Bombay is the only city of India that has accurately served the function of a proverbial melting pot. Fernandes has pointed out in the book about the city that has proved to integrate people from diverse religions, cultures, classes, and occupations. Bombay always has attracted migrants for a better life and has also acted as a symbol of cosmopolitanism and tolerance. Throughout the book, the author has lamented the decline in such values corresponding to the growing progress. He attributes much of the increasing divisions between the religious communities to the rise of the Shiv Sena and not between the rich and poor. 

Fernandes has provided an informative history, tracing down the changes from 17th century Bombay to present-day Mumbai. The fire of 1803 that destroyed almost a section of the town, the completion of the Colaba Causeway in 1838, and the construction of the Bhor Ghat Road on the Western Ghats in 1830 are dutifully recorded. Some exciting anecdotes like the arrival of ice on a ship in 1837 from Boston were an event that got the people excited and led to a widespread cold among the Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy guests. Fernandes has combined Bombay's history with some Roman Catholic family's history from his own. The book is a study of Bombay's evolution over the centuries into what we know today as a civic mess. 

Bombay's per capita income is equivalent to three times the national average, and yet, one in five residents of the affluent city live below the poverty line. Fernandes blames the lack of will of the privileged for the decline in the living conditions and standards for most people. According to Fernandes, the celebration of shantytowns and Dharavi as hubs of productivity has absolved the elites of any guilt and responsibility.

But City Adrift has shown the depths of Bombay that would never be explored. The feeling is like crushing on someone because they look pretty and make you feel good. 

Naresh Fernandes has shown beautiful juxtapositions and comparisons of the "Bombay Reality" and the "Bombay Dream" by pontificating and declaiming how realtors sell and position the projects in hoardings alongside the roads and promise everyone space in and away from this city. Bombay is a honeycomb, very dense, and stories of how kinds of bees flew into this city and were assembled in a single location are extraordinarily riveting and fascinating. 

An entire industry had once thrived on this land in the palaeolithic era, and quite a few of the varied religions and castes that exist in this city were immigrants lured into the town through incentives by the East India Company, were few of the fascinating Bombay trivia that is spread across this book.

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