Given the multifaceted history of Bombay, it becomes important to examine the character of the city in the Indian context. Consumer media arrested these images of the city and relayed them across the country. The discussion presented above clearly demonstrates the fact that Bombay has been inadequate in the institutional depictions of the city.
Literary representations of the city celebrate its chaotic plurality and multicultural diversity. The existence of multiple lives in a single homogenizing space reflects the heterogeneous contours of the city. His journey to the city is symbolic of the lives of men who come to.
This chapter also positions the city as an imagined space in the form of the writer's city and the film city. How have representations of the city informed the individual's conception of the city and vice versa.
Towards a Theory of the City
Interestingly, the identification of particular pathological conditions in the city legitimized a number of theoretical interventions in the urban environment. Castells emphasized that the spatial form of the city was implicated in a number of significant ways in the reproduction of capitalism. Despite this narrow view, Castell's interpretation of the urban question is significant for the localized social processes as a direct result of the production processes in the city.
It is significant that the role of the state was crucial in deliberating over the contradictions of capitalism. It is impossible to do justice to the rich diversity of Marxist urban theory in the context of the present chapter. For example, Marxist urbanism has encouraged a productive dialogue between feminist and Marxist scholars in the context of the urban landscape.
Postcolonial views of the urban question the normative assumptions that are part of political economy analysis. The concept of post-colonial urbanism is extensively discussed in the third part of the chapter.
Space: ‘A Lefebvrian Reconciliation’
Renowned spatial theorist Henri Lefebvre argues that knowing the history of space is essential to understanding the spatial realities of the present. Foucault, in "Of Other Spaces" (1967), had famously declared the present age to be the "age of space"21. In this perspective, Henri Lefebvre's analysis of social constructions and contradictions in the production of space becomes a valuable tool for understanding the contemporary moment.
In The Production of Space (1991), Lefebvre tried to understand the role of space, the nature of the urban and the meaning of everyday life within the capitalist mode of production. In relation to the production of space, Lefebvre perceives the city as a work of nature or art. Representations of space refer to conceptualized space, the discursively constructed space of professionals such as architects and planners.
Representations of space thus constitute the objectified representations used and produced by these agents. Changes in culture and modes of production reveal consequent changes in the production of space and vice versa.
Writing the City: Literary and Cinematic Representations
Real city spaces are inherently dynamic, informed as they are by social relations of power. Literature, and more recently cinema, plays a decisive role in the formation of dominant representations of the city. The city of imagination finds expression in representation through literature, various arts and media23.
Negative literary images of the city also often have their roots in its political nature. Charles Dickens's treatment of the city transferred the materiality, sensuality and texture of London to the text. The cultural and spiritual topos of London - the "unreal city" of modernity - in The Waste Land reiterates the idea of the city in modern consciousness.
Eliot's London represents the fact that the realities of the city had changed by the twentieth century. In Woolf, the subjectivities of the characters are constituted in the very spaces of the city of London.
From Colonial to the Post Colonial City
In the post-independence years, the nation was preoccupied with demographic changes, economic and cultural transformations, while the specter of colonialism continued to haunt the post-colonial nation. In this context, examining the postcolonial city would involve an articulation of the postcolonial in relation to an important Western metropolis, which would lead to the risk of reinforcing the latter's colonial legacy. While it would be absolutely wrong to deny the influence of the Western metropolis on the postcolonial city, it would be further dangerous to consider the postcolonial city with the Western metropolis in mind.
More than a city of subjugation and exploitation, Bombay was a city of national self-reliance, as it was a city to make its presence felt on the international stage. Anthony King argues that the postcolonial city "privileges a representation of the city that foregrounds its colonial past, rather than the city's present or future." While recent studies of the colonial city have challenged the hegemony of Western discourse, the spatial divide between the indigenous city and the European colonial settlement is much more complex as local history becomes.
The spaces of the colonial and also the post-colonial city are ambiguous and contested. The postcolonial city is a space of interconnectedness, where social and spatial realities offer opportunities for negotiations between cultures and spaces.
Bombay: Literary and Cinematic Representations
Bombay's cultural imagination is crucial in the representation of the city in cinema. Bombay boasts the largest film industry in the world and the city itself has been a recurring subject in contemporary cinema. The reader could relate to the hustle and bustle of the city and the celebration of the city's vitality.
Any change in this composition resulted in the transformation of the social structure of the city. The importance of the state in regulating capital/labor conflicts was also considered. Similarly, the concept of gated communities provides a focus for negotiating spatial politics in residential areas of the city.
22 In Cities of the Mind: Images and Themes of the City in the Social Sciences (1984), Lloyd Rodwin and Robert M. The city is thus symbolic of the nation as the text emphasizes the collective element of the concept of the Indian nation. Central to Rushdie's representation of Bombay (and the nation) is the idea of home.
In this way, the city invades the space of the house like water that flows inward. In the context of its colonial owner, the Methwold estate is the space of the colonizer. The private space of the house becomes the space for the performance of public realities.
Modernity thus becomes the place for the unfolding of certain imaginations and practices of the city. The contested social and political spatiality of the city is expressed in the laundry box. They respond to the specific spatial arrangement through different narrative strategies in the light of the city's pluralism.
The significant changes made to the configuration of the city's public space expand the possibilities of the novel. A significant and decisive feature in the representation of the city is the change of location.
The Marginal City
These problems of the city are fundamentally spatial, because they all involve the division of urban space. The narrator's neutral point of view suggests that no one is in control of the city. In the context of Bombay, the urban crowd mystifies the image of the city and the social manifestation of urban density.
Nevertheless, despite the flaws, once again it is impossible to ignore the stories of the city. The spatial planning of the city was subject to “the pressures of local time, global imaginations. After the rise of Dawood, the 1990s were a key period in the history of the city's criminal growth4.
In her paper on the aftermath of the city riots Jyoti Punwani says,. Katekar's life in the kholi is symbolic of the spatial disillusionment that has gripped the city. Such spatial displacement leads to the segmentation of the city and the greater concentration of slums and squatter settlements.
In this context, the imagined city of literature challenges and complements institutionalized narratives of the city. 3 The conventional wisdom of the period emphasized the control of urban spaces by gangs.
Conclusion
As already suggested in Chapter 2, literature and film provide a never-ending commentary on the city and the manifestations of the urban. It showed images of the city that were more legible than for the urbanite using his own view of the street” (190). The text actively defines the city; it informs the city's writing and thus produces it for the reader.
The urban space signifies the problems of representation that the city has always presented, and the diverse nature of the city is at the heart of literary explorations. These inquiries through literary tools reveal the construction of meaning in the city and, to varying degrees, set a philosophy about the city on the field. The primary aim of this thesis has been to explore the narratives of Bombay to reveal the literary geography of the city in selected Indian fiction in English.
In this way, the thesis hopes to make a contribution to current scientific debates about literary representations of the city. The core texts discussed in the chapters are literary performances of the metropolitan experience in Bombay. Mistry's representation of the imaginative spaces of the city is evident through his renegotiation of the idea of India.
Here the city loses its abstract character as the space of the underworld is mapped by the folklore that circulates in the city of Bombay3. The current work has focused on the production and experience of everyday urban spaces, leading to the production of identity within the framework of the city. Literary narratives attempt to represent the city and, by extension, this work has attempted to map the literary representations of the urban fabric of Bombay.
3 Interestingly, the workings of the underworld and mafia (murders, extortion rackets) are all part of an everyday story of the city. Charm of Bombay : an anthology of writings in praise of the first city in India. An Ambiguous Journey to the City: The Village and Other Strange Ruins of the Self in the Indian Imagination.
