Narcopolis [Hardcover]

Bombay,or Mumbai, as it is known today, is brought to life by Jeet Thayil in this engrossing novel of sex, drugs and love in the underbelly of this sprawling city.

The characters in this book include the amazing Dimple, who was born a boy but who was castrated at a young age and works as a prostitute in a brothel next to an opium den, where she prepares the pipes. Although she has no formal education she is able to read and is always looking for beauty although she doesn't find it in the streets of this huge metropolis. Among others who frequent the opium den are the Chinese refugee/businessman, Mr.Lee, who has his own tale of woe and Rumi, a working man who is addicted to violence. Opium gives way to heroin as the years go by but the cast of characters seeking relief from whatever ails them only increases in number.

Mr.Thayil, a poet, whose use of language is so vivid that the city and its inhabitants really come to life, also portrays, vividly, the violent riots between Muslims and Hindus which erupted in 70s, 80s and 90s and which hatred still exists today. I highly recommend this book and will attempt to read other of his books.

Jeet Thayil's novel Narcopolis is the story of Bombay, the old city that changed its name and destroyed part of its history. It is told from the point of view of a man who travels to the city from New York in the 1970s. He is fascinated by the poor areas where criminals provide drugs and prostitution as an alternative way of life for a variety of Indian people. The common denominator of these people is psychological and physical pain. Sex and intoxication disconnect the neurons from the individuals' pain receptors. In this depiction of Bombay, many residents have found a life of the senses in rhythm with the life of the old city.

The underworld is accepting of characters who deviate radically from normal expectations. These marginalized souls include an opium den operator, a transgender opium pipe preparer, a violent day worker and family man who visits the den, an alcoholic artist who acts out the expectations of deviance by his admirers, a Chinese expatriate businessman mourning the loss of his culture, and other survivors determined to connect without pain to the immediate life of the subcontinent, the mysterious Eastern metropolis of Bombay.

Although the old Bombay and its people seem doomed to the squalor of small lives and little motivation to improve their lot, there is remarkable freedom for the adventurous in the life of the immediate senses and easy gratification of desires. There is plenty of opportunity for consideration of morality, religion, art, personal responsibility, reincarnation, violence, rebellion, and the soaring illusion of freedom induced by intoxication. It is all there in the ancient city for people with the courage to immerse themselves in its uplifting and destructive life. The visitor is seduced by the city and comes to understand that it demands that free people give affection to those who need it, and everyone in Bombay regardless of caste needs it.

Opium is the symbol of the old Bombay in the novel. Using it is a slow, ritual process that involves a camaraderie and acceptance of others that fosters some mutual affection for all involved. When the visitor rehabs and leaves the old Bombay, he loses track of the life of the city. Revisiting the new city, Mumbai, in the first decade of the 21st Century, heroin from Pakistan has become the new symbol. Its use involves an isolated process that is quick and desperate interfering with the affectionate bonds that were part of ritual opium use. The visitor sees that the city forgot its past and became a place of immediate but dissociative life. Without time to give and receive affection, the incidence of violence, cruelty, and artless tearing down and rebuilding parts of the renamed city has stolen its mysterious life force in the eyes of the returning visitor.

Narcopolis reminds me of The Alexandria Quartet Boxed Set by Lawrence Durrell in which characters try to understand the life force of the great city of Alexandria as it changes over the time of their interacting lives. This is a very interesting novel especially in its description of characters who believe that the pulse of the city is like the perpetual high that they seek with chemicals. Ultimately, these truth seekers are overwhelmed by the power of the city and the limits of their understanding of their futile quest to be free of pain.

Narcopolis is a first-rate literary achievement. The author's lucid and versatile prose style bespeaks mastery of language, and lends itself to finding the richness and value in the surreal, the mystical, the natural, the haunted, the stuff of vivid dreams and hallucinations, and occasionally collides with the world of the restless dead. Before all else, however, though its words are well-chosen, it's sentences well-wrought, and its paragraphs mesh neatly from one illuminating, sometimes beautiful, page to another, Narcopolis is about the brutally chaotic meaninglessness of life in Bombay, the enormous city now known as Mumbai.

If there is a character whose life typifies the poverty, chaos, and unthinkable suffering of Bombay, it is Dimple. Her real name is something else that she's long forgotten, having been given away by her mother when she was six or seven. While the name Dimple seems feminine enough, one suitably coupled with our use of the pronoun "her," this is misleading. Dimple, by whatever name, was born a boy, but after being given away or sold, who knows, when she reached age eight or nine her scrotum and penis were cut off, a sort of double castration suitable to an over-determined eunuch, someone who has been surgically designated to live out her days as a prostitute. If her customers are kind, they will apply lubricant before using her rectum as a vagina. She spends the rest of her working day preparing and serving pipes to those who frequent the opium den that shares a floor with her brothel.

In spare moments, Dimple teaches herself to read, just because she likes to, and she smokes opium, snorts cocaine, and eventually learns to appreciate heroin. In time, the dissolute life for which she was foredoomed takes its toll and her beauty fades. It's true that Dimple didn't have to do drugs, or she might at least have exercised moderation, say after the fashion of her friend, old Mr. Lee. But if we don't delude ourselves, we can see that the escape provided by narcotics was a truly rational response to the horrors of Dimple's biography and the world in which she lived it out.

Dimple knew that there were other ways to live, but nothing better was available to her. She wondered why others, especially the young who were whole, well nourished, nicely clothed, had access to as much quality education as anyone might want, and who had the love and protection of their parents did drugs much as she did. They, she imagined, could find meaning and fulfillment in the world as it was. If not in school, family, or work, then there were certainly enough religions whose tenets were waiting to be warmly embraced: Hinduism, Islam, Catholicism, Jainism, Coptic Christian, and no doubt others not mentioned. Everyone seemed to have a religion, many practiced them dutifully, but in the end it was all quite perfunctory, myth and ceremony but nothing uncorrupted and substantial to fill the void. When Rumi, indulged son of the wealthy Muslim Rashid, was given a choice between drug rehab and prison, he likened it to a choice between gonorrhea and syphilis.

Perhaps this is the most that one can expect in a socially disorganized, thoroughly corrupt city where, in fact, the only sacred institution is the market, for drugs, people, entertainment, the necessities of life, certainty as to your gender, avoiding a sudden plunge into abysmal poverty, where everything, including the most horrible, is possible for a price. A city of twenty-five million in a failed nation caught up in the accelerating, expanding, all-pervasive process of globalization that got going with a vengeance in the 1970's, the same time as the beginning of Narcopolis. If this is the source of the brutally chaotic meaninglessness of life in Bombay or Mumbai -- whatever -- Narcopolis may be a glimpse of our future. For a non-fiction version see Katherine Boo's ethnography Behind the Beautiful Forevers.