Altaf Tyrewala
City of dreams has a pungent smell
The city that was Bombay once and is Mumbai now has been the subject of much literary exploration. Novels, short stories and poems have been written by those who have been fascinated with this maddening city where day-to-day existence is a Sisyphean struggle. Yet, they have found love, romance and heart-warming humanity in its bylanes and, occasionally, in its boulevards.
Few tangents around the noir genre
Bombay Noir was the informal name given to crime films made in Hindi during the 1950s. They were in the same mould as Hollywood noir films but had an Indian flavour, such as songs, dances and sometimes a comedy track. The basic ingredients remained the same — rich and powerful criminals who were outwardly respectable, a hero with his own code of honour, femmes fatale. Bombay Noir remains an understudied and under-appreciated genre.
Mumbai Noir is a collection of stories brought out as part of an international noir stories. Is this a contemporary echo of an old style?
