Research Fellowship Proposal – UDRI 2008

melancholy memories
of the city

The idea for the research is taken from Salman Rushdie’s book Haroun and the Sea of Stories - an allegorical account of perception of a city set in a sad backdrop…

"…a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name", which is located beside "a mournful sea full of glumfish, which were so miserable to eat that they made people belch with melancholy".

Mumbai has always been projected as a city of dreams. For an outsider, Mumbai has always been a city of hopes, the opportunistic city, the popular Bollywood, the city of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. A popular notion amongst outsiders is that every Mumbaikar is a neighbour of a filmstar. A ready question on any outsider’s list at the first meeting with a resident of the city would be “How many hero / heroines have you seen?” Mumbai’s history more or less follows these questions. We talk about the Gateway of India, the Marine Drive, romanticize about the colonial past, the cosmopolitan culture, and more recently the enterprise and the Bollywood, which is documented very well. The popular history of the city always talks about the seven islands, the colonial rule, the beginning of a metropolis and growth of a commercial hub – a morphological understanding of the place. However, it cannot be neglected that the city has many more events to recollect that just these. When we are talking about events and people, we are talking about memories. Good memories are always generalized and compiled. However, something amidst all this remains untold – the bad memories.

Never is Mumbai’s history seen in the light of its dark events. The research paper is geared towards breaking the notion of Mumbai being a city of dreams. The purpose of the research is to construct an experiential history of the city by collecting memories of people, which are not good in taste. We remember the dark events of Mumbai only when another unpleasant event occurs in the city. These distasteful memories are merely collected as journalistic records and published every time another bomb blast would occur, or the city is filled with water in another downpour, or so on. However, these impressions never contribute towards a significant part of Mumbai’s history. What still attracts people is the new lifestyle, the modern buildings, and the city lights – as projected by traditional history.

Research Problems and Questions

The project will try to explore new ways of reconstructing the city, the prime questions being - Why should the history of the city only be celebrated by the glorious events of the past? Why does the history need to recollect only the good times? Why does the city of Mumbai attract so many people inspite of the fact that it is actually a machine? The aim of the thesis is to look at our city of Mumbai as it is – in the most pragmatic manner. Once we break away from the projected positive image of the city, we may be able to capture important fragments of history through collecting memories, which are not much talked about. The less talked about memories will discuss problems that the everyday inhabitant of the city deals with. At the same time, it will give an insight into the problematic past of the city. These recollections of the past hide into themselves
a conception of a city space, which has never been talked about. The objective of the research is therefore to construct a city space, which seems to be unacceptable, but is still lived in. The project would attempt to make the difficult history of the city more agreeable to natives as well as outsiders for whom; the city of Mumbai has always been a city of celebration and fantasy.

Aims and Objectives

The objective of the thesis would be to collect stories from different kinds of people, of them having unpleasant historic memories of the city and stitch a new layer of history for the city – the difficult narrative. These stories will question the idea of the outsider’s image of the city versus the problems of the native. These stories will also delve into the change in the perception of an outsider becoming a native of the city.
Thus, the scope of the thesis is to methodically use narratives to capture experiences contributing towards a difficult, more unpleasant history and on the other hand deconstruct the idea of Mumbai as a city of Enterprise.

The compilation of these varied experiences may be extremely interesting to read just as stories, but at the same time, the thesis will attempt to draw a picture of the space which each story would create for the city. These pictures, coming together as a storyboard will help in imagining a physical manifestation of the “bad” city through individual memories.

So once the bitter bytes of the city are scanned, one might just get a complete different perception of the city. A city playing in the hands of various interests and nurturing itself on biases. A city thriving on so many interests can not be silent. It is boiling. Different people living in different times in different parts of the city will contribute to a palimpsest of images. The city of Mumbai is therefore no more has the nice man’s image; and neither does it have that glitz and glitter of the Bollywood. It becomes a city which lives on the edge, with every working person contributing towards a memory - a collective memory that is deep hidden since a long time. The common man wants to share his bad memories. But conventional history does not provide the opportunity to do so – because histories are always written in good taste.

The research will allow the inhabitants who are associated with the city to share their bad memories of the city. The research will undergo an ethnographic study of experiences of the people in the city. These experiences will be collected in the form of stories or narratives. The narratives thus collected will help in re interpreting the history of the city in an alternative way – where the city of Mumbai will no longer be available as a platter for beautiful dreams. The research allows the city to reflect upon its unpopular past by looking through the bitter everyday memories of the ones who make the city.

Methodology

The research will adopt a qualitative mode of collecting data including in depth interviews as the prime generator of stories. Therefore, the study will primarily depend on ethnographic surveys and learn about the city through people’s past. These stories will be collected from people who share memories with the city.
These would include people from different areas dislocated during the numerous rehabilitation drives. Stories may pertain to the rise of slums or the rise of the working class in the city and therefore look at a particular economic section of the city, which drives it. The increasing migration in the city calls for having interviews with people who have been outsiders since a very long time. The research may look into stories of existence of people in the city, the struggle for space. An interesting aspect of the study could be to study the increasing fear with the city as an instrument. These would include the experiences of everyday travel, a comparative analysis, and in more recent context the fear of crime and the underworld within peoples mind. The everyday negotiations and the tensions that these create – exploring the meaning in – “I need my space”. The purpose of the research is to bring these difficult narratives together to stitch a history of the city, which may not be pleasant. In other words, the idea behind the proposal is to construct a history of the city through bad memories.

The ideas discussed above may seem to be more contemporary, but the research suggests that there existed times when Mumbai went through a difficult phase. Secondary sources for the project would be newspapers discussing stories of individuals, which will be used as pointers, local magazines that discuss works of local people and events and other relevant books from libraries where stories can be studied.

Studying and tracking blogs of people might also be an interesting way to understand their perception of the city. The nature of these people would be difficult to detail at this instance.

The research aims at collecting these bad historic memories of the city, which are never discussed considering them to be offensive / harmful or distasteful. Such memories do not contribute to the touristy image of the city; neither would it allow freedom for envisioning a dream but will be very realistic. Hence, these historic memories are never talked about. Thus, the thesis will try to construct images of the city through layers of experiences instead of physical markers and at the same time, it will try to break the popular notion of the city being a dreamer’s island.

***
A proposal that did not take off.
(I now realize how it could have been so much better!! I lacks major literature review. But the proposal was almost prepared in no time...)