The City is a poem

with Bilal Moin, and a host of other "City" poets

In an introductory essay on the phenomenon of popular cinema as the “slum’s eye view of politics”, Ashis Nandy cites the notion of the “unintended city”, borrowing a term used by Jai Sen:

The slum here means exactly what architect and social activist Jai Sen means when he speaks of the 'unintended city'—the city that was never a part of the formal 'master plan' but was always implicit in it. The official city cannot survive without its unintended self, but it cannot own up to that self either. For that other city consists of a huge mass of technically and officially discarded 'obsolete' citizens who form the underground of a modern city. They provide the energy—literally the cheap labour—that propels both the engine of civic life in a Third World society and the ambitions of its modernising elite.”

Nandy’s articulation of the “city that was never part of the formal ‘master plan’ but always implicit in it” deepens the conversation, to articulate the human cost of labour, embodied in disenfranchisement and marginalisation, but also the “unintended” as the “engine” of civic life. He further connects this to the “ambitions” of an elite class with eyes set on modernity as a defining social characteristic (there is a link here that could be made with “capital”). I find this articulation compelling, not only as a complex that problematises “urban planning” and cultural anthropology, but as a statement on the poetics of the urban; a way of rendering the absences and erasures inherent in both “imagining” and “making” cities. Space is constructed in the minds of those who inhabit it, and time is immortalised in the fingers of artists (not historians). Nandy’s “unintended city” as a conceptual formation, foregrounds the spontaneity and chaos associated with precarity, and mechanisms of survival, over intention and planning, while also laying bare the hypocrisy of the elite, and the bourgeoise.

It takes a particular kind of discerning observer to unravel this “unintended” design through their creative documentation. Anand Patwardhan shows us the political implications of “development” by focusing on the real “makers” of Bombay – their stories and song - in Bombay, Our City (1985), while also exposing the “use-and-throw” model of their “masters”. Amar Kanwar makes a similar argument, but in the context of the nation (not the city), in his Night our Prophecy (2002). I believe that Arun Kolatkar’s vision is similar, in the poetry cycle Kala Ghoda Poems (2004) . Other commentators have proposed that the various characters - both human and ‘non-human’ - embody varying degrees of ‘marginality’, ‘subalternity’ etc.). The “unintended”, as an analytic, helps us think through the tensions between design and reality, state and citizen, imagination and built environment.

There are no less than 23 mentions of ‘Kolatkar’ in the Penguin Book of poems on the Indian City edited by Bilal Moin (including bibliographiphic notes and such; I’ve checked!). While this is testament to the tremendous influence of Kala Ghoda Poems as a text, in the conception of Mumbai city in Indian literature, Moin’s fascinating curation of “urban” poems doesn’t feature any excerpts from that collection. While his introduction starts with the reflexive nostalgia of the Military Cafe and the The Wayside Inn, referencing the activity of the “Bombay poets” during the latter half of the last century, he chooses to feature a couple other Kolatkar poems. I applaud this decision.

As an aside, nowadays, I find this view of the “Bombay Poets”, centred around a particular clique, to be problematic. I place the blame squarely on the critics (not the poets themselves) who have created a heavily romanticised mythology of poetic association and “community” . The fact that these poets wrote primarily in English - and a specific kind of “Bombay” English - aggravates this mythology. The poets grew out of their own associations with different languages, including Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati, and Bambaiyya, but perhaps, broadly, they stayed within the geographical confines of South Bombay (which in itself represented a “modern”, cosmopolitan location from the 60s to the turn of the century, as is well documented by such writers as Gyan Prakash and others. What about the Thane troubadours, and the bards of Kalyan and Dongri, Chembur and Matunga… Are these not “Bombay Poets”? What about the lokshahirs? I think we cannot speak about “bombay poetry”, today, without talking about Navi Mumbai, for instance. It is important to think about the fault-lines of caste, class, language, and place, when speaking about a “canonical” Bombay Poetry. In this regard, there are several interesting cultural groups doing the important work of documentation and ‘publication’, to expand this definition. I’m sure, you dear reader would be familiar with some of these, so I won’t list them here, since the object of this particular commentary is larger than “Bombay Poetry”. Perhaps, that list requires a separate essay, or book, all by itself.

Returning to Bilal Moin’s editorial vision, let us refocus our energies by broadening our scope to the notion of the “Indian” city - the chosen frame of the anthology. In my view, Moin’s anthology, is, perhaps more sensitive to some of the fault-lines I’ve mentioned above - the decision to include works from other languages through English translation somewhat remedies the perils that come with an “anglophone” focus. One must acknowledge the editor’s layered engagement with the subcontinent’s geography, history and language. The book allowed me to rejoice in the “unintended” (re)discovery, both of cities (and the ignored cultures or spaces therein), and poets (and their colourful poetic personas). For this I am grateful, and my curation of a small selection from the volume in today’s commentary, is an attempt to pass on this gratitude, without compromising the accompanying element of surprise.

I hope this selection will serve as a kind of teaser - provoking you to reach the book in its entirety. It is a worthy addition to your library - especially if you identify as a “bombay poet” :)

---

Do write to poetly@pm.me if you have any questions, queries, or comments. I will write back as soon as I find the space, and the time.

If you like what you read, do consider ‘buying me a coffee’.