Bombay, bustle and stories of a Parsi neighborhood

Book title: Bombay Time

Book author: Thrity Umrigar

This is my fourth book of TU. By now I know Umrigar is the maestro of sketching Bombay and Bombayites in words. Bombay Time only stamped my belief.

The novel starts on a new morning in Mumbai. The city is waking up, its dwellers getting up from bed, preparing for going to school/work. Then the lens narrows down on a Parsi neighborhood, particularly the apartment complex of Wadia Baug. I laughed and loved how Umrigar brought the morning contest that goes on in the middle class city dweller apartments in the pages—get up, make the kids get up, rounds of argument with the doodwallahs, the butchers, the other wallahs.

Later that evening, the neighborhood joins the wedding party of a young couple where each family reminisces about their younger days. All the identical apartments of this complex hold unique stories. All are Parsi, all are Mumbai born/raised, but their stories—so unique from one another—dreamy eyed young man, guilt-ridden teenager, once-ambitious woman… Each story left an impression on me.

Not to mention, Mumbai itself is a character in TU’s novels. And her another signature is—bringing up the populations of both edges of social/economical scale together. Through her novel’s characters she makes alive the dilemma of Mumbai—its staggering contrast between populations.

Reading the book in 2025, I found the neighborhood bond so wholesome. When I was growing up in a small town in Bangladesh, my parents relied on our neighbors to take care of me while they used to stay at work. The relationships we grew with our neighbors are lost in time, and did not reborn when we came to live in this busy city of Dhaka. In this modern age of social media, reading about those relationships of Wadia Baug neighbors, I was missing the old days and feeling we should recreate the relations!

Leaving some beautiful words from the pages I bookmarked—

For a short, precious moment, no boom box blares Hindi film music; no taxis speak in the harsh language of beeps. Just the sounds of their own breathing and of the sighing ocean as it tosses and turns in its sleep.

Now it’s time for breakfast. The women serve the largest portion of the scrambled eggs to their men. Next, they serve their elderly relatives and their children. They keep the least amount for themselves. Usually, they eat directly from the frying pan, using the bread to wipe it clean of grease. One less plate to wash.

City where the golden skyscrapers kissed God in heaven and the black slums found hell on earth.

Even the few among them who were genuinely rich, who could afford to keep their children with them—how could they enjoy their wealth, watched as they were by the accusing eyes of naked and hungry children?

Jimmy knew that many of his less fortunate neighbors masked the sourness of their own puny lives by ridiculing the successful and the powerful. It was their way of coping with the disappointments of their own lives, and Jimmy respected that.

Plainly said, Coomi was determined to marry above herself. It was painfully clear that she could not pull herself out of her lower-middle class origins by the sweat of her own brow; no, she would need to perch a ride on the shoulders of a man who was unafraid to work hard himself.

As usual, custom and tradition triumphed over common sense.

Once a woman has witnessed the human body distorted beyond recognition, once she has smelled the distinct, unmistakable smell of charred flesh from a body that used to smell of rose water and eau de cologne, then that woman has the right to turn away from all things ugly, Tehmi believed.

Suddenly, the enormity of what he had lost, the full price of his disinheritance, hit him. He had lost not only this holy land but also the respect of his father, the bond with his mother. He looked around him and everything felt rooted—the tall trees that had dug their feet solidly into the earth, the vagabond birds who had come home to their nests, the dependable, darkening sky that covered him like a blanket. He alone was rootless, homeless.

But although time takes away a lot, it also leaves you with something.