‘Purple satin gown,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘Wild, matted hair. I remember her perfectly.’
‘She wasn’t insane, not at all. She knew that none of this ever happened.’
‘Not even this?’ He spread out his hand to underscore the tempest, its theatre of upheaval.
‘Not even this.’
‘Something in all of this must be true, Rhea.’
‘Only the moment is true.’ Her reply was so strained that perhaps he never heard it. ‘Everything else is false.’
‘Rhea…’ His eyes trailed after the doomed, defiant blur.
A cloud had burst over her, and sent her reeling into its foliage. She sensed, as she felt herself go under, that it was everywhere, it was everything. Love. It was this city, its ghastly buildings and the sea. Dark petals of red roses dancing in the wind and the roofs of crumbling cottages. A shell on the beach and the hum of a blind beggar. The amber cast of the street light and a dog howling at the moon. Everything was made out of it. Everything had come forth from it, as it would one day return into it. Love.
With her hair streaming open, arms spread out, legs caught in wreaths of water, she came up once, and through the rippled curtains of rain looked up at the sky. The world, in spite of its disquiet, or perhaps because of it, was what it was, and now this world was neither threatening nor ugly, and she was glad to know that, after all, everything was just right.
Acknowledgements
Because of your friendship—a.a., Adam, Alan, Ambika, Anjali, Bhavesh, David, DT, Elnora, Erico, Flaviano, Heather, Hemali, John, Kalyani, Kanika, Kaushik, Laura, Lorenzo, Meenu, Namrita, Nehal, NG, Nina, Nonita, Parul, Paolo, Raman, Rashmi, Sandip, Saraswathi Devi, Satya, Siddhartha, Sooni, Pico, Tinu, Tushar, Urvashi—I could write a little book about big love.
This book took a bit of spit and polish from two extraordinary editors, Poulomi Chatterjee and Danielle Durkin.
My book’s agents, Jonny Geller and Lisa Bankoff, have been singular, terrific models of allegiance and energy.
Nandini Bhaskaran copy-edited the manuscript dazzlingly under duress.
Farrokh Chothia gave me a magnificent jacket image that allowed Prashish More to design the perfect book jacket.
Much of this book was written at Meher Pilgrim Retreat; Barr House, Matheran (where Francis Wacziarg has created an artist’s haven managed with marvellous efficiency by Surendra Singh); and 815, Evelyn Avenue.
I am indebted to Swami Vignanananda, Founder, Yogalayam, Berkeley.
This book is for Sai Baba and for Meher Baba.
A Reading Group Guide
Today Bombay is referred to as Mumbai. However, the author has chosen to call it Bombay because it is Bombay in the hearts of its citizens. The two names reference the same city but very different worlds. How do you think the story might have been different if it were a narrative about Mumbai as opposed to Bombay?
The city is as much a character in the novel as anyone else. The author re-creates a character obsessed on documenting every facet of a city. Do you believe Bombay came to life for you, and did its menace make it attractive or daunting? Karan wants to see the city to complement his own oeuvre, and Rhea helps him because she is keen for him to preserve photographically a city she calls home, one that is dearly beloved to her. How do we remember and hold on to geographies that construct us? And what parts do we wish to leave behind, as Karan ultimately does with Bombay, in order to save ourselves?
Early on Zaira describes her scariest nightmare to Karan, in which a man corners her and says “I am afraid to love.” Do you think this dream is indicative of some deeper issues for Zaira, and if so, how have those issues influenced her greater story?
Throughout the story we see how Rhea Dalal influences and transforms Karan’s photos with her ever-changing presence in his life, especially once she breaks his heart. Do you believe that personal tragedy can affect a person’s art?
At the beginning of the novel, Karan Seth says of Bombay, “I noticed that everyone here was running away from loneliness…. Without the distraction of beauty, without the consolation of art, people find respite in each other…. In Bombay people don’t offer each other too much talk or touch; rather, they look each other in the eye like soldiers, wounded and brave and crazy…. The power of this city is the mad desire it arouses in you to live an unlonely life.” Do you think this is true, or do you believe each of these characters is wounded in such a way as to make them inherently lonely even while they find solace in one another?
Initially Karan takes issue with Samar’s homosexuality and avoids befriending him separately. However, after Zaira’s murder and his own broken love affair, Karan and Samar form a deep attachment. Do you believe this would have happened organically if they had not been forced together by circumstance?
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is, in many ways, ultimately about love. How has the concept of love evolved for each of the characters throughout the book? Do you believe their personal tragedies have made them more or less willing to love? What do we owe the people we love? In Samar’s case—what does he owe Leo and what does he owe the memory of Zaira? In Rhea’s, what does she owe her marriage and what does she owe her lover? What does Karan owe his English girlfriend, Claire, and how is he beholden to his art? This dance of love and moral ambiguity feature in all our lives. Which choices in the practice of moral love have left you satisfied, and which ones have unsettled you with their ultimate consequence?
The ending of the book provided a very powerful image of a flood washing Rhea Dalal away after Karan and she make peace. Did you expect the book to end in such a way? Did you find it appropriately poetic or jarring?
A novel that takes place in India often has one of many “typical” elements: a multigenerational family saga, an arranged marriage, a return from America, or a coming of age story; however, The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay is about people, their relationships, and their city. So, in some ways, it has more in common with those great New York stories than other novels that take place in India. Do you believe this allowed the story a different level of authenticity?
Corruption and political failure are endemic in India, as evidenced by the failure of Zaira’s murder trial. There is a sense of the individual revolting against “the system” but, ultimately, it seems to add up to nothing. As India modernizes and is poised to take on the world, what parts of the book made you question the quality of this progress?
The AIDS epidemic turned a corner in the mid-nineties, with the arrival of life-extending drugs. And many gay men, who had prepared themselves for death, were then faced with the prospect of life. Leo chooses life. And Samar chooses to die from AIDS. Have you lost someone you know to AIDS, and if yes, how was this loss unlike others you experienced? And what do you believe has been the role of literature in informing you about conditions like AIDS, which were initially cloaked in misconception and stereotype?
Samar, who has access to life-extending drugs for AIDS, skirts them, preferring the consolation of death. Similarly, Rhea chooses to give herself to a deluge than live without Karan’s friendship. Adi vanishes, and we don’t know if he is alive. Perhaps the author advocates a fatalistic view, one in which life is utterly unworthy of enduring without love and friendship. Do you agree or disagree?
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Also by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi
The Last Song of Dusk
THE LOST FLAMINGOES OF BOMBAY. Copyright © 2009 by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shanghvi, Siddharth Dhanvant.
The lost flamingoes of Bombay / Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN: 978-0-312-59349-0
1. Photographers—India—Fiction. 2. Celebrities—India�
�Fiction. 3. Upper class—India—Fiction. 4. Bombay (India)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9499.4.S53L67 2010
823'.92—dc22
2010030189
First published in India by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books
The Lost Flamingoes of Bombay Page 36