Mapping Bombay | Review of ‘The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap’ by Adil Jussawalla

Jussawalla returned in 1970, and the city has never been too far from his writing | Photo Credit: Getty Images In the densely allegorical poem ‘A Letter for Bombay’ (1962), Adil Jussawalla addressed the city of his birth from London. The poet, “a medieval apothecary” in exile carrying the “quintessence” of the city, pleads for guidance: “Instruct me in my art… give my chaos form.” He urges the “divided city” to combine, “and I shall return and pass beyond your storm”.Jussawalla returned in 1970, and the city has never been too far from his writing.The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trapgathers his prose on Bombay — now Mumbai — written for newspapers and magazines between 1980 and 2002. It complements earlier collections likeMaps for a Mortal Moon(2014).Champion of new voicesIn his introduction, Jerry Pinto points out that Jussawalla was “a part of Bombay’s literary landscape in a way that few could challenge or would want to”.This is not just because of his poetry but also his teachings and championing of new voices. The pieces in this collection are “a way of giving witness to the bigness and the strangeness of the city”, charting a relationship “between man and landscape, man and city, man and nightmare”.Many of them are riffs, segueing like a knight’s moves on a chessboard. In one, Jussawalla starts with the necessity of plumbing and proceeds to Wilde and Auden. In another, the morning sun warming his bed leads to musings on the effects of the sun on lovers and others, until a deadline calls him to his typewriter.The titular piece takes the form of a droll 19th century letter by a beleaguered pundit to his wife. It touches on many forces that have shaped the city over the years: land reclamation, cotton mills, the Kolis and a plague, all wrapped in an arresting metaphor for the city’s gaudy allure.Other pieces feature literary encounters. There is a discussion with Sharada Dwivedi and Rahul Mehrotra; evenings with Mulk Raj Anand; and an encounter with Nissim Ezekiel.Jussawalla examines Mumbai from multiple, often unexplored, angles. “Given that so much of the life of the city when it was called Bombay was linked to its docks, its shipyards, and the shipping trade, and continues to be so linked after the city was renamed Mumbai,” he observes, “I find it surprising that we who live in the city have written so little about such matters.”When he writes about the city’s fabled monsoon, it is not to romanticise it, but to speak about those who leave the city during the season, such as roadside cobblers and itinerant vendors. Similarly, he notes the plight of sewage workers and the homeless without sentimentality.The simplest observations can ignite his interest. He ponders how life in the city can resemble moving from one enclosed box to another; how virtual reality, which “can make everything virtual except class”, is unable to replace the city’s human network; and the ubiquity of carrom, “Bombay’s game”.A shrewd approachMuch of his critique remains fresh. In a 1993 piece, he cautions against lauding Mumbai’s “seemingly indestructible spirit”, which ignores “the millions whose spirit the city has destroyed”. In 1980, he observes that “a few privileged property owners and property sharks are the truly big fish, devouring and threatening to devour lesser ones”. Still true.A wry, self-deprecating tone runs through the collection, sparing it from becoming elegiac or celebratory. Jussawalla’s shrewd, ironic approach is especially welcome at a time of grand narratives and inflated rhetoric — about Mumbai or anything else.The reviewer is a Mumbai-based critic The Diamond-Encrusted Rat Trap Adil JussawallaSpeaking Tiger Books₹499 Published - May 16, 2025 09:00 am IST