2004 Twentieth-Century Literature Conference
Thrity Umrigar's Bombay Time: A Casebook
Anne Ryan
Case Western Reserve University
Bombay Time: Hope in Dialogue
Do not quote without author's permission.
Life is dialogical by its very nature. To live means to engage in dialogue, to question, to listen, to answer, to agree, etc. ~ Mikhail Bakhtin
One of the problems that contemporary literary theory explores
is the nature of the self. This is not a new problem; writers and readers
seem to have always been asking and answering variations on the question:
what does it mean to be human and to be me? In Literary Theory: A Very
Short Introduction, Jonathan Culler writes, "Literature has always
been concerned with questions about identity. . . . Narrative literature
especially has followed the fortunes of characters as they define themselves
and are defined by various combinations of their past, the choices they
make, and the social forces that act upon them" (112). One of the
great attractions of literature for me has been to learn about other people's
lives, even imaginary people's lives. From the suffering of Job in the
Old Testament and the heroism of Jean Valjean in Les Miserables,
the ethics of Dorothea in Middlemarch and the matriarchal strength
of Ursula Buendia in One Hundred Years of Solitude, I think that
I can learn what it means to be human, to be an individual, even what
it means to live a good life. From Bombay Time's Rusi and Coomi
and their neighbors in Wadia Baug, perhaps I can learn, among other things,
what it means be a member of a community knit so closely together by a
common ethnic and religious heritage and a lifetime of shared experiences.
The work of twentieth-century theorists like Louis Althusser, Jacques
Lacan, Michel Foucault, and Judith Butler, however, calls into question
such naïve reading by drawing attention to the various ways in which
society's power structures and language itself construct the concept of
the individual self. Despite the distinct orientations of these theorists,
they all tend to rely on the post-structuralist binary self/other in which
the self defines itself in terms of difference and deferral. In other
words, self equals not-other, and both self and other exist in a dialectic
power struggle. Jonathan Culler expands,
Work in theory emanating from different directions-Marxism, psychoanalysis,
cultural studies, feminism, gay and lesbian studies, and the study of
identity in colonial and post-colonial societies-has revealed difficulties
involving identity that seem structurally similar. . . . The process of
identity-formation not only foregrounds some differences and neglects
others; it takes an internal difference or division and projects it as
a difference between individuals or groups. To 'be a man,' as we say,
is to deny any 'effeminacy' or weakness and to project it as a difference
between men and women. (118-9)
The novel Bombay Time seems ripe for any of these readings especially
because it focuses on character rather than plot. A psychoanalytic, feminist,
or post-colonial reading might highlight the struggles between the self
and other, masculine and feminine, or oppressor and oppressed throughout
the novel. On the other hand, much of the story's appeal comes from its
theme of community and the neighbors' very real need for one another.
Just as Tehmi appreciates Dosa's gossip because "it was proof that
she existed, that she surfaced occasionally in the mind of the people
living beside her" (164) and just as Jimmy's realization that "in
reality, [he and Zarin] were married to an entire group of people, a neighborhood,
a way of life" (74) saved his marriage, so all of the characters
find meaning in their interactions with one another. If the novel offers
hope for the community of Wadia Baug at the end of the evening, it seems
to lie in the possibility not of overturning or deconstructing the categories
of self/other, male/female, Parsi/non-Parsi, rich/poor, British/Indian
but of truly communicating and creating meaning by acknowledging both
sides of the binaries and engaging in dialogue between them.
In contrast to most major theorists of the late twentieth century, the
Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin developed a concept of the self in which
the self and other do not exist in a struggle for power (Note 1).
Perhaps best known in literary studies for his concepts of heteroglossia
and the many-voiced novel in The Problem of Dostoevsky's Poetics
and Discourse in the Novel, the carnivalesque in Rabelais and
His World, and as the inspiration for Kristeva's term "intertextuality,"
Bakhtin has emerged as a more complex figure as more of his writings have
been translated and distributed in English in the past twenty years. In
Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World, Michael Holquist, Bakhtin's biographer
and major editor in the United States, examines his entire oeuvre synoptically
and argues, "Dialogue is an obvious master key to the assumptions
that guided Bakhtin's work throughout his whole career" (15). Dialogism,
Holquist writes, can be understood as a "theory of knowledge . .
. that seek[s] to grasp human behavior through the use humans make of
knowledge" (15). It is a fundamental principle of communication that
undergirds Bakhtin's writings on existence, selfhood, language, authorship,
the genre of the novel, history and poetics, etc. When Bakhtin and Holquist
speak of existence and selfhood as a form of dialogue, they mean that
just as every utterance derives its meaning in relation to other utterances
(it is a response to something that has already been said and looks forward
to an answer), so every self (which like an utterance occupies a unique
point in space/time and thus a unique point-of-view) gains meaning and
wholeness-achieves a degree of "consummation," to use Bakhtin's
term-only in relation and in dialogue with other selves.
One of Bakhtin's earliest works, "Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity"
is a monograph-length meditation on the challenges that an author faces
when seeking to create a believable, complete character in a work of fiction.
Two major philosophical subjects of this study are architectonics, the
study of "the way something is put together" and aesthetics,
the study of "how parts are shaped into wholes" (Holquist, "Intro"
x). Bakhtin's study leads him to consider the problem of the self, for
in many ways an author's relationship with a character parallels the self's
relationship with others. Holquist explains that "Author and Hero"
forms part of "a general theory of human subjectivity, in which various
kinds of perception play a major role in order better to distinguish the
specificity of aesthetic perception" ("Intro" xix). Aesthetic
perception involves consummation or wholeness, a point-of-view that finishes
off or completes. In his introduction to Bakhtin's Art and Answerability,
Holquist writes:
Bakhtin differs from many other thinkers now in fashion in that he
does not begin by rejecting the intuitive sense of things held by most
of his readers, who will feel that they are individuals precisely because-for
better or worse-they are the keepers of their own uniqueness . . . . [But]
a first implication of recognizing that we are all unique is the paradoxical
result that we are therefore fated to need the other if we are to consummate
our selves. Far from celebrating a solipsistic 'I,' Bakhtin posits uniqueness
of the self as precisely that condition in which the necessity of the
other is born. (xxv)
According to Bakhtin, I cannot understand my own uniqueness or the value
of my self outside of the context of my interaction with another self
who is not me. Both physically and metaphorically, I can only see the
horizon in front of me when I look out at the world around me. I cannot
see what is behind me; I cannot even see my own face (unless I am standing
in front of a mirror, and even then I see only a reflection). I experience
myself from within, and I have no way of placing myself within a context
or attributing meaning to my own life. But when I look at you, I can see
your whole body and its background, and I can love you because I am transgredient
(Note 2) to you (Bakhtin, "Author" 22). In the context
of a suffering human being, Bakhtin writes:
The person suffering does not experience the fullness of his own outward
expressedness in being; he experiences this expressedness only partially,
and then in the language of his inner sensations of himself. He does not
see the agonizing tension of his own muscles . . . he does not see the
clear blue sky against the background of which his suffering outward image
is delineated for me. And even if he were able to see all these features
. . . he would lack the appropriate emotional and volitional approach
to these features. (ibid. 25)
My job as an other in dialogue is to project myself into his place and
then to return to myself to give "a word of consolation or an act
of assistance" (26). "Aesthetic activity proper actually begins
at the point when we return . . . to our own place outside the
suffering person, and start to form and consummate the material we derived
from projecting ourselves into the other . . ." (26). Then we can
use the information about the other to complete his understanding of his
own suffering. In other words,
A human being experiencing life in the category of his own I is incapable
of gathering himself by himself into an outward whole that would even
be relatively finished. . . In this sense, one can speak of a human being's
absolute need for the other, for the other's seeing, remembering, gathering,
and unifying self-activity. (35-36)
One of the themes of Bombay Time is the characters' need for the
sort of self/other dialogue and consummation that Bakhtin describes. The
residents of Wadia Baug cannot experience their individual lives as meaningful
without the perspective of others. This theme is realized through the
narrative style, the pattern of Rusi and Coomi's relationship, and the
symbol of the photo album.
As chapter one opens, a third person narrator (Dorrit Cohn's psychonarrator)
sets the scene and presents Rusi's thoughts to us as he waits for his
wife Coomi to finish getting ready for his friend's son's wedding: "Rusi
Bilimoria glanced at his watch for the fifth time" (7). Soon, however,
the narrator's voice becomes harder to distinguish from Rusi's thoughts.
For example, the narrator tells us that "he didn't even want to go
to the wedding" (7) because he is tired of dealing with his nosy
neighbors and the dirty, busy city of Bombay. When the text reads, "It
would be the same crowd . . ." I am not totally sure whose voice
is speaking. Perhaps the narrative style of Bombay Time is better
classified as a mixture of psychonarration and narrated monologue (Note
3). At this point most of the story seems to be focalized by Rusi;
although we see Rusi in the third person, we see the rest of the story
through his eyes.
When Coomi ignores Rusi's impatience and continues to primp, Rusi imagines
what might happen if he just left and went to the wedding by himself.
He can't bring himself to do it, however, knowing that by the next day,
the entire apartment building would be gossiping about his behavior. As
he imagines what would happen if Coomi visited her old friend Dosamai
after being left at home, curious things begin to happen to the narrative
voice and focalization. Coomi would be "telling her [Dosamai] about
her shock and fright at finding that Rusi had 'abandoned' her, had left
for no reason at all, without a warning or anything" (9). Abandoned
is in quotes because it is the word that Coomi would choose to describe
Rusi's actions and her own state as a victim of his unreasonableness.
But the phrases "shock and fright" and "no reason at all,
without a warning or anything" are not set off in quotes even
though they also seem to belong more to Coomi's point-of-view than to
Rusi's.
Next the narration switches from Rusi's imagination (the verbs in his
thoughts express probability through the modal would) to the psychonarrator
(who uses the past tense and knows that "Dosamai had decided years
ago that it was not in her best interest to encourage harmony between
Rusi and Coomi") and back again in the next paragraph. Rusi constructs
the women's whole conversation in his head, from Dosamai's "fatalistic
voice" to Coomi's "pained expression." But the narrative
voice changes again from Rusi's would to the psychonarrator's past
tense when the text reads, "'Rusi always did like women,' Coomi had
murmured" (11). Soon Coomi becomes the focalizer for the narrative
as she remembers Rusi's ambition when they were first married, but her
reverie ends when Dosamai and the psychonarrator bring her back to the
imagined present. Then the narrative brings us back to Rusi's consciousness
when the narrator tells us that he wants only peace or approval from his
neighbors and Coomi "finally emerge[s] from her room" (14).
This mixing of narrative voice and focalization marks the novel as a whole,
underscoring stylistically the theme of dialogue and mediation (Note
4). Whether or not Coomi's memory of the day at the beach during the
first year of their marriage is mediated through Rusi's consciousness
remains a mystery. It is clear that Rusi cannot understand his life without
attempting to view himself from the standpoint of his neighbors, the others
in his life. On the other hand, I do not think that at this point in the
novel Rusi is capable of these sorts of insights into his wife's buried
love for him. When Coomi thinks, "All of him is in those eyes, .
. . all his hurts, all his losses, his father's death, his fierce ambition,
his burning desire to be somebody. To do something large," she is
enacting the vital service of the other-first empathizing and then creating
a whole picture of Rusi's life. She possesses a viewpoint that Rusi necessarily
lacks.
We learn that it is this empathetic and loving viewpoint that first attracted
Rusi to Coomi; he remembers, "Coomi was different. He felt she understood
him" (16). Now, after years of disappointment--failure in business,
unforgiven words spoken in anger, and the emigration of their daughter
to England--Rusi has concluded that he was wrong. He and his wife just
can't understand each other. So he withdraws into himself and cultivates
an attitude of indifference to her, perhaps unaware that in doing so he
is only subtracting from his own existence. For according to Bakhtin,
Cutting oneself off, isolating oneself, closing oneself off, those
are the basic reasons for loss of self. . . . It turns out that every
internal experience occurs on the border, it comes across another, and
this essence resides in this intense encounter. . . . The very being of
man (both internal and external) is a profound communication. To be means
to communicate. (qtd. in Todorov 96)
Throughout the beginning of the evening, Rusi repeatedly feels moved to
speak to his wife but chooses to remain silent. For example, as they walk
to the wedding, he knows that Coomi expects him to comment on her appearance
(and he really does think that she is beautiful in her rose-colored sari),
but he does not put forward the effort. When he thinks of Binny in England,
the narrator tells us: "He longed to say something to his wife but
was reluctant to break the silence that had engulfed them since they had
left home" (21). Again when he hears the story of the attack on Sheroo's
niece and imagines his own rage if anyone were to attack Coomi, "he
had a passing urge to tell Coomi this," but he doesn't (27). At the
end of the first chapter, Rusi's desire to separate himself from his friends
and city has passed: "He wanted to ask someone's forgiveness and
he wanted to absolve someone . . . He looked up at the moonless sky and
felt a strong desire to sing a mournful, plaintive song. A dirge that
would carry all the way back to the waiting sea. But he just sat there,
saying nothing" (27-28).
Eventually Rusi responds to this desire to speak. Perhaps he simply does
so because, as Dosa found as a young woman, "most people long to
talk about their lives" (35). Perhaps when Rusi gives his speech
to Mehernosh and takes on a new role as the go-between for Wadia Baug
and the outside world after the stone is thrown, his character is not
really changing from withdrawn to outgoing-after all, Rusi's presence
weaves through all of the other character's memory chapters; like Tehmi's
Cyrus, all his life Rusi has had a gift for empathy and interaction with
his neighbors.
When Jimmy and Zarin distribute the photo albums, however, something new
happens between Rusi and Coomi. Coomi sits very close to Rusi in order
to see the pictures, and the narrator tells us that "for once, Rusi
did not mind this enforced closeness with his wife. It felt good actually,
this warmth from Coomi's arm as it brushed against his" (237). As
the photos help Rusi to contemplate the past, the narrator reveals, "for
a moment, he felt the silence that stretched long and thin between him
and Coomi snap like a rubber band against his heart" (239). This
is an interesting metaphor because it compares silence to a physical object.
The silence feels tight and drawn out like a rubber band. Sound, however,
is a physical force that travels in waves, and I usually imagine silence
as the absence of that energy. Another metaphor involving silence occurs
when Rusi drums up the courage to tell Mehernosh that the hopes of the
community lie in his ability to be happy. Coomi says, "I know what
you mean, exactly. Exactly," and her "words [ring] out
like a shot into the embarrassed silence" (249). Metaphorically and
perhaps even physically, those words act not only on the silence between
Rusi and Coomi, but also on them. When Rusi looks at Coomi, he sees in
her face an expression "that used to make him feel omnipotent"
(249). This is an example of what Bakhtin is referring to when he says,
This love that shapes a human being from outside throughout his life-his
mother's love and the love of others around him-this love gives body to
his inner body, and, even though it does not provide him with an intuitable
image of his outer body's outer value, it does make him the possessor
of that body's potential value-a value capable of being actualized only
by another human being. (Author 51)
An utterance, even a look, is a deed, an action that acts upon the self
and the other. In this sense, Coomi's support for Rusi gives him real
power.
"In the actual life of speech," writes Bakhtin, "every
concrete act of understanding is active: it assimilates the word to be
understood into its conceptual system filled with specific objects and
emotional expressions, and is indissolubly merged with the response, with
a motivated agreement or disagreement" ("Discourse" 1206).
Bakhtin believes that listening and understanding involve real work. As
Holquist writes, "Dialogism conceives knowing as the effort of
understanding, as 'the active reception of speech of the other" ("Intro"
xlii). He connects this idea with an interesting new book by James Lynch
of the University of Maryland's medical school that "provides evidence
that calling dialogue 'work' is not just a metaphor (or only a metaphor):
in a series of imaginative experiments, Lynch has shown a direct corollary
between blood pressure levels and the activities of talking and listening"
(xlii). Lynch shows that "talking alters a 'person's relationship
to the social environment in a way quite different from when one [is]
silent in the same environment.' What is significant about this apparent
truism is that it indicates the power of speech to effect a bond between
entities that are separated in every other way" (xliii). Spoken words
can do physical work on the interlocutors, just as Coomi's words affect
Rusi and the silence between them in Bombay Time. Holquist explains
that Bakhtin "goes much further than psychophysiologists in defining
the power of language to bridge gaps for . . . he sees talk as animating
simultaneity both within and between organisms" (xliii-iv). If Bakhtin
is right about the power of the word, and Lynch's experiments seem to
support his view, then Rusi's speech and Coomi's active reception and
understanding response enact a physical change. What remains to be seen
at the end of the novel is if that understanding connection will last.
One of the implications of my self's limited point-of-view and need for
the other is that when I am self-conscious, I experience myself in the
category of the other. "A certain renewed effort," Bakhtin writes,
"is required in order to visualize myself distinctly en face
and to break away completely from my inner self-sensation" ("Author"
30). But even then, my own view of myself lacks a certain depth. According
to Bakhtin,
"we shall be struck by the peculiar emptiness, ghostliness,
and an eerie, frightening solitariness of this outward image of
ourselves . . . [This] is explained by the fact that we lack any emotional
and volitional approach to this outward image that could vivify it and
include or incorporate it axiologically within the outward unity of the
plastic-pictorial world." (ibid. 30).
A good example of this occurs during the wedding reception when Coomi
is indulging her obsession with taking mental photographs to share with
Binny or Dosamai. As she watches Rusi laugh at Bomi's whispered joke,
she clicks an imaginary photo to save for herself as a remembrance of
a younger, happier Rusi. When Rusi catches her staring at him, "the
laughter that had bubbled in him like a spring froze . . . His face closed
like a door" (119). Hurt by Rusi's hardened gaze, Coomi "turned
her camera on herself. Click. She watched herself dissolve into nothingness"
(119). When Coomi takes these pictures, she is already feeling slightly
isolated from the group-"someone who stood slightly outside the circle,
watching, observing everything" (81). She is able to capture Rusi
in one of his best moments, but she cannot evaluate herself.
Tehmi, the only other guest who notices Coomi's peculiar habit of blinking
memories, has a similar experience when she has "a sudden clear picture
of herself: an old snowy-haired woman standing alone, holding an almost
empty glass of whiskey and giggling to herself. The picture made her giggle
even more" (204). She is able to laugh at the ridiculous way she
looks to herself, but her self-awareness only serves to highlight her
isolation. The narrator notes, "People were staring at her. But she
was used to that" (204).
Bakhtin writes that self-portraits have this same eerie look to them:
"It seems to me that a self-portrait can always be distinguished
from a portrait by the peculiarly ghostly character of the face: the face
does not, as it were, include within itself the full human being"
("Author" 34). A portrait, on the other hand, is painted by
an other, an artist who can give the subject emotional depth and value
because he or she stands transgredient to the subject (ibid. 34). When
Jimmy and Zarin give their special guests a photo album, they perform
a similar function. Just as the album helps to unify the novel structurally
by reviewing the highlights from each of the character's individual histories,
so it also helps to unite the old Wadia Baug crew by reminding them of
their bond with one another. "I'm proud of Cyrus being included in
a group of such fine people," Tehmi says (240). And what takes Rusi's
breath away as he views the picture of himself with Coomi on the beach
is not his own youthful image but "the love and tenderness on Coomi's
face" (243). Like the activity of the portrait artist, the old photos
and the neighbors' responses consummate their understanding of their selves.
As Soli says to Jimmy, "You have reminded us of who we are and what
we are to one another. You've given us ourselves back, our youth and our
promise. Our real selves back, minus a few double chins and bald heads,
you could say" (269).
Their magical evening is shattered, however, when the father waiting in
the group of hungry people outside of the gates throws a rock through
the window. All evening long and for the majority of their lives, the
middle-class Parsis of Wadia Baug had managed to ignore the poor lurking
on the borders of their more comfortable existence. And even after the
stone-thrower violently enters their lives, they "determine to wake
up tomorrow having put all of this badness out of their minds" (271).
But Rusi, who has perhaps realized anew the necessity of living in dialogue,
vows to remember the events of the day and to remain open to the world
outside: "Somehow, he had to learn to navigate between contentment
and complacency, between caution and fear, between the known safety of
Wadia Baug and the unknowable world outside its walls" (270).
At the end of the novel, all of Wadia Baug's hopes for the future are
pinned on Mehernosh and his young bride. Perhaps this small Parsi community
should look instead to Rusi, who with new found strength is resolving
to live on the borders in dialogue: "Just as his ancestors had occupied
the safe small strip of space between Hindu and Muslim, between Indian
and English, between East and West, he had to live in the no-man's-land
between the rage of the stone thrower and the terror of the stoned"
(270). Perhaps there is hope for Rusi in greater communication and mercy
with Coomi and the city of Bombay-in Bakhtin's meaning-giving dialogue
between self and other.
Notes
1. Perhaps it is more accurate when drawing on Bakhtin to speak, as Todorov does, of I and Thou rather than self and other.
2. Bakhtin used the word transgredient "in complementary
sense to 'ingredients,' to designate elements of consciousness that are
external to it but nonetheless absolutely necessary for its completion,
for its achievement of totalization" (Todorov 95).
3. Gerald Prince explains that narrated monologue is characterized by
"free indirect discourse in the context of third-person narrative.
With narrated monologue (as opposed to psychonarration), the account of
the character's discourse is mainly in words that are recognizably the
character's" (57). Focalization is a clumsy word, but a handy concept
for distinguishing "who speaks" from "who sees" (Prince
32).
4. And exemplifying Bakhtin's idea that the novel as a genre "can
be defined as a diversity of social speech types (sometimes even diversity
of languages) and a diversity of individual voices, artistically organized"
("Discourse" 1192)!
Works Cited
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Art and Answerability: Early
Philosophical Essays. Trans. Vadim Liapunov. Eds. Michael Holquist
and Vadim
Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. 4-256.
-----. "Discourse in the Novel." Translated by Caryl Emerson
and Michael Holquist. The
Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Vincent B. Leitch, et al,
eds.
New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 2001. 1190-1220.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction.
New York: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
Holquist, Michael. Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World. 2nd ed. New
York: Routledge,
2002.
-----. "Introduction: The Architectonics of Answerability."
Art and
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Prince, Gerald. A Dictionary of Narratology. Lincoln: University
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1987.
Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Trans.
Wlad Godzich.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984.
Umrigar, Thrity. Bombay Time. New York: Picador USA, 2001.