Mumbai Fables Read online

  Like most Doga comic books, the series on communal conflicts also begins with declarative statements in the opening page that set the moral parameters of the narrative. A living body needs a heartbeat, a heartbeat needs blood, and blood needs oxygen. A living city needs the law, the law needs honesty, and honesty needs humanity. Thus begins Doga Hindu Hai (Doga Is Hindu). This analogical opening sets a fundamental relationship between blood and humanity, echoing the sentiment in Shylock’s question “If you prick us, do we not bleed?” Underneath the differences of religion, we are all human. Blood does not differentiate between Hindus and Muslims. When this universal belief is challenged, the Doga series on the Hindu-Muslim conflict tells us, a communal bloodbath engulfs us.

  The story concerns a blood bank, whose manager is in league with a fiendish criminal, Bloodman. To obtain blood, the manager has to be bribed. The money goes to Bloodman, who replenishes the supply by his tie-up with a drug pusher, Smackbhai (Brother Smack). Smackbhai lures workers into his drug den, where they blow their monthly paychecks on smack. While they are lost in their drug-induced dreamworld, blood is drained out of their veins and sold at a premium at the blood bank. Doga intervenes when the corrupt blood bank manager denies blood for children injured in a school-bus accident. He beats up the manager and the Bloodman’s thugs. In response, the enraged criminal lays a deadly plot. He shoots several of his own Muslim hirelings, leaving three Hindus alive. His men spread the rumor that Doga killed only Muslims and spared the Hindus because he is a Hindu himself. Communal tensions grip the city. These escalate into open warfare as a result of another conspiracy hatched by Bloodman.

  Doga is invited to a Hindu wedding in Dharavi. The bride insists that the superhero escort her to the palanquin after the wedding. Treating her as his sister, Doga willingly does the deed and leaves. As the newly wed bride departs from her natal home in a palanquin, Muslim rioters block the path. They attack the Hindu wedding party but flee when they see Doga. Hindu rioters react by attacking a Muslim wedding, which is occurring at the same time, also in Dharavi. The Muslims’ hopes soar when they spot Doga; they are sure that the superhero will come to their rescue. But Doga sits frozen in a corner, paralyzed by the spiked dessert that he has eaten at the Hindu wedding. It is later revealed that the woman who gave it to him is Bloodman’s plant. But meanwhile, Doga’s frozen state convinces the Muslims that Doga is on the Hindu side. His image as a superhero transcending community identity is tarnished. The Muslim bride spits at him, and the city rings with cries denouncing Doga as a Hindu communalist.

  The Hindu-Muslim violence rages on in the city. When arson and killings take over, the army is summoned to restore order. Such is the scale and intensity of the chaos and carnage that the artist dispenses with the square panel—the meter of comic books (see plate 7). It is as if the anarchy has thrown even the comic-book format out of alignment, unable to contain the disorderly energy of sectarian violence. Doga plunges into the cauldron to extinguish the fire, but he is helpless, unable to decide whom to thrash and whom to spare (see plate 8).

  The Muslims turn on Doga, convinced that he is on the other side. A Muslim mob converges on him and pummels him when it finds further evidence—again planted by Bloodman’s agents—that he is one of the Hindu assailants. Rather than defend himself, Doga meekly suffers a rain of blows by sticks and iron rods. Why should he protect his body when his reputation as a man who is above religious difference is already dead? The blows nearly kill him. Fortunately, Lomdi (Fox), a female superhero, whisks him away. As she nurses him, Doga’s soul separates from his body and cries out in pain (see plate 9). The last time he has cried was as a young boy when witnessing Halkan’s cruelties. A sense of duty toward others has enabled him to suppress pain. But how can he withstand the pain of being seen as a betrayer of trust? His soul sobs inconsolably. Lomdi tries to coax him back to life, but Doga’s soul resists. Why does she want to save him? How can he live with the burden of communal slaughter? Doga is dead, and the dead cannot be brought back to life.

  The sociological and political phenomenon of the communal bloodbath becomes a crisis of the soul, a deep psychic event in the comic book. The dark and foreboding artwork and the internal monologue create a picture of psychological unraveling. Despair and self-doubt overwhelm the resolute and indestructible superhero. The agents of the state can be corrupt, the politicians can be crooked, and the criminals can hatch conspiracies. But what happens when the general principle itself is placed in doubt? To the extent that Doga embodies the universal ideal, the splitting of his body and soul expresses the loss of the general principle. Mumbai is no longer Mumbai when it loses the bond of humanity underlying religious difference; it is a Hobbesian jungle of warfare and brutality.

  Thanks to Bloodman’s conspiracy, ranged against Doga are the city’s population, the police, and the military, which has been called in to restore order. The superhero can battle his adversaries and survive physical attacks but not the destruction of his moral being. If Doga is to live, he must regain his moral reputation. His soul must rejoin his body. Fortunately for the city, this is exactly what happens. In Doga Ka Curfew (Doga’s Curfew), the superhero rises up from the ashes. With grim determination, he imposes a curfew on the city to quell violence. Anyone venturing out, particularly those armed with weapons, is subjected to Doga’s harsh justice. He enlists his faithful dogs to enforce his will. When the military sedate his faithful canine army, Doga appeals to their conscience and wills them back to action. As the superhero roams the city to enforce his curfew, he carries on an internal monologue on the effects of communal carnage (plate 10). He is puzzled by people who invite riots even though they are fully aware that these result only in destruction, orphaned children, and devastated families. Thousands are willing to die in the name of religion, but no one is willing to fight for humanity.

  Doga’s curfew stops the bloodshed, but there is still the matter of his besmirched reputation. How can the superhero, embodying the universal ideal of communal harmony, live with the stigma of being a Hindu communalist? He is resolute in smothering the embers of violence, but his secular heart bleeds. Fortunately, two honest policemen discover video footage that reveals how the false evidence implicating Doga as a Hindu partisan was planted. When the footage is shown in slow motion on television, the conspiracy to frame the superhero becomes clear to Mumbai’s residents. Stricken with guilt for having doubted Doga, they once again embrace him. Bloodman dies a bloody death when Doga orders that no blood supply be made available to revive the bleeding, bullet-riddled body of the merchant of blood.

  The superhero format requires a villain, a definite cause for criminal mayhem, which must be annihilated. Thus, by killing Blood-man, Doga slays the cause of the communal bloodbath. But along the way, the comic book identifies the murderous fury of the crowd as the real agent of carnage. It is this bloody rage that splits Doga’s body from his soul. It breaks apart the very embodiment of the universal ideal of human coexistence. As the superhero—the conscience of society—grieves for the damage wreaked by the frenzy of communal violence, questions of sociology and politics are reduced to the elemental level of blood and humanity. Caring for fellow human beings is portrayed as the essence of religion. Social harmony means not a society that is above religion but one nourished by religion’s commitment to humanity. Thus, Adrakh Chacha expresses his Islamic identity by standing up for the welfare of all, not just the Muslim community.

  Caring for other human beings, according to the comic book, is what holds an urban society together. The society plunges into crisis when vested interests hatch criminal conspiracies that incite violent passions. As the storm of communal rage engulfs the streets, the glue that binds humanity gives way. When this happens, the rule of law is the only answer. However, the state is unable to enforce the law; its power and authority are compromised. Therefore, the superhero must act.

  LAW’S EMISSARY

  Act he does, swiftly and decisively, to enforce the law. Battli
ng the diabolical underworld dons, then slaying the vicious criminal in the pious garb of a politician, Doga annihilates them all. The villains’ power is commensurate with that of the superhero. Though they lack Doga’s immense physical strength and indestructibility, the crime lords command gangsters and have corrupt politicians and policemen dancing to their tune. The terrorists operate with the support of foreign powers. Some, like Kaal Paheliya, are devilishly devious like the Joker in Batman. Thus, Doga has to solve the trickster Paheliya’s riddles in order to foil his criminal designs. All this helps to magnify Doga’s superhero character.

  The superhero’s exploits against the supervillains, his relentless drive to rescue Mumbai’s inhabitants, portray the predicaments of life in the modern metropolis. The challenges are many. The attractions of quick money, the lure of drugs, shortcuts to career advancement, and enticements of fame turn the city into a powder keg of pressure. The availability of technologies of killing—AK-47s, grenades, and bombs—make life precarious. With modern technologies of transportation, criminals strike with lightning speed. The density, diversity, and size of the city’s population unleash conflicting forces. Now moved by one impulse, then by another, the city’s crowd adds to its volatility. In Doga’s eyes, Mumbai is never in a state of repose but in constant motion, moved by an excess of conflicting stimuli. The power of money runs riot, setting loose pathological violence for criminal gain. No kinship of blood binds this urban society. With its framework of law in tatters because of criminal conspiracies, it lurches from crisis to crisis.

  Doga confronts the challenges of not just any modern metropolis but those of contemporary Mumbai. Much of the series’ drama derives from Doga’s engagement with the experiences of the last two decades—the criminalization of politics, the underworld menace, the builder-criminal-politician nexus, communal riots, and terrorist attacks. Borrowing freely from the journalistic and cinematic images of urban strife and darkness while using the popular art form of comic books, Doga strips contemporary events and figures down to their bare essentials and universalizes them. Its graphic retelling distills Mumbai’s experiences to simple but powerful stories of the state’s failure to act against injustice. We see the city stalked by the pathology of criminal violence, unrestrained by the rule of law. The criminalization of politics is the desecration of khaki and khaddar; the outbreak of communal violence is a crisis in human relations. As Doga confronts the enemies of truth, justice, democracy, and human community, the comic book’s stark narrative form magnifies the moral stakes.

  To its credit, though, the comic book is reflexive about Doga’s moral authority. So, when the stigma of being a Hindu communalist haunts him, Doga’s soul splits off from his body. How can he be a superhero when the public doubts his secular self? He may be physically indestructible, but Doga cannot be Doga against public opinion. The legitimacy of his vigilante violence depends on his maintaining the public’s trust. And even then, his moral authority is not entirely secure. Why not fight crime and injustice with the law and democratic activism, instead of vigilante violence? Do the ends justify the means? When Monica poses these questions, Suraj is not entirely convinced, but he reluctantly declares Doga dead. As criminals burn shantytowns and render people homeless to make way for luxury hotels and apartment towers, an immense chasm opens between the ideal of the state as an instrument of general welfare and the reality of its agents’ complicity in crime and corruption. It is a breach that only the superhero can fill. Even Monica arrives at this conclusion. Doga must kill the criminals, rather than hand them over to the police as Batman and Superman do, because the political and legal order is thoroughly corroded. He must act on the state’s behalf because its agents cannot or will not. A contingent moral justification for Doga’s violent vigilantism is reestablished.

  Doga’s power is imperishable. But he does not deploy it to establish his personal rule. He is law’s emissary. If he acts outside the law to restore its authority, this is because Mumbai lives in dark, unruly times. Adopting the viewpoint of the street, Doga sees the city perverted by the illicit use of money, power, politics, and religion. The constant peril posed to the rule of law is drawn in the images of burning slums and crowd violence. Blood-splattered panels, and the drawings of evil villains voicing their poisonous plans, bring the reader face to face with the elemental meaning of lawlessness. When Doga annihilates the outlaws, he acts to rehabilitate the hegemony of law, to rescue state authority from the damage inflicted by its agents. From his actions, it is clear that the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order depends on the probity of its functionaries. Even the superhero is not exempt from accountability.

  Mumbai’s society is diverse, consisting of different classes, religious communities, and neighborhoods, but it has no foundational structure, no primordial ties of kin, caste, or religion. It is a delicate mix, a “fine balance” between Hindus and Muslims, the rich and the poor, state power and ordinary citizens. The thread that holds together Mumbai’s disparate social, cultural, and political fabric is the everyday practice of human interactions. But criminals, crooked politicians, and communal rioters threaten this slender thread. They hatch conspiracies every minute to achieve their nefarious aims. Mumbai teeters under this pressure, struggling to maintain itself as a just and democratic city of law. Injustice runs riot while the law stands corroded and paralyzed. Hoodlums go on the rampage, thrashing law-abiding citizens. So anonymous are social relations in the big city that bystanders do not intervene to stop the violence, and nor do the police. The comic book presents Bombay Dying from the point of view of the street. For it is there that injustice and violence threaten the very essence of the urban order. Fortunately, Doga is there, standing with the people and delivering street justice to restore the urban legal order.

  9

  DREAMWORLDS

  “Haay Haay Haay Haay . . .”

  On the pavement by the sea, a dark thin man is smacking his blood-spattered naked back with a whip made of rags. People have thrown coins in front of him. This is the first time that Neel has seen such an original method of earning a livelihood.

  Tonight he will reach his shack. Just as a middle-class man’s wife greets him with a cup of tea, this man’s wife will welcome him by soothing his bloodied back with balm. He never found work as a load carrier or as a security guard. Never learnt to mend shoes, broken umbrellas, or sing with his harmonium on the local train. Never acquired the skill to pick pockets, to snatch purses and chains. He could not even manage to get hold of two-dozen bananas in a broken basket. He and his family reeled with hunger. So, he made a whip out of his torn shirt and started beating his back. After a few hours, when blood started spluttering, a pious woman threw him a five-rupee bill. Why has the President not awarded this ingenious man with a prize for India’s greatest scientific invention?1

  This is a scene from a Hindi novel about two men from North India, Neel and Bhola, who meet on a train on their way to Mumbai to seek their fortunes. “I am going to Mumbai to earn a hundred thousand rupees in two years,” Bhola announces soon after making Neel’s acquaintance. His plan is to land a job as a security guard in an apartment building, like many of his North Indian compatriots. Neel has set his sights higher. After all, unlike the aspiring security guard, he is educated. With his fledgling academic career in Delhi having gone up in smoke because of an affair with his PhD adviser’s niece, he is in the city to make a new beginning. Money and success will come easily in Mumbai for a man of his education and youthful good looks, he has been told. In spite of the difference in class and education, Neel feels a strange closeness to the simple and generous-hearted Bhola and is happy to take him around the city that he knows from a guidebook.

  Both Neel and Bhola have landed in Mumbai, drawn by its fabled opportunities. It is another matter that one will become a gigolo and the other will join the underworld. Upon arrival, they take in the tourist attractions. The sights live up to their fabulous image of the city. As they gaze upon the city fr
om the windows of Naaz Restaurant on Hanging Gardens in Malabar Hill, the clustered towers on Cuffe Parade, then Express Tower, then the Air India building, and finally the string of buildings on Marine Drive sweeping into Chowpatty come into view. The sight of the limitless expanse of the Arabian Sea is entrancing. Waves crash into the seawall, turning into foam, then transforming back into a lacework of water drops. The crimson rays of the setting sun are reflected on the surface of the water. Neel is witness to Mumbai’s doubly colonized history—the colonization of nature by culture and its formation through the British territorial conquest.2 The fables spun by this doubly colonized history are embodied in the structures spread out before his eyes. But what are the stories hidden in this fabled city by the sea?

  Neel finds the answer at the Gateway of India, an area that was witness to a furious symbolic contest to claim the city. Standing tall by the sea is the Gateway, built in 1923 to monumentalize the visit of the Prince of Wales. Nearby is the colossal statue of Shivaji on a horse, contesting the British claim to ownership of Mumbai. The immigrant duo does not notice the Maratha warrior. Instead, their eyes are drawn across the road to the opulent Taj Mahal Hotel, a tribute to the pride and wealth of its Parsi founder, Jamsetji Tata. Bhola knows the story that Tata built it when he was refused entry into a British-owned hotel. Neel patiently answers his uneducated companion’s questions about the Taj and discusses its architectural merits in comparison with the Intercontinental Hotel. The thin dark man whipping his body breaks their reverie. His bloodied back wins the symbolic contest over the city. Barely a day in his new home, Neel grasps that hidden in Mumbai’s fabulous history are stories of its legendary spirit of survival. You duck and weave, grab opportunities, licit and illicit, to survive. And when all else fails, you turn to your own body, whip it bloody, or become a gigolo, as Neel does, in exchange for a few coins.