Narcopolis

This is not the book for the wishy washy airy fairy cup-o-chai bourgeoisie reader of Indian writing in English. This is for the connoisseur, one who knows the pipe and the tales of the smoke and mirrors of life. The journey into this Parnassus of quickened, heightened, multiplied consciousness in Narcopolis begins and ends in Bombay, with an exciting interlude in China and a mention of New York. It is a journey on the slow train of transgressions, living vicariously the vicissitudes of its inhabitants slipping djinn-like in and out of opiate tunnels of illumination. Dive in and discover the secrets of Dionysian harmonies.

Narcopolis is a hard hitting, realistic book that shines a light on the drug sub-culture in Bombay over the past 4 decades. The story revolves a motley cast and traces their lives against the backdrop of a fast changing city. Thayil's biggest success is that he neither glamorizes nor vilifies any of the protagonists, instead describing their weaknesses and foibles without any judgement or pity. Ultimately, this is a book about Bombay - perhaps the biggest drug of them all. A good read for those who want to learn more about a, hitherto ignored, side of this mad city.

Jeet Thayil’s debut novel Narcopolis (2012) marks a continuation in the Indian literary scene of a conscious awareness of the problematics of identity and belonging (personal, religious, sexual, regional, national, and international) in an ever evolving post-independent, post-colonial India. The backdrop of the drug world where an unlikely set of characters come together provides the locus for the intersection of these elements. This theme is infused formalistically with a conscious stylistic engagement with what is now termed high modernism as well as postmodernism. James Joyce makes his presence felt as early as the prologue and is followed by Baudelaire, Burroughs among others pervading the spirit of the city of the dead. The narrator, Dom Ullis (Ulysses?), a Tiresias in the land of this rabidly globalising, decaying, dying city is himself a ghost. His ineffectuality is replicated by the pattern of the narrative itself where he appears and disappears by turns and even more so than Eliot’s Tiresias is not only not prophetic but barely able to decipher the meaning of the phantasmagoria of characters and images that surround him. Dom is unable to even take credit for his story transferring any active participation that storytelling might have accidentally granted him to the pipe.
Where Narcopolis gains is, apart from the realistic description of Bombay’s underbelly and its changing face over a span of over thirty years, is the effortless ease with which its author transforms autobiography into fiction. Thayil is quoted as saying “I didn’t even bother changing some of the names, as they’re all dead now.” The keen eye with which he makes his reader percolate the several layers of lives of the array of characters Dimple, Rumi, Rashid, Salim, Jamal, Bengali through the various episodes is achieved by allowing their multiplicity of the voices to emerge. This dialogic mode is one of the reasons that prevent the novel from becoming just another drug/junkie novel. For it is not just addiction to heroine or opium that return the narcos (the inhabitants of this narco-polis) to this world. Everyone is trapped in their own personal hell, the pipe just helps them burn in another one. Dimple is addicted to knowledge, Rumi to violence, Mr Lee to his China, Rashid to Dimple as Thayil is to his Bombay.
Nietzsche might have been right in asserting that “blessed are the forgetful” but it is a luxury that only a few can lay claim to. Memory finds its most painful rendition in acting as a persistent reminder to the inhabitants of this Hades of their dislocation and it is this inability to forget which is also the failure to forgive or outgrow the past. The displacement physical/geographical as well as mental resurges at key moments whether it is when Dimple recounts her childhood with her mother Hindu-Christian mother in north-east India or Mr Lee’s personal history of China. This rootlessness of being which the characters often try to repress finds alternative modes of expression in religion or opium or sex but is bound to fail as the past they are trying to recapture is as illusory as the present they inhabit. Yes, Bombay is dying. To quote the author, “Everybody is dying...” But there is yet time for the burial of the dead in this Narcopolis/Necropolis. Redemption lies just around the corner from Shuklaji Street. The glimmer of it is found in the various manifestations of love that still makes itself felt despite all odds. Of course love too is often muted, perverted, dead, or even a ghost and is rarely if at all expressed. Still it exists and beyond life and often inextricably intertwined with memory. Lives are stretched beyond death as long as one is remembered: Mr Lee comes back from the dead when Dimple betrays her last promise to him and Dimple will remain alive as long as Rashid’s memory does. Even the fraudulent S T Pande who is his own publisher and bookseller (reminiscent of Swift) hints at the necessity of remembering to forget. Its placement in the text also questions the very nature of fictionality as well as reality when fiction is placed within fiction.
The end, as it has often been remarked, marks the transition of an ever evolving Bombay whose ever-changing yet ever-the-same sea is all that remains from an older world long dead. Bleak as it is, it also marks a forward movement, an acceptance of the old world on its own terms without blaming it and without guilt. Spider-man Shankar won’t return to that world but cares enough to convey his regards to his old boss and Ullis is no longer a regular but a visitor. This understanding of addiction (to drugs, violence, love, sex, memory) and its reasoned acceptance/rejection on its own terms is where Narcopolis’ beauty lies. For, here races condemned to hundred years of solitude might still have a second opportunity on earth.

this isa book for teh readers, who read books fort he flow of events, for the descriprion, for moving back and forth in history... all booker nominees carry a distinct mark.

midmights children, sesne of an ending, noe nacropolis, all are teh same yet different.

there is nothing to say aboutt eh book as it deals omn the fgeneral stroy of opium/eunchs/prostitures, sexual desires.. .

BUT THE BEST PART IS THE RPESENTATION.
U FEEL AS IF U R A PART OF THE PROCEEDINGS.
and peobably that is what makes great writers different.
this is not a chalu book by some young writer who has spent lahs for the publicity of the book and has arranged bookr eleases and starry celebrations.
this is worth aread, if u like literature, if u like teh detailed description of feelings, ehich u yourself have failed in doing....

please read hte book. you will write a better review.
thanks

Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil is one of the worst books I have ever read. Set in 1970's Bombay the book has weird characters and their stories make you puke and ponder if such people do exist in the world. With words in both hindi and english; the author is successful in weaving a hallucinatory novel that takes you to the dirtiest drug snorting dens to shady sex bars. The pages move slowly at times and I must say not worth the dope! DO NOT BUY OR BORROW!

A Caveat: Just in case your willing to take the risk and read this book... ensure you are in a state of trance!