Arre baba, dis is Orlem

Malad’s Catholic neighbourhood is the setting for Lindsay Pereira’s debut novel, where dreams, upheavals and secrets of dwellers in a rickety building play out in a bitter-sweet, no-holds-barred storyline

Rosy the secretary. Peter the drunkard. Johnnie the wannabe don. Bollywood can take credit for stereotyping the Catholic community. Thankfully, the literary world has salvaged this with more balanced depictions. Adding to this repository of urban Indian literature, mid-day columnist Lindsay Pereira’s Gods and Ends (Penguin Random House) that releases on March 22, is a dissective and, often uncomfortable portrayal of a group of fictional residents of the decrepit Obrigado Mansion in Orlem. This Malad neighbourhood is home to one of the city’s largest concentrations of Catholics. Pereira’s chronicling subtly encapsulates their eccentricities, including the diction and acerbic humour, all of which will resonate with not just Bombaywallahs.

The parish and prayer form an integral part of social conscience in the book. Pic/Nimesh Dave

As a chronicler, it’s undoubtedly an ode to his favourite city, because of “its endless capacity for surprise,” he says. “When I began writing about it, I knew there were stories hidden in plain sight but didn’t believe I had the wherewithal to try and do them justice. I wrote this book not only because there has been no novel set in Orlem before, but because every suburb can surprise, anger, or horrify in equal measure. When a writer, artist, or filmmaker attempts to recreate his or her particular reality, we get a perspective that, coupled with other voices, creates an approximation of a complete picture.” And now, he adds his voice to those of writers before him, all of whom have tried to bring Bombay to life. “My attempt may be an awful one, but I stand by it, nonetheless,” he says.

Excerpts from an interview:

Why did you set Gods and Ends in Orlem as opposed to other Catholic localities like say, Chapel Road, Vakola, or IC Colony in Borivali?
It was simply because I was born in Orlem and lived there for three decades. It is where I still have family, and where my grandparents are buried. It will always come closest to my idea of home.

Each character has their baggage and quirks, and yet, barring a few, resignation seems to be a common thread that ties them.
The book’s title is a pun on the way these characters’ stories are told, as well as their milieu. They rent rooms and, as tenants, occupy a lower rung in an environment where invisible lines have always been drawn by class. I believe this to be true of any tight-knit community in India. As people who don’t own homes, they are doubly marginalised in a minority community. Christians comprise approximately 2.3 per cent of India’s population, of which Roman Catholics are just one denomination. I wanted to look at forgotten people struggling not just by virtue of living on the margins in a country defined by majoritarianism, but with internal pressures exerted by neighbours. From that perspective, a sense of resignation is almost inevitable, and I wanted it to come through.

Lindsay Pereira. Pic/Hemal Shroff

Were you inspired by people from your growing-up days while creating these characters?
Most of the characters were put together with bits and pieces gathered via real interactions. Some traits were based on people I grew up with or knew of during my formative years.

The storyline begins from the pre-Emergency era, and moves forward into more recent times...
Interactions between communities changed drastically after liberalisation, and I wanted to focus on that period because it allowed me to look at these characters when the idea of an old India was beginning to vanish. Affluence was swift and sudden in some parts, and there were repercussions across society that haven’t been fully understood. Property prices rose drastically, for instance, pushing more people towards lives of uncertainty, and there were other fallouts as some began earning more than their parents ever did, even as occupations and jobs were made redundant. This was the Bombay I grew up in. To write about it was, for me, also an act of remembrance.

Orlem, the Gulf and Goa act as key barometers for success and failure among the residents of Obrigado Mansion. Why is that?
Yes. I remember the Gulf War and its aftermath vividly because it upended so many lives in my part of the city. Catholic communities don’t rely on remittances from the Gulf as much as they used to, but it was once a much sought-after destination that had the power to transform the homes of those lucky enough to find a footing in 
the Emirates. This wasn’t true of just one community, of course.

The book is a microscopic lens on a certain strata of Goan Catholics. As their narratives progressed, was it tempting to re-do any character or the draft?
I’m not sure it focuses solely on one ethnic group [Goan Catholics], because Orlem also has a significant East Indian and Mangalorean population, and the lines between them start to blur when one looks beyond differences of dialect and cuisine. My first draft had no underlying skeleton and was meant to be a series of disjointed voices. I liked the approach, but realised it demanded too much from a reader. I amended it to introduce characters who could be followed, creating a structure I could hang opinions upon. I did want to give some stories more attention than I eventually did, but my final draft came closest to what I wanted to capture, which is a sense of life at a particular time, rather than individual stories.

Who was the most challenging character?
It was always Philomena because of the ambiguity that surrounds her like a fog. There is goodness in her, but also a darkness that surfaces occasionally. None of it is her fault, because circumstances push certain elements of her personality to the forefront, so I hesitate to label her as simplistically good or evil. I wanted her to leave a reader with sympathy, as well as a bad taste in the mouth.

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