Bombay Tiger By Kamala Markandaya, Penguin, Rs 495

Bombay Tiger is the posthumously published novel by Kamala Markandaya, the author of such acclaimed books as Nectar in a Sieve and A Handful of Rice. Markandaya was born in Mysore and moved to England after Independence. Her last years in London were spent in anonymity. After her death in 2004, the typescript of a novel called The Catalyst: Alias, Bombay Tiger, was found by her daughter.

The novel deals with post-Independence India of the mid- Eighties and early-Nineties, when socialism was giving way to reforms encouraging private enterprise. Bombay Tiger is the story of Ganguli, a village migrant, who comes to Bombay with nothing except his drive to become the biggest industrialist in the teeming metropolis. In fact, Bombay Tiger is the nickname given to Ganguli because of his tiger-like ferocity and doggedness to make it to the big league of business.

Interwoven with Ganguli’s narrative, which deals with the period after he becomes a tycoon, is the story of Rao, his classmate and rival, and of Rajiv Pandey, the son of Ganguli’s village teacher and a doctor returned from the West. Ganguli, now one of Bombay ’s biggest industrialists, is unscrupulous to the point of being almost Machiavellian. Placed as a foil against his capitalism is Rajiv, the idealist, with his head and heart filled with Western ideology. In the novel’s gallery of characters is Lekha, Ganguli’s only child by his wife, who dies during childbirth. Another character who makes a mark is Rao. He is Ganguli’s rival but is left far behind in the rat-race. The novel traces the lives of these characters, but the main focus remains trained on Ganguli’s overpowering ambition, his bond with his labourers and his strange affection for his only daughter.

The apparently comic narrative voice fails, for there is nothing in the book that provokes laughter, although some of the characters end up becoming caricatures. The complexities of Ganguli’s character, his periods of grief, joy, anger and love are handled with some success. But one would expect greater sensitivity from an accomplished novelist like Markandaya in her delineation of the non-lead characters.

The action of the novel is placed within Bombay’s high society — with its lawyers, politicians, filmmakers and industrialists. Nowhere do we find the real Bombay that ordinary people can identify with, except for one scene of Holi revelry on the streets. Bombay Tiger may not be the true portrait of India of the mid-Eighties and early-Nineties; it may also not be the best of Markandaya’s works. Rather, it should be read as the last representation of the land of her birth by a writer who was destined to die on foreign soil.