Confessions of an Epic Indian

Vertigo: A novel by Ashok Banker 

Featured Comment by Amit Varma, on his popular blog
India Uncut

Banking on passion

Ashok Banker, in an interview with Sonia Faleiro, says:

I don’t think I’m a very talented writer, but I have passion. What I lack in stylistic or linguistic dexterity, and sheer artistry, I make up for with fecundity, fire, and feel.

He’s right. That isn’t a boast or false modesty, but honesty, a rare quality when the most common failing of our species is self-delusion.

I must confess here that I am not entirely a fan of Banker’s writing. I haven’t read his recent series, and I read “Vertigo” and “Byculla Boys” years ago. The quality that struck me most about “Vertigo” was passion. It was honest and in-your-face writing, devoid of pretence, with no attempted literary flourishes or suchlike. The book didn’t say, as so many Indian novels in English do, “I write so well, look at me.” It said: “This is the story I have to tell. Listen.”

Banker’s passion for telling the story and nothing else also manifested himself in the way he dealt with the world, and his disdain for the press and the trappings of being a writer. He speaks about all that in the interview with Faleiro, so go read that to get more of a feel for what the man is about.

Featured review by Manas Sengupta, Mumbai: This review first appeared on Mouthshut.com

“A MUST READ!!!! For anyone who has faced insecurity about work! For anyone who has craved true love! For anyone who has felt completely at sea about things around him (/her)! For anyone who has ever been beyond the glory days of teen and tried to find his true self.

Jai, the protagonist, is you, is me, is all of us. His is a simple story told in simple words. That’s the best part about it. Unlike many Indian authors, A Banker, does not try and prove his worthiness as an English writer by using heavy 10-letter laden words. He does so by writing a book he feels about, he surely has gone through and by keeping his foot rooted to terra firma.

For people in Mumbai, u will relate to him rite from the minute details, (viz. morning rush hour local to Churchgate) to the deep rooted concerns, rather insecurities, abt work, love, family, finance etc. For people outside of Mumbai, you will still relate to all thats happening in Jaiís life. Even if u dont know where and wat Gokul is. (Those who do, cheers, lived 2 years on those cramped tables!!)

Hats off to the author for writing a simple story which encompasses everything. Just one regret. How the hell did he not write a sequel to this book??

The various reviews of the book (not just on this site) called it an Indian epic. I was circumspect.. even cynical. But trust me, if you are a middle classed working Indian, you HAVE to read the book. And to think that this book was written in 1992, not much has changed!!

As for critiquing the book on specifics, here goes.

The characters are simple, yet clearly and honestly defined. A spade is called a spade.
The plot line moves fast. Every chapter rushes you through a major event. Its so beautifully structred, you are finishing one episode and you are already thinking ííWhat Nextíí.

The pace is maintained throughout, and that is the only let down. Cause, even the climax is the same. It doesnt reach a greater height. Unlike what climaxes are meant to do. They end the story with a question mark… thought provoking yes, but fulfillin no.

All in all, read the book, just get your hands on it. You will love it. I did. And it surely is the MOST simple yet enriching book i have ever read.” Manas Sengupta, Mumbai

“I got into big-time reading after getting my hands on a copy of Vertigo. I have your Ramayana series too. I have been looking for Byculla Boy everywhere. Can you send me a signed copy? Sir, I am your biggest fan.” Ekta Kapoor, film and television producer, by sms to Ashok

The following review by S. Manzoorul Islam first appeared in The Daily Star (Bangladesh), on May 7, 2005. It appears below exactly as published; not one word has been altered or deleted.

Dizzying depths: A review of Vertigo by Ashok Banker, Penguin India New Delhi, 2005 reprint, 392 pp, Rs. 295

1. The setting of Vertigo is Bombay, or rather slices of it: the financial district, a few suburban areas, the Marine Drive, a couple of hotels, the two flats Jayesh or Jay Mehta, the protagonist, lives in. Bombay is not yet Mumbai, since the time is early 1980s, and the milieu the novel describes consists mostly of denizens of a Darwinian corporate underbelly where money and power and glitter rule. Ashok Banker has meticulously kept to his time frame, drawing generous references to the happenings in the Indian and global corporate worlds, politics and culture of the time to authenticate his narrative: Indira Gandhi, Lee Iacocca, Dirty Harry movies, Dan Aykroyd and James Belushi, Grease 2, Gigi, Bruce Springsteen’s Brilliant disguise, Ayatullah Khomeini, Automatic Teller Machines, 386 liquid crystal display laptop selling for under Rs. 1 lakh . . .. Say it again? Yes, ATMs and LCD laptops. But in Bombay circa 1982? Why not?! However, but the reviewer, who was in Bombay for a week in 1983 doesn’t remember seeing even one ATM in the crowded bank of Bombay where he went to cash his US dollars, and had to wait endless hours while lethargic clerks conducted the whole business absolutely manually, writing down bank note numbers ever so meticulously and counting Indian rupees over and over again. But then the reviewer may have missed the laptop clutching grey suited executives from the world of advertisement zapping past him in a frenzied race to be the number one rat in business. The ATMs and laptops, whether real and authentic, (the burden of establishing the verisimilitude should be left to more assiduous researchers) are an important part of the elaborate discursive setup of Vertigo, which aims to capture every subtle shade of the fiercely competitive canvas of advertising and direct marketing. This is the world where the workday Jay belongs, and willy nilly, is drawn into its vortex. Banker draws this world as ruthless, cruel and fiercely challenging. It’s a world where big fish routinely make a feast of small fish. Jay, a small fish, would have been swallowed whole by fish even slightly bigger than him, had he not been protected by a woman roughly his own age, but one who had bloodied her teeth and claws in corporate warfare early and knows the trick of survival. She also happens to be the woman who feels an emotion akin to love for Jay. The woman, Meera, is liberated in the late 1990s sense, and is guide to Jay while he! tries desperately to pick up the fragments of his life, which include his non-functional love life for, his fiancee, Tuli, a Gujarati girl who believes she does not exist outside a family relationship, is predictably cool on questions of carnality. Now, the rather sombre account of Jay’s life should place him in the age range of late 20s, but he is only 19 or 20 when the story opens and is only 24 when it ends.

So why is he seen picking up the fragments of his life that early when, even for most corporate minnows on a salary of Rs. 2000 per month, life should just begin? Answer: It’s because Jay has to look after his mother, an abandoned wife, an incorrigible alcoholic, a temperamental and pathetic woman. With a Halaku Khan for a father (who once left Jay a ten-rupee note when he had pleaded with fearful eyes for his help in looking after his mother) Jay has absolutely no other choice except to live with her, nurse her, sometimes feed her, wash her, suffer her neurotic outbursts, and earn a living good enough to see them through the month. Balancing the two lives, both equally traumatizing, Jay begins to break down. At the ripe old age of 22! It is this elementally sad and tragic, gripping and unforgettable tale of Jay’s balancing act that rather than the fast-paced narrative of Bombay’s competitive, do-or- die corporate world produces the real vertigo. Ashok Banker appears unrivaled, except for the likes of Anita Desai (remember her Clear Light of Day?), the very best of the lot, really, in his sensitive description of fractured and tragic lives. A 20-year-old young man, alone and abandoned by an indifferent father, the burden of the love and patience he can muster, tries to salvage some sanity in his and his mother’s lives. In this he is not helped by his mother, who rather makes his life more difficult. But the young man persists, driven by no particular passion, but burdened with the memory of a mother’s desperate attempt to bring him up, put him through school and generally shelter him from the slings and arrows of fortune. Added to this is the constant neglect of his father and the annoyance he shows wherever mother’s name comes up. Driven to desperation, and in search of a life away from mother that he so desperately deserves, Jay moves out to a flat in the suburb, urged on by Tuli who wants a clean break from the past. But before he makes the move, Jay muses on what it would mean to him, staying apart from his mother. What will she do then? And, more important, what will he do? There can’t be an answer to that, except saying that both would be more miserable, in their own, different ways.

2. Vertigo’s plot line is uncomplicated, and lends itself to easy retelling. Jayesh Mehta, 20, and his sick and alcoholic mother are forced to live on their own, having been driven out by a successful businessman father, who then quickly remarries. Jay, fresh out of school has to find a job, and takes on the task of looking after his mother. His job at a DM company is not easy, given the dog-eat-dog work ethics prevailing there, and he struggles on, forever unhappy, forever feeling deprived. A distant relative, Meera, a woman of great personality and charms, turns up at the same company, occupying a higher post, and takes a fancy on Jay. She quickly becomes his surrogate mother, while expecting to be his lover, guiding him through the jungle of life with patience and poise. But Jay has a fiancee, Tuli, who is divided sharply between her loyalty to her parents and family, and her lukewarm liking of Jay whom she cannot imagine to be approved by her family for marriage. Yet marriage is what she desires and eventually gets . . . but not with Jay. What can Jay do? He can be more drunk, more miserable and more desperate. And to compound matters, Meera is away somewhere in Dubai, doing an overseas stint for the firm. Jay begins to flounder. He had left his mother, if you recall, and begun to live his own life. Only it proves to be a shadow of a life. He changes his job on better prospects, but cannot bring it to himself to go back to mother, or even visit her. He had fixed her up with a caregiver, and he forces himself to forget her. Indeed, the last time he had seen her, she had thrown a glass after him, which shattered and showered splinters all over. When he had closed the door behind him, it was the sound of glass breaking that chased him away.

After months of lunatic loneliness, irreconcilable but inescapable the mother dies. Back at his mother’s flat after the funeral he sits on the floor of his mother’s bedroom and muses: so this is what it comes to finally? This is the price? [He had sold the flat to a neighbour at a good price.]
And what is he supposed to do with the money…?

This woman has suddenly thrust him up to the top of this paper mountain and here he stands now, alone, looking down at the city, at the puny people toiling mindlessly, at the hordes trudging homewards every evening . . . But wait. He will not be alone for long. Because up comes Meera, who is in town and knocks on the door. Jay doesn’t open, but she says she’ll wait. All night if I have to. He looks down at the latch and after an eternity debating who he really loved, and what this sleep-around bitch [meaning Meera] really is, he relents. Slowly, as if of its own volition, the latch begins to turn, to open.

Two stories, two lives. They finally merge at this point.

3. The Bombay story of Vertigo is about a ferocious, cannibalistic cult which considers money the sole god, and power and pleasures his two outstretched hands. This story is single minded and because of its commercial association, slightly global.

It is also strangely Anglo-Indian, as the novel’s early eighties ambience doesn’t include any Indian or local cultural markers. More Hollywood than Bollywood. No local celebrity is mentioned: Lata, Mohammad Rafi, Gavaskar, Dev Anand — none. In keeping with the upper-crust Bombayites’ craze for a western life, the cultural markers are also imported. The mother-son story, on the other hand, with all its Indian connections and connotations, is a genuinely home-grown one and is the stuff that contributes to the novel’s enduring appeal. It is vicious but simple, elemental but enduring.
The story has an air of inevitability about it — it just happens, it doesn’t have to be willed into place. Banker knows the power of this archetypal, Indian tale, and weaves his other story around it. Jay’s rejection of Bombay at the end is an indication of how the more local and timeless story has the power to pull us into its deep centre. And the force with which we are pulled leaves us with a strong feeling of vertigo.” S. Manzoorul Islam teaches English at Dhaka University

“Ashok Banker’s Vertigo is an amazing work where fiction and non-fiction mix, merge, morph into each other. While essentially about Mumbai, the city, the metaphor, the mystical moment that traps all of us so magically. Despite its high-pitched style, the book’s absolutely unputdownable. Banker is without doubt one of our finest writers today and the autobiographical quality of this work sears your soul.” Economic Times

“Vertigo, the title seems perfect for starters because this piece of speedy writing depicting the anti-hero’s situation could send one’s head reeling. It is also a comment on the jetset, image-conscious realities of Mumbai wehre relationships have taken a backseat, making way for personal gratifications. And yet it is the protagonist who is left to care for his mother, perhaps a frustrating foil to the mechanical humdrum of city life. The book is written ina post-modern style, with fragmented sentences delineating the frayed existence of the lead character - torn between his ambitions and an alcoholic and psychotic mother who throws such deadly tantrums and mouths such obscenities that the narrative gets nauseating. And yet one is reminded of how this abandoned woman raised her child all by herself since her indifferent husband stopped paying the alimony. The 20-something protagonist, Jayesh Mehta or Jay for short, is emotionally battered by his boss who underestimates him and refuses to give him a promotion in his direct marketing company called DM, and instead hires a hardboiled and go-getter woman, Meera, as his group head. She is intelligent and attractive with the ability to stoop and twirl people around her little finger. Jay and Meera are opposites but vibe together. This helps delineate Meera’s other side. While Jay secretly harbours an ambition to become a copywriter, his three-year stint at the thankless direct marketing job sees him perpetually hard up for money. He suffers from a strange disincinclination towards food, somewhat like an anorexic. This again is built in with a lifestyle that is anxiety-prone and perpetually in hardship. Jay’s girlfriend, a teenager named Tuli, is already planning to get married to him. She is picturised in a series of flash words and the reader is supposed to put the pieces of the jigsaw in place. She is demanding and Jay suffers from a tug of war. The book is absorbing, if you are in the mood for large doses of realism. Vertigo is Mumbai uncut.” The Statesman, Kolkata, Sunday edition

“Dizzying heights. A portrait of one man’s pursuit of happiness and material wealth as it is dreamt in a city like Bombay. Vertigo - if that means fear of heights, would it mean fear of never reaching some heights or would it mean falling off from such great heights that recovery is hardly possible? Ashok Banker’s novel that goes by the same name could imply almost all of those fears. A portrait fo the pursuit of happiness, material wealth and capital as it is dreamt in a city like ‘Bombay’, Vertigo is also an insight into the dark underside of that dream. Twenty-something Jayesh Mehta lives in Bombay with his ailing, alcoholic mother abandoned years ago by her Gujarati businessman husband. A small-time client servicing executive, Jayesh dreams of becoming a copywriter someday. But dreams never get fulfilled easily. And for a person like Jayesh who has not learnt the art of survival, a nasty boss, a demanding girlfriend and an over-whelming sense of duty for his mother are enough to send his dreams to a tizzy. Everyday becomes a struggle as Jayesh finds his ambitions and romantic desires ruthlessly stifled by the same city that nourished them. So where do his struggles lead Jayesh to? Do somethings at least fall in place? And if they do, have they made a difference to Jayesh? That’s for the reader to find out. Vertigo is a fierce narrative and portrays Bombay as a city where nothing comes with ease, where double standards are a way of life, where detachment and ‘being busy’ is the order of the day, where money is very important, and survival is most difficult. It is also the story of betrayal, of loss, of profit, but most of all a story of loneliness. A loneliness that Jayesh constantly battles with - both in personal and professional life. A racy piece, Ashok Banker’s novel is a definitive peek into the lives of the salaried class of executives who are forever trying to make it ‘big’ - if not in Bombay maybe elsewhere. The language is easy on the reader and the occasional local slang adds to the piece. All in all, those craving for some reality check have one book that could glue them to the reading table.” Subbalakshmi B.M., Deccan Herald, Bangalore

“This is Mumbai uncut and without apologies. Banker’s novel of love, longing, and survival in Moneytown is a must-read.” Cosmopolitan’s Fab Reads for February 2005

“You have done something extraordinary. From the first page where he comes out of the train at Churchgate Station, right through to the heart-breaking ending, I couldn’t put down the book. I picked it up just to read a line or two, and I couldn’t stop reading…Even though I couldn’t understand why. I mean, it’s not as though the plot is so gripping, or the story is so action-packed. On the contrary. There are passages full of purple prose, where you describe things for pages and pages ad nauseum, and it should be tedious to read it all, but somehow, it is so engrossing and compelling, every word, every line is so intense, it pulls you in, and doesn’t let go till the end. I stayed up till 4 a.m. reading it, and I couldn’t believe I’d done that. I don’t know how you achieved the effect or why a novel I didn’t even know existed should have such an effect on me. Some parts left me with butterflies in my stomach, they were so real, like my own life. It’s a brilliant, brilliant, book, and the best on Bombay I’ve ever read. Simply amazing.” Pritish Nandy

“Think Bombay. What goes through evey mind is the over-crowded trains, the filth, the squalor, Marine Drive, Juhu beach and vadapav. You get a taste of all this in the novel. Of congestion, not only on the roads, but also the dreams and aspirations of 20-something Jayesh Mehta. Bitten by the misfortune bug, in an alcoholic mother, a disinterested father, a demanding girlfriend and an underpaid assignment, Jay ‘learns survival’. Meera, colleague, friend, ’shoulder, becomes the road to self-discovery, of hope for Jay. Lady luck does shine on Jay, but at what cost? The style renders the book its authenticity, moving sometimes as if one were on a Thane fast local or at other times, lazy, like flicking sand with your feet along the beach. The author manages to keep the tempo going except in the end when he drifts into the 1984 riots and speculations in the share market that could have ended in two lines but was dragged across two chapters. The end too becomes very pretentious, in the author’s attempt at giving it a very theatrical effect. Apparently, the book is in its second reprint, the first being in 1993. The book is sure to get you hooked for the simple way it recreates Mumbai with its tangible smells, tastes, sights and a justifiable storyline.” First City, New Delhi

“In tracing the life trajectory of Jayesh Mehta, the protagonist of Banker’s novel Vertigo, the reader is also treated to a ringside view of the profusion of contrary pulls and propulsions that made for a Bombaywalla’s life in the Eighties. Born of a Catholic mother, and deserted by his ‘respectable’ Gujarati father, Jayesh or Jay as he is generally known, tries to carve a life for himself armed with a high school education, a father who couldn’t care less and burdened by his mother’s chronic alcoholism and premature senility. There is never enough money to go by, and his fiancee Tuli keeps yo-yoing between her attachment to him and the realisation that Jay’s job and monetary status do not match standards that her Gujarati background demands from a ’suitable boy for marriage’. The narrative, as it unwinds, recreates the city of Mumbai with its known landmarks, its bustle, its local trains and the vast, pouring, seething passions that drive its denizens. A great read.” K. Subbarayan, Free Press Journal, Mumbai

“When I picked up Vertigo at a Bombay bookstore, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have read your Ramayana and I thought this would be along those lines. Vertigo is so much better, much more accomplished. It is a perfect book. Maybe I am biased because I am in advertising and a Mumbaikar, but I would like to know which of your books you think are the best - Vertigo or the Ramayana? I think Vertigo is your best work. If it is not The Great Bombay Novel, I don’t know what book is.” Ashok Agarwal, advertising professional, Mumbai

“Let me confess. I always thought that Indian writers and Indian literature was a little above soft porn and a little below melodrama a la Ekta serials. In fact, I wouldnít be caught dead with a Indian writerís novel on my person. Imagine my irritation when this book found itself in my house, and that too a second hand well worn version of the book. It was a hot Monday morning when I started reading the book, what kept me into the book was the stark reality and the logic amongst the characters, be it Jay, the Marketing guy, his collegue and companion, or his girl friend, Tuli. All these people are someone who you can look around and find almost everywhere all around you. And this is where the author has won hands down. The author hasn’t prepared a dream for us to dream about, he has prepared a mirror to our society, and so beautiful is the mirror, that we are forced to see our reflections in it. The novel basically is the life story of the main protagonist, and how he rises in his personal and professional life, with the help of many and almost all women he has ever met. Once again, Ashok Banker has not created any miracles or any out of the way happenings for Jay. He has shown the generation next and all the others coming after them that there is no comparison or alternative to those golden qualities of hardwork, talent and then lady luck. But.. what actually made he remember this novel after almost a year of reading it, is this character which still makes me squirm in embarassment whenever I think about the novel and itís characters. The character of Jayís mother, the doomed woman, who dies a silent and sad death, away from the only person she ever loved, her son, is someone which will wrench the hearts of all ícareer oriented young peopleí and show them the stark reality of where their preferences should lie. Read it.” Nawab, Mumbai.

“This is the first novel by you that I have read. I had not heard of your books until recently, and picked up this one on a friend’s recommendation - her mother had bought it and she had also read it, and both were raving about it. I understand now why. It is so fantastic, I am now a fan of your work. The way you describe Bombay of that time I feel like I am living in the city, I can see and smell and hear everything as if it is happening right now. Sometimes I can recognize some places you have describe like Carter Road and Bandstand (I did not know Bandstand was called Land’s End, but now I know why Taj has that name), many a times I am not able to recognize which place you mention because some things have changed. The characters are amazing. The parts with the mother make me want to cry. or maybe shout out loudly. I can feel the pain and the emotions with them. Just one question, if you do n’t mind my asking, sir: In the end, when someone rings the bell and Jay is not opening the door, who is it outside? Is it Meera or is it Jay’s mother come back in a new life as Meera? I thought maybe it was Jay’s mother because I cannot describe the emotion there, what a beautiful ending, I am still living there and seeing it as if it is going on front of my eyes. I want to give you money so you can keep writing such books. I am goign to buy your Ramayana books now and read them, which is the first book to start with?” Satish, Mumbai

“The cover of the re-issue of Ashok Banker’s novel Vertigo proclaims that the book has acquired “cult status as the quintessentially Bombay novel”. Put that down to the puffery of publishers. Vertigo has been out of print for a long time. It has not acquired any such status. Cult status is a difficult concept. It should mean that there’s a loyal band of readers who treat the book as the pronunciamentos of the divine, or something close. But contrariwise it should also mean that everyone else is aware of the book, even if they’re not sure why the initiated get so excited about it. Cult status is what Jonathon Livingstone Seagull has if you’re a birdbrain. Cult status is not what Vertigo has, although it is very Bombay in its concern for prices, its casual use of local celebrities, and its get-rich-quick story.” Jerry Pinto, Time Out

“Ashok Banker is one of the lesser-known Indian novelists writing in English. And that probably has to do with the fact that he is not yet published in the West, although there are rumors that he has hooked (I apologize for this term) a publisher in the US (of A fame) for his latest novel, The New Ramayana. For the uninitiated, Ashok Banker was also the scriptwriter of the first (and perhaps only) Indo-English serial telecast on Indian television, A Mouthful of Skyí. Vertigo is Bankerís most accomplished work, leagues ahead of even the poignant ëByculla Boyí. The narrative begins with a staccato narration of life on a Mumbai Monday morning. The protagonist, Jayesh Mehta (Jay for short) is on his way to office amidst the cacophony of a new week, upset with the anticipation of being fired by his boss for not completing an assignment over the weekend. En route he meets Meera, a very close friend who has joined his organization as his superior.
What follows is a highly disturbing tale of youthful aspirations gone astray. Numerous hurdles face Jay, a client-servicing executive working in a Market Research organization, in his personal life. His mother is an alcoholic and he has to fend for her addiction despite his meager salary; his father has left him in the lurch; his girlfriend, Tuli, is a selfish woman, who despite all assurances leaves him for another man. Essentially a tragedy, the novel ends with Tuliís betrayal and the death of Jayís mother. In this extremely dark narrative, the reader comes across a marvelously etched character of Meera. Strong-willed, ambitious, and compassionate, all at the same time, she is the only one who provides emotional succor to Jay. Their relationship is revealed in a series of brilliantly crafted scenes. ëVertigoí, unlike the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name is not a thriller, yet one cannot but help trying to finish it in one sitting. Where the writer does seem to go wrong is in the climax, which fails to match the expectations built by the preceding chapters. All in all, ëVertigoí is a novel that should not be missed. Its copy should be grabbed with both hands, much like a once-in-a-life-time-opportunity.” Moid Askari, New Delhi

“I just finished reading the new edition of the book Vertigo by Ashok K. Banker today. I got a personally autographed copy of the book, yesterday, from Ashok K. Banker himself! A great writer and human being and one of my favourite authors now. He has an awesome way with words and his books are really well worth a read (or two or even three!). Coming back to Vertigo - it’s a story of a guy trying to survive in Bombay. The book takes you through his life of dealing with his alcoholic mother, his (very demanding) girl friend, his job, money, etc… A very intense novel and definitely ‘unputdownable’ like all of Ashok’s works. In fact I finished the book in two sittings inspite of having a final exam tomorrow! It was a very intense book. Very gripping and very realistic. Completely (totally) different from the Ramayana…But I loved the book! Somehow Ashok K. Banker’s books always tend to come during my exam time and this time was no different. I got the book on 18th Jan and I had my final exam on 20th! But no exam could tear me away from Vertigo. Finished it in two sittings and truly was impressed ñ in fact I was blown away! I could relate to a lot of situations in the book, which made the experience a whole lot more complete and deep.” R. Sabarish, Bangalore

“Dear Mr Banker, I am quite sure that you do not realise the impact you are having on young and upcoming writers like me. I want to congratulate you on your remarkable successes and want you to know that you r an inspiration. Indians all over the world are proud of you.” Nikesh Murali, Australia