 Mumbai, the city which is known as the financial capital of India is not just the financial capital but also the cultural capital of our country. This city has produced so many Bollywood movies and art festivals but at the same time it has also produced number of writers who have changed the landscape of English literature. So Mumbai's extraordinary colour, humanity and energy has been celebrated in so many works written by such famous writers. In today's video, I am going to take you through the city of Mumbai and we will also talk about five major writers who were either born in Bombay or have lived in this city and have produced some works which are related to the city of Bombay. These books are very important if you are preparing for UGC net English so let's embark on this literary journey with me today. Let us begin by talking about Mr. Salman Rushdie. Though Salman Rushdie has lived most of the time in the city of London and New York but in most of his interviews he says that India and specifically Mumbai is the city that is closest to his heart because he was born in this city. Yes, those of you who don't know, I would like to tell you that Salman Rushdie was born in Mumbai during the British India period and he spent most of his childhood in the city of Mumbai. If you look at Salman Rushdie and his works, most of his works including the famous midnight children deals with the Indian subcontinent and the societal issues that revolve around India. Right now he is a British citizen who is residing in US. Do you know Salman Rushdie received fatwa on his life by Islamic extremists because of his very controversial work called satanic verses. If we talk about Salman Rushdie and his connection to Mumbai, you should not forget that Salman Rushdie was born in Mumbai on the Malabar hill, walking distance from the Haji Ali mosque and he was born in a liberal Muslim household. At the same time what you should not forget is that in the work Midnight Children, Salim the character, the protagonist of the novel talks about Haji Ali mosque multiple times in the novel. At the same time another interesting thing that you should remember about Midnight Children and about the character of Salim is that Salim was born at the very moment when India gained independence from Britain in the year 1947. The relationship between Britain and India permeates in all the Salman Rushdie's work and so does this permeate in the city of Mumbai as well where the British buildings like the Victoria railway terminus has been renamed as Chhatrapati Shivaji. At the same time if you look at Gateway of India which is right behind me, this is a large vast arc overlooking the Arabian Sea and this arc is very important from the relationship point of view of Britain and India because this arc was made to celebrate the entry of King George V in 1911. The writer says that the city of Mumbai has a top spot in his heart and therefore it's no wonder that this city features in almost all his works be it Mozilla Sai or Midnight Children. At the same time the Mumbai that features in Mozilla Sai or Midnight Children is a perfect microcosm of the post-colonial India. By the way what you see behind me is the famous Taj Hotel of Mumbai. Salman Rushdie's famous work Mozilla Sai features seen from the Chhatrapati beach of Mumbai which is a place crowded with young couples and sugar happy kids. In this work Mozilla Sai there's a famous line that once every year gods come to Chhatrapati beach to bath in the filthy water which is a reference to the annual Ganpati festival where Lord Ganesha idols are brought from the city in a parade to the seashore. The families in Mozilla Sai reflects the true picture of Bombay of what Bombay has been in the past 30 years says Salman Rushdie in one of his blogs. So what he meant by saying this is that Bombay is a city where the rich got richer and the poorer got poorer. It is the same city where on one hand we have Dharavi slums and on the other hand we have such high-rise building and this is the city where we have world's most expensive building that is a 27-storeyed Antila. The next writer we are going to be talking about is our favourite Mark Twain. He has written these two famous works Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Now this writer set out on a tour of British empire and when he set out on this tour his main intention was to pay off debts and to make some money for himself. As a part of this tour he came to India and specially visited Bombay where he met Maharajas, princes and British officials. Also when he was in Bombay he actually gave a lecture as this famous novelty theatre which is right here in front of me. The lecture that he gave at the famous novelty theatre was reimagined by a Canadian writer, a Canadian director named Gabriel Emmanuel and the name of the play was Mark Twain Live in Bombay and this play was staged in the Prithvi theatre of Bombay. Alongside that there is a famous fact that I would want to share with you. So Mark Twain when he was in India he stayed at this famous Watson Hotel and this hotel was so beautiful that even Queen Victoria has frequently commented on the garishness of this place. The next writer we are going to talk about is Rohinton Mistri. Rohinton Mistri was born in India and he spent his childhood and a few years of his youth in India. He did his BA in mathematics and economics from the famous Saint Xavier's College in Mumbai which is right behind me here. After doing his graduation he decided to settle down in Canada with his fiance. He went to Canada in the year 1975 and after a decade he finally released his first short story collection that was Tales from Ferozha Bagh. All his novels, all his works show strong Parsi background and at the same time showcases a lot of things about the Parsi families. Rohinton Mistri's second book which was such a long journey was banned from Mumbai University's syllabus. The book won Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was nominated for Booker's Prize but it was banned from Mumbai University's syllabus following the threads of Shiv Sena. The book was said to be on a very controversial topic where it commented on Baal Thakre who is the leader of Shiv Sena. Also it commented on Maharashtrian people as well as on Mumbai's Dabbawalas. So the vice chancellor of Mumbai University decided to keep it aside from the curriculum. At the same time there were news where this book was burned in front of the university's campus in front of reporters and a cameraman. We also have two other works written by Rohinton Mistri which are centered around Mumbai. One of them is Family Matters. Family Matters is a story of a couple living in a two bedroom apartment in Mumbai in the present day Mumbai, modern Mumbai and it portrays the Parsi lifestyle. The second work is Scream which is narrated by an aging isolated resident living in one apartment in Mumbai. The voice of beat generation came to Bombay twice. The iconic writer Alan Ginsberg first saw Bombay in his dreams. In his dream he sailed to the nighttime harbor of Bombay and three months later in 1962 he finally decided to come to Bombay. He came to Bombay with a number of Indian refugees and with his boyfriend. He also asked the two other writers Jack Rao and William Burrow to accompany him to his trip to Bombay but those writers weren't as keen as him to visit this place. In his second trip to India Alan Ginsberg stayed with the writer Pupul Jayakar on the Malabar Hill House and then he later shifted to another flat of a very famous Indian Jewish writer Nazim Azikil. If you know of famous work or famous poem written by Nazim Azikil please put that in the comment section below. Now we move on and look at what did he do when he was staying with Nazim Azikil. So he was writing couple of poems and scribbles about the city of Bombay and also he went to a lot of cafes, explored those cafes around the area of Kalagora and Fort and at the same time he was enjoying his conversations and food with local intellectuals. All the fans of Jungle Book we have an interesting piece of trivia for you. So if you know about this famous author Rudyard Kipling of course I'm talking about this author has written a famous work which is loved by both kids and adults alike and this author actually spent six years of his childhood here in the city of Mumbai. The original house where Kipling lived with his family was demolished a few years back and a new house was built which is right behind me. This was built a few years ago to celebrate this famous author's childhood in the city of Bombay and this is what we famously know as the Kipling Bangalore or the Dean's house in this campus of JJ School of Arts. So these were five important writers who were inspired from the city of Mumbai. If you liked this video then please give it a big fan thumbs up and also share your comments in the comment section below. I am very eager to know how did you find this video and whether you liked it or not this was a little experiment done from my side to make learning more engaging and more fun. So with that note I would like to take your leave that's it from my side for this video lecture. I'll meet you very very soon in the next video lecture. Till the time we meet next happy learning keep loving literature and stay tuned to ArpitaKarwad.com