Sunday book pick: A Jewish refugee in Bombay in Anita Desai’s novel ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’

For as long as I can remember, I have looked up to Anita Desai as the foremost contemporary Indian writer. The first book I read of hers, Clear Light of Day, was a part of my undergraduate syllabus. I fell in love with her instantly. Her writing vividly brought to life an era I was not alive but felt deep affection for. It was a time of great hope – when India was still finding a footing in the world as its people adjusted to these shifting realities and identities. As conflicting forces rock the world outside, Desai’s stories become the window to its effects on the common man and his family.

A firang in Bombay

In her novel, Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988), the man of interest is Hugo Baumgartner, a firang. Not just a white man, but a Jew who has fled from persecution in Nazi Germany. Desai describes him as a man who has “always, somehow escaped the mainstream.” But his Bombay neighbours don’t have such a generous view of him. To them, he is the “Madman of the Cats” or the “Billewallah Pagal” thanks to his army of gangly cats that have taken shelter inside his dilapidated flat. It’s hard to say what “Bommgarter” does for...

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