However, the ethics of writing a period novel without typecasting the characters — the Goan/Portuguese community in this case — took a chunk of her writing efforts. This, especially when this community is not at the top of the cultural hegemony in Indian literature, takes away the limelight from rich stories. “Unfortunately, a lot of good literature gets lost due to poor or ill-thought marketing. There is so much focus on the popular names or authors who make it to award shortlists — we lack a general curiosity and desire to discover our rich literature,” says Borges. 

Tulika H. Bhojwani: How was your experience in Bombay Balchão different from co-writing Mafia Queens of Mumbai?

Jane Borges: My first book, Mafia Queens of Mumbai, required some rigour and research. It was non-fiction, and one where we were attempting to tell the stories of 13 real-life female criminals, many of whom had either passed on or about whom very little had been written or was known. There was a lot of leg-work involved there, but very limited scope for me to use my creativity or imagination as a writer. All the stories were based on our interviews and research and recounted true events. At the end of the day, it was meant to be a factual account. That wasn’t the case with Bombay Balchão. It was a novel, and that made it a completely different kind of book. Though inspired by a real-life Catholic community in South Mumbai, I had complete liberty and control over the narrative and my characters. In fact, I wrote the stories first and wove in bits from my research later.

Tulika Bhojwani: The setting of your book is almost poetic. There is so much colour and emotion on every page. How did you decide upon the setting of your book?

Jane Borges: Bombay Balchão actually comes from a very personal space. I am a resident of a community in South Mumbai that’s a lot like the one that I have recreated in the book. And incidentally, it’s also called Cavel. The real Cavel and the fictional one have the same, shared history. It is a small Christian neighbourhood in Marine Lines, Mumbai, and not known to many; it is one of the oldest Catholic pockets in South Mumbai. This is where the Portuguese missionaries settled back in the 15th and 16th centuries, and by the 20th century, it became home to many Goans who migrated from Portuguese-Goa. Today, with most Catholics having moved abroad or to the suburbs, Cavel is no longer the place, where church bells drowned the sounds of handcarts and hawkers. I have been a witness to this change. That made it easier for me to tell the story because the setting was based on my lived experience.  All I had to do was create characters, the kind you’d love or hate, but still find relatable.

Tulika Bhojwani: How did you come across this tiny neighbourhood in Mumbai that most of us have never heard of? Are there any life experiences that you had there?

Jane Borges: I moved into this neighbourhood in 2003, after my parents bought a home here, from a relative. My mum, who used to visit this place as a child, says it was her dream to own a house in Cavel, because of how peaceful this part of town was. She moved to Muscat in Oman after marriage, and my brothers and I were raised there for most part of our childhood. When I returned to Mumbai as a 16-year-old, the city was quite a revelation to me. It was super chaotic, always on the go, and forever buzzing with activity. Cavel stuck out like a sore thumb because it was nothing like the rest of Mumbai, where it belonged, and which it was very much a part of.  It was like a refreshing oasis in a desert. And that made me curious about it.  

There are lots of amusing experiences that I had in Cavel, one of which also inspired the chapter, ‘The Water Fiasco’. When we moved into Cavel in 2003, we learnt that one of the water pipelines to our home — most old buildings have tanks in each home, and they receive water, based on timings allocated by the local municipality — had been disconnected. We don’t know who did it, but after that, for many months, until we got a new pipeline, we had to get water from our ground floor neighbour. We kids would carry buckets to her house, and then climb up two floors every day. We used to be so particular about our water consumption then —how much we used to wash clothes, take a bath or even sweep the floor. That incident stayed with me and eventually found its way into the chapter.

Tulika Bhojwani: The characters in your book are as different as can be even though they are connected. What went behind the scene when you defined your characters?

Jane Borges: This book is as much about people, as it is about a place. And a place is made up of all kinds of people — the good, bad, and evil. I never intended to create a protagonist; which is why you won’t see a central character. Every individual gets equal space and opportunity to tell their story — why they became what they did, their motivations, what makes them so loved or hated. I think we are all products of situations and experiences. I wanted the reader to live out these experiences with my characters before judging them.

Tulika Bhojwani: Are these characters in any way based on real-life people?

Jane Borges: Well, not exactly. Though, over the course of my research and conversations with residents, I came across interesting vignettes that shaped the characters. My protagonist, Michael Coutinho, for instance, is a work of pure imagination. But my late dear friend, former veteran journalist Ervell E Menezes, who lived in the building next to mine, had once shared an amusing incident, of how he was forced to grow a beard as a decoy to keep away a bunch of goons, who he had written about in an article. He wore that beard till he passed away last year. In the book, Michael grows a beard for the same reason. Some years ago, I had done a feature story on a local Crossword hero Joe Albuquerque, a resident of Dabul, another Christian neighbourhood that is a few metres away from Cavel. The character Mario in my novel shares a similar passion for the game.

To answer your question simply, yes, there’s a bit of someone real in every character — some parts of me, some parts of others who I knew and whose life stories I found incredibly remarkable, and endearing. 

 

Tulika Bhojwani: There are a lot of familiar elements in the book’s ethnography. How did you steer away from typecasting of the culture and the community in the book?

Jane Borges: Because I am a Catholic with roots in Karnataka and Goa, I was very conscious of this. Having witnessed how popular narratives have generally been unfair, and inauthentic in their portrayal of the lives of Indian Christians, mostly Goans, I knew this is something I had to resist doing. I must admit that typecasting always seemed like a very tempting prospect because it required little effort: A mini-skirt flaunting Sandra, a perennially drunk Pedro, and the broken-Hindi speaking daruwaali aunty sound perfect characters for a colourful book, but how honest would that make the novel? It’s likely that you will see similar types of people in my book, too. That is also because there is some truth to stereotypes. But what has happened in the past — and that’s the problem with cinema, especially — is that we never gave ample room to these characters to grow. So, you are only stuck with one kind of idea of them. You were never told about the struggles of the lady who sold illegal hooch liquor, or how the fortunes changed for a certain person, which eventually forced him to take to the bottle. Those stories were missing. We focussed too much on playing to the gallery, and that’s why they felt less like real people and more cardboard cut-outs.

Tulika Bhojwani: Give us an insight into the journey of writing this book.

Jane Borges: I began writing this book in 2015 when I briefly moved to Muscat, where I was working with a newspaper. Though I lived with my dad, it was an incredibly lonely phase in my life, possibly, because I realised that Mumbai was where my heart was. On the spur, I began writing. Initially, they were meant to be short stories, written more to pass time, because I was so incredibly bored out there, and of course, getting very nostalgic about home. But, the more I wrote, the more I saw a pattern. Eventually, I knew I wanted to write a novel. When I returned to Mumbai a year later, I showed it to a few friends, but the response was underwhelming. I gave up the project completely for two years and concentrated completely on work. In 2018, I met Anish Chandy, of Labyrinth Literary Agency. He was hoping I would write another Mafia-related book. I, instead, suggested that he look at the shelved manuscript, which at the time was about 60 percent complete. He read it and loved it, and the rest, of course, is history. Over and above that, it took a year-and-a-half to complete the novel.  

Tulika Bhojwani: You are a journalist. Did it impact your vision and the writing for this book? How?

Jane Borges: A lot. I started out as a storyteller, but by the time my stories came together, I realised there were cultural elements and events that I was documenting in the book, which I had to look at with a more serious lens if I had to do justice to them. A similar feedback came from my commissioning editor Sanghamitra Biswas of Westland, who after reading the first manuscript, suggested we historicise it.  That’s when the journalistic curiosity set in. That I was covering Mumbai’s cultural and heritage scene for the weekend newspaper where I worked meant that some of these facts slowly and often organically revealed themselves to me.  Like the story of the missing church bells from Vasai fort, which I write about in the book. That was a find, which I stumbled upon when I met a researcher from Vasai for another story that I was pursuing.   

Tulika Bhojwani: Do you think the Goan/Portuguese community in particular and the Christian community, in general, have been under-represented in Indian literature? What did we miss?

Jane Borges: Not under-represented, but yes, definitely not part of the mainstream. It’s only in 2020 that I got acquainted with Damodar Mauzo’s books. And I am almost embarrassed to admit that I hadn’t read any of him till then. His Konkani novel, Karmelin (1981), which was later translated into English (1990), is the story of a Goan maid in the Gulf, and, what a poignant work it is. There’s also Ivan Arthur’s heart-warming A Village Dies (2016), about two neighbouring Christian gaothans in Andheri, which was a window to the diverse Catholic community there. Then, of course, we have the marvellous Maria Aurora Couto. So, there is a lot of literature available, but very few are being talked about (and even read), and that’s a huge disservice to these wonderful storytellers. Unfortunately, a lot of good literature gets lost due to poor or ill-thought marketing. There is so much focus on the popular names or authors who make it to award shortlists —we lack a general curiosity and desire to discover our rich literature.

Tulika Bhojwani: I noticed that the name of your book is a huge draw among readers on social media? How did you come up with this interesting name?

Jane Borges: The title wasn’t the first choice. When Anish started pitching the book to some publishers, he asked me to think of a few names (and quickly). One of the names my brother and I came up with was Bombay Balchão. In Goa, the balchão masala is used to prepare a prawn side dish. It can also be used as a fish preserve. This pickle masala is a blast of flavours — spicy, tangy, and sweet. Since the novel was crowded with so many different colourful characters, I thought it fit well with the ethos of this book. Also, like the pickle, where the prawn needs to settle in the marinade for a couple of days before you can really relish it, this book too, evolves over a period of time — 70 years — before all the characters come together. Though Anish liked the title and concept, he had other concerns. He didn’t want people to assume that it was a food novel. Strangely, though, food has been the biggest takeaway from the book. A lot of friends and readers told me they felt hungry after reading Bombay Balchão. That wasn’t intentional. 

Tulika Bhojwani: The book demands the reader to pay attention to its setting, mood, situations, and characters. How do you balance this while giving the readers what they deserve?

Jane Borges: I didn’t really set out to strike a balance. I wanted to tell stories of people, living very unusual, yet ordinary lives.  I was, however, very conscious about the characters I was creating. They all had to stand out, and that’s why they all had to be very different from each other. 

Tulika Bhojwani: Staying true to its title, the book reserves a special place for food. Is this a personal element (your love for food) that you have incorporated in the book?

Jane Borges: Who doesn’t love food? But, like I mentioned earlier, there was no deliberate attempt at including it. I was writing about a community that takes great pride in its culinary heritage that has its roots in Western and South India, as well as Portugal. If I was going to talk about the Goan-Mangalorean-East Indian Catholics, I couldn’t ignore their food history.

Tulika Bhojwani: Historical settings demand a certain level of ethics. How do you do it when you are writing a 

book?

Jane Borges: The challenge when historicising a novel is to stay authentic to the experience and the event, which you are writing about. Because Cavel is a place I knew so intimately that problem was partly taken care of. I was an insider, offering a perspective to an outsider. I wanted people to appreciate and know more about Cavel’s glorious past, to the point that they got curious about the place.

  

Tulika Bhojwani: Tell us about yourself and your life as a writer.

Jane Borges: I started my career as a sub-editor/writer at 21, with The Asian Age. But I began writing much earlier as a child. I was 11, when my contributions — short stories, non-fiction, and poetry — would appear in a popular magazine in Muscat, where I grew up. That really cemented my writing journey. Later, as a journalist, 

documenting stories of people, places, and varied experiences, I knew I had set myself on the right path.

Tulika Bhojwani: When did you have the first thought about being an author?

Jane Borges: Once, during summer vacations while I was still in college, I remember spending many weeks writing a novel — a very amateurish one — which accidentally got deleted from my desktop. I thought this was it. It was not meant to be, and I completely gave up the idea. I don’t think I ever seriously considered becoming an author or writing a book (again) till Hussain Zaidi asked me to research and co-author Mafia Queens of Mumbai. I guess things happen when they are meant to.

Tulika Bhojwani: What is your opinion on the response to Bombay Balchão so far?

Jane Borges: I am overwhelmed by the love. At this point, I feel a little spoiled (or rather, pampered by readers), because I hadn’t seen this coming. I had prepared myself for criticism, but I was really unprepared for the kindness that came my way.  

Tulika Bhojwani: What is the most demanding part of being a writer?

Jane Borges: Discipline. It’s tough. But, once it sets in, you are on a roll.

Tulika Bhojwani: What was the biggest revelation while writing Bombay Balchão?

Jane Borges: …That there’s something extraordinary about ordinary life, which needs to be celebrated.

Tulika Bhojwani: We need to talk about the cover. It is certainly one of the most unique covers I have come across. What went into creating it?

Jane Borges: It indeed is. And all credit goes to the illustrator Mohit Suneja and Vishwajyoti Ghosh, who helped him conceptualise it. My publisher Karthika VK had a very clear vision for the book, which we discussed over coffee on a rainy evening in Bandra. She wanted it to be a peek into the life of the families we were writing about. My contribution was just sending photos of my building, to get a sense of the architecture, and that of other neighbouring Christian pockets, like Khotachwadi, that inspired the novel. The designers took over from there.    

Tulika Bhojwani: Which books and authors have influenced your writing? What is the most glaring difference between Indian writers and global authors?

Jane Borges: There are too many. But, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a personal favourite. I have steadfastly been in love with her writing since 2013, and I hope she writes more. I don’t think there is any difference between Indian English writers and global authors. They are all sharing stories in a language, though similar, is so strongly influenced by their experiences that it also makes it very different.

Tulika Bhojwani: Name one contemporary author whom you admire. Has this author’s work inspired yours in any way?

Jane Borges: Jerry Pinto. He makes me want to write better.

Tulika Bhojwani: What is your opinion on cultural diversity in Indian Literature? Also, do you think culturally diverse books can be a medium to sew society together, especially in the current times?

Jane Borges: India is such a culturally rich and diverse nation, and that reflects in our literature as well. I am glad that more and more contemporary authors are turning homeward for inspiration, instead of attempting something that is alien or imitative. More than bringing society together, these stories highlight how irrespective of caste and religion, the experience of being human is common to all.

Tulika Bhojwani: Do you think the approach to writing has changed in the last decade? Also, how easy/difficult is it to publish your book today?

Jane Borges: I don’t know if the approach to writing has changed, but the approach to publishing definitely has. 

More and more books are being published, and editors are opening up to all kinds of stories. That makes the space very competitive too. Is it difficult to publish a book today? Not really, the avenues are many. And self-publishing has thrown some brilliant surprises.  

Tulika Bhojwani: What does the future roadmap look like? Are we going to see more of you on the literary scene?

Jane Borges: I am hoping I can write more, of course. But I cannot really say when that would happen, or what it would be about.