Hugo Baumgartner, the son of a Jewish merchant, was born and raised in Berlin. They lived in affluence as his father's trade was booming. Then the unthinkable Holocaust happens forcing them to lose all their properties during which his father dies. The entire property of his father was slowly seized by his dad's business associate (they addressed him the 'Gentleman from Hamburg') who, posing as if helping the family in grief, somehow manages to beguile and gulp the whole fortune to himself. He tells Hugo to go to India, as Germany is no more safe for Jews, and that he would put a word about him to his business partner in India (he has contacts). Hugo decides to go and live in India whereas his fragile mother refuses to come to "the land of snakes and beggars." So, he set out for himself and plans of returning once things were normal in Germany, as the 'Gentleman from Hamburg' assures that he would take care of Hugo's mother.Hugo goes to India and lands in Calcutta. It was the time when Germany and England locks horns (WWII). Hugo was arrested and sent to a concentration camp being mistaken to be a Nazi, wherein his repeated attempts to prove that he was but a Jew born and brought up in Berlin, came to naught. He accepts the fate and starts to enjoy the routine life in the camp for 6 years. In all this time, he had been writing letters to his mother, and received no reply. He was afraid that perchance his mother would have been caught by the Nazis.After he was released from the camp, he goes to meet the person he was supposed to meet in India: Mr. Habibullah. Unfortunately, the latter was broke and was in a situation where he was forced to leave Calcutta for Dacca because of the Hindu-Muslim clashes in Bengal back then. Mr. Habibullah advices Baumgartner to go to Bombay and meet Mr. Chimanlal. In a riot, it appeared that Habibullah's shop was looted and he was possibly killed. So, Hugo leaves for Bombay, meets the generous and kind Chimanlal who helps Hugo much. With Chimanlal, Hugo forms somehow a deeper relationship than that of employee-employer, and accompanies the former in his horse race moments, which obviously is considered bad by the former's family. So, whatever silver cups they won together by betting, Chimanlal gave Hugo to keep and that someday they would share it. In the meantime, Chimanlal dies and his son takes over his business, thus forcing Hugo jobless because Hugo has had no bonding and business papers with Chimanlal.He resorts to live secludedly with stray cats in Bombay. His only companion was a fellow "coarse German" named Lotte who was once a bar dancer.One day Baumgartner takes a drugged foreigner to his home because the latter happened to be penniless to pay the bill for what he had eaten and refused to move out of Café de Paris, the restaurant to which Hugo was a regular customer. The restauranteur had pleaded Hugo to go and speak to the homeless "firinghi" and ask him to get out. Hugo was in a constrain because it is only this restuarant that provides leftover food and milk for his cats for free everyday. So, he spoke to the guy in German. As the latter refused, Hugo, in the spur of the moment, offers to take the homeless to his home.This man, wild and dominant in nature, comes to Hugo's home and eyes the silver cups. What happened then is the closing scene.The final chapter of the novel is meticulously written. Human emotions during panic, and confusion, especially in a city like Bombay, was so neatly pictured. The whole story was deeply soaked in humanity, the hidden devils and gods within. It is about alienation, abject condition, perspective of people, hapless nature of a common man. There were Historical references to World War II and its consequences; that how it affected the lives of ordinary, powerless people.It is interesting and astonishing to note that you can forge a wonderful fiction out of a failure; a total nobody, in contrast to the well-equipped, or clever, or intrepid and adventurous, or charming type of protagonists whom we are so accustomed as well as bored of seeing.A lovely, lovely read.
In the last one month I have read three books by Anita Desai, but this is only my first review out of the three. The reason behind it is that Anita Desai’s writing always leaves me with a feeling of awe towards the author. Her language and her writing style is unparalleled in her genre and I feel extremely under qualified to review her works. So instead of making this a proper review, I am going to merely state my feelings from reading this book.Baumgartner’s Bombay is the story of one Hugo Baumgartner and his life during the World War II. Hugo had the misfortune to be born into a Jewish family during the time of The Holocaust. When his father’s furniture shop was ransacked and he was taken to a concentration camp, Hugo’ mother sent him off to Calcutta with the hope of a better future for her son before going into hiding. But Hugo arrived at Calcutta only to be imprisoned for a long period. Once freed, he moves to Bombay where he rekindles his acquaintance with Lotte and makes a few new acquaintances too. But even then he remains a loner for most part as his true companions were not human, but cats for whom he used to bring scrap food.Starting with a murder at the beginning, Anita Desai continues to tell Baumgartner’s story by tying up the present with the past. Hugo Baumgartner at a glance seems to be an extremely plain person with no strong personality. As the story progresses, we realize that there’s more to depth to Hugo’s character than we had initially thought. The loner’s need for relationship/companionship is reflected in his apparent affection for the cats. His life from the time of The Holocaust and the following experiences were responsible for shaping up his life and his personality. I found Lotte’s character to be a sharp contrast to Hugo. She had a certain belligerent persona that made her stand apart from Hugo.The ending was just perfect for how the story had been shaping up. The novel takes us on a ride to discover the importance of relationships, friendships and explore the feelings of loss and solitude. The best part of the story is the author’s narrative style and her elegant writing style which has the quality to grasp the reader unawares and not let go. It simply compels you to delve further and further into the character’s lives and feel their emotions in person.Awesome book and I recommend it to the people who are interested in reading quality fiction with some depth.
What do You think about Baumgartner's Bombay (2000)?
in depth look at the life of a WWII refugee who fled to India. desai shows you the complete rupture the Nazis caused in Hugo's life. his life in India is like a strange charade Hugo puts on just to pass the time. he creates no meaning for himself in India. he is just there making a living. as Hugo ages he and Lotte get gross and disheveled and it doesn't seem to bother them. their lifestyle is so solitary. Hugo never desires to go back no matter how foreign and out of place he is. without mother
—Teresa
By Anita Desai. Grade: B+Anita Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay builds an old city, a city reverentially unknown to the 21st century. It’s a story of a German. It’s a story of an exile. It’s a story of a lone crunching man but not a story of retribution. BAUMGARTNER'S BOMBAY is Anita Desai's classic novel of the Holocaust era, a story of profound emotional wounds of war and its exiles. The novel follows Hugo Baumgartner as he flees Nazi Germany?and his Jewish heritage?for India, only to be imprisoned as a hostile alien and then released to Bombay at war's end. In this tale of a man who, "like a figure in a Greek tragedy . . . seems to elude his destiny"Baumgartner's BombayHugo Baumgartner, a Jew fearing the Nazi regime, fans away his fears and anxieties and lands up in Calcutta in the wake of a bright future. But he ends kicking dust in jail as his country is at war. Six years pass and he’s out in the streets of Calcutta. His years in jail are less fun and morose. His acquaintance with Lotte (who marries a wealthy Indian and escapes imprisonment) is rekindled in Bombay many years later. They find themselves in each other’s comforts. Their luxuries are alcohol. They immerse their sorrows and loneliness in it and worry about nothing. Baumgartner has no friends in the big city. He knows a handful of them. Chimanlal, his business partner; Farrokh, the restaurateur who helps Baumgartner with scraps of food from the previous night for his cats; and his neighbours who he ‘namastes’ every day. Baumgartner is a loner for most part of the story even though Lotte acquires a sizable portion in his life as his friend from a known world.Ms Desai imitates her own style by setting the story in a nonlinear frame. In Desai’s Baumgartner’s Bombay, Hugo Baumgartner is impressively not understood by humans, but very familiar with the cats. The story is like a dream sequence – the good, bad and ugly ends with a saline residuum. Death of war and death of Baumgartner - both happen in different continents and different contexts, and yet greed is the cause of war, and the same greed kills Baumgartner. No amount of kindness could alleviate his loneliness.The lamentable and questionable form is where Anita Desai stereotypes Indian English. Every person Baumgartner meets speaks poor English or a new version of English. That sort of sting has to be removed. It serves no purpose. The climax that’s supposed to be meaty minces the meat. It should have stopped a couple of pages before or should have had a couple of pages more. There’s no need for finality or closure in a story. But it shouldn't leave the readers at crossroads.Ms Desai has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize thrice for Clear Light of Day; In Custody; Fasting, Feasting. From a writer of such calibre, prose can’t be faltered, it requires slow reading and digesting one thing at a time. If writers like R.K. Narayan and Mulk Raj Anand undivided the borders for Indian English Literature, writers like Anita Desai, Salman Rushdie and Jhumpa Lahiri became the faces of Indian English Literature globally.In Baumgartner’s Bombay, there’s as much India as there’s Germany. Desai bends her beak to the minutest details and spends her intelligence on describing the characters rather than the situations. It is through the characters we see and seek the hot long summers. The book has summer as a minor character. And through the characters we learn greed can kill and lost is lost forever. The loss cannot be replaced by anything new.Originally reviewed at www.vaultofbooks.com
—VaultOfBooks
I found this book very interesting but I'm not sure I would have ever picked it up or finished it if not for reading it in a class. More like 3.5 stars for me. I really liked Hugo and found the juxtaposition of the distant Holocaust with the distant events of India (not physically, but on the periphery of Hugo's experience) super effective. I liked seeing a Holocaust story that wasn't just a Holocaust story, but the story of a jew (rather than a Jew) struggling through a similar yet different kind of life and ensuing guilt. Intriguing for sure, but I'm not confident that I would pick it up again.
—Riley Dawson
