Editorial Content for A Room in Bombay: A Memoir

Being an only child, an Indian son, homosexual, and the child of Hindu parents stuck in a loveless marriage, Manil Suri faced challenges.

In his memoir, A ROOM IN BOMBAY, Suri talks about his life and how it unspooled in Bombay, then stretched across the world from a Pittsburgh university to one in Maryland, with trips and vacations to New York City, London, Paris, California and Delhi. He meets the challenges of his life, crashes and burns a few times, has a loving partner, and learns that he can never quite leave home.

Home was an apartment in Razia Mansion, where Suri’s father, Ram, and his mother, Prem, moved in 1958. He was born a few months later, and they were a tight unit. They shared the apartment with three other families (all Muslims), and the many quarrels and arguments involved the refrigerator, marking floor territory, using and cleaning the toilets, and verbal spats among their visitors. Suri had shame for their situation but also was extraordinarily loyal to his parents. The machinations of maintaining this room were complex. It was ramshackle and needed repair, yet they were all bound to it. It was home.

"You will remember A ROOM IN BOMBAY long after you put it down as you consider your own understanding of home."

Suri’s growing understanding and acceptance of his homosexuality is quite naturally a huge focus of his adolescence and early manhood. Prem, affectionately called Mammy, is able to somewhat comprehend what his choices meant because she read and had gotten an education, but Ram did not. It seems that Suri has a single regret about his father’s death --- that he did not speak openly with him and answer questions. 

Suri returns again and again to Bombay during the 11 years after Ram’s passing. He moves Prem to America to live with him, but then she goes back to India. He visits her and the extended family, and he sees changes in Bombay, Delhi and the surrounding areas. Amidst the uncertainty of Prem’s declining health, he is steadfast in his commitment to her, finding solutions and new paths for her contentment. However, she does not always take them. During a final airplane trip to Bombay, Suri reflects on the “what-ifs” of her life. Her choices gave him life, but would her hypothetical choices have paralleled his? He does not know.

The obligations of an Indian son to his parents are immense. Social interactions, Bollywood plots, cultural and religious norms, and fables from Ramayana are all reminders of filial duty that exemplar sons are meant to achieve. After his move to America, Suri learned the precept that “everyone’s responsible for their own life,” which sounded liberating and promising. But it was not so easy to abandon his parents. 

The memories of card games sitting on the edge of the single bed, the joy he recalls in his parents' faces on the balcony as he would return home from school, their shoulders lifting as they recognized him in the crowd --- Suri’s life felt bound to them and to the room in Bombay. He thought he needed to repay the “surging, overpowering, all-engulfing love” from his childhood. He was supportive and generous beyond measure, and he needed that responsibility to come to an honorable close.

In an effort to make the distance between himself and his parents more bearable, Suri writes letters --- more than 2,700 of them, all addressed to Prem. They show the richness, honesty and humor of his life. You will remember A ROOM IN BOMBAY long after you put it down as you consider your own understanding of home.