The Catalyst alias Bombay Tiger was published in the year 2008 after its author died. Considered as one of the major novelists who wrote in English in the 20th century, Kamala Markandaya’s last novel is, as the blurb on the book jacket, says, “gloriously rich in incident and character.”

Essentially, the story is about Ganguli, who arrives in Bombay with an ambition to become the city’s biggest industrialist and which he succeeds in fulfilling. Set in the 1980s, the novel throws the spotlight on an India which is transitioning with the arrival of private enterprises.

Ganguli is sketched out as a man who is hard working, possessing a tunnel vision in order to complete a task, ruthless and unaccommodating when necessary. He is visionary and pragmatic, as well as human and accommodating, when reality confronts him or when other people’s needs can no longer be denied.

Hailing from a village on the outskirts of Srirangapatnam, once the capital of Sultans, Ganguli is described by his childhood competitor, Narahari Rao, who too arrives in Bombay to make a name in finance. They went to the same village school whose headmaster, Pandey, a widower, taught his students about how the subcontinent of India was overpowered by colonial forces. “Their greed, our stupidity,” he told them, which Ganguli has reversed and holds as his motto: “My greed, their stupidity” as he goes about building up a towering business for himself.  

Both Rao and Ganguli land up in Bombay, first Rao, who establishes himself as a city financier and then Ganguli, who, with his bull neck, massive clever head, thrusting ambition and buccaneering spirit, soon endears himself to Bombay traders. He is shown rising steadily, capturing the construction industry, diversifying his business into steel and later into machine tools.

The plot keeps changing with the perspective of the characters who complement the personality of Ganguli and take the narrative forward. There is his daughter, simple-minded Lekha, who has a heart of gold. She is forever rescuing and tending stray animals. There is Manju, her friend, who hopes of becoming a woman astronaut.

There is Rao himself, his wife, son Sheshu, daughter Nalini and an old father. There is Kothari, the boisterous flamboyant advocate, Dr Jinwala, a Parsi gentleman and then there is Rajeev Pandey, the foreign-educated son of Ganguli’s old schoolmaster. There is even a Hollywood crew that arrives to shoot a film and whom the author in her sweeping narrative uses to take potshots at the stereotypes that abound about India in the West. 

However, as American professor Charles R Larson describes in the prologue to the novel, Ganguli dominates Bombay Tiger with his sheer audacity, whether as a business mogul, lover, parent or barely domesticated animal on the prowl.

“In its narrative force, its kaleidoscopic vitality, even its dazzling comic tone, Bombay Tiger becomes Markandaya’s sometimes disturbing summation of the late twentieth century India,” says Larson.

The language is superb and skillful and Markandaya gets into the skin of the characters to record how they confront a changing social milieu. The author has published a total of 10 novels, including the classic Nectar in a Sieve and lived a life of near anonymity on the outskirts of London for two decades till 2004 when she died. Shortly after her death, her daughter discovered the finished typescript of the Bombay Tiger, which was published in the year 2008.