I am a people watcher and an experience seeker, and Murz’s stories in Muses Over Mumbai were raw, real, and brutal. They affected me deeply.
Mumbai: When Gogi Duggal, a Bandra-based music producer and sound engineer, decided to return to his craft after a fifteen-year hiatus, he chose other forms of self-expression – poetry and lyrics and books – as a way to inspire himself. While on this quest, he met Mumbai-based author, Murzban F. Shroff, known for works like Breathless in Bombay, Waiting for Jonathan Koshy, Third Eye Rising, and Muses Over Mumbai. “I got to know Murz through a common friend and read all his books,” says Gogi. “His characters were people I felt I knew. I am a people watcher and an experience seeker, and Murz’s stories in Muses Over Mumbai were raw, real, and brutal. They affected me deeply.”
Having spent several years discovering and promoting college bands and young talented musicians, many who went onto becoming composers, playback singers, and lyricists, Gogi was inspired enough to venture a music track on Shroff’s Muses Over Mumbai. “The song came up totally unplanned,” he said. “I just had this burning desire, and the whole thing flew out of me in twenty minutes. There was no correcting or re-writing; it was almost like auto-writing. I spent another twenty minutes putting it into an AI music generator (Suno.com) and choosing a genre. Hiphop was my natural choice. It lent itself nicely to the pace and vision of the book, which is truly about knowing your fellow-citizens.”
Muses Over Mumbai is Shroff’s fourth book and a tribute to the prolific spirit of Mumbai.
Over 17 stories, the book covers a multitude of lives, characters, and issues. The work has garnered advance praise from renowned authors such as Salman Rushdie, Jonathan Franzen, Robert Olen Butler, Amit Chaudhuri, and Jeet Thayil.
Listen to Muses Over Mumbai by Haaathi on #SoundCloud: