Thrity Umrigar

Thrity Umrigar was born in Bombay and moved to USA at the age of twenty-one. She holds a Masters degree in journalism from the Ohio State University.

After her stint in OSU, she worked as a journalist for Lorain Journal, a paper near Cleveland. Later, in 1989, she worked for the Akron Beacon Journal.

Thrity Umrigar’s novels are primarily populated with Parsi characters, the community from which she herself hails. The metropolis of Bombay, with an entire range of humanity living side by side, also influences the setting of her works.

Works

• Bombay Time
• First Darling of the Morning
• The Space Between Us

Bombay Time

Bombay Time portrays the lives of longtime residents of an apartment building and is an examination of their bonds with each other as well as their love-hate relationship with the city of their birth.

All of the residents of Wadia Baug are Parsis, whose relative affluence and Western orientation makes them stand out in a city of mass poverty. Now the son of Jimmy Kanga, the resident success, is getting married and all the neighbours are invited. As each of the guest’s disparate, poignant stories unfold we follow the slow dissolution of Rusi and Coomi Bilimoria’s marriage, the fatal betrayal suffered by Rusi’s friend, Soli Contractor, the rise of Jimmy Kanga, and the sad case of the reclusive Tehmi Engineer. Above all, the novel gives us a sense of how this close knit Parsi community copes with individual struggles through humor, hope and courage.