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Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta
Ebook Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta
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Review
“Stunning. . . . A powerful, arresting work. . . . Marvelous.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review“Narrative reporting at its finest, probably the best work of nonfiction to come out of India in recent years. . . . Mehta succeeds so brilliantly in taking the pulse of this riotous urban jungle.” –The New York Times Book ReviewAs each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.“What Dickens did for London, what Joseph Mitchell did for New York City, Suketu Mehta has done for Bombay. . . . A candid, extensive, and wholly entertaining portrait.” –San Diego Union-Tribune“The ultimate insider’s view of Bombay, a roiling and vigorous account that delivers on a seemingly impossible challenge: how to limn the diversity and sprawl of such a place in a single book.” –The Seattle Times
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From the Inside Flap
A brilliantly illuminating portrait of Bombay and its people-a book as vast, diverse, and rich in experience, incident, and sensation as the city itself-from an award-winning Indian-American fiction writer and journalist. A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us a true insider's view of this stunning city, bringing to his account a rare level of insight, detail, and intimacy. He approaches the city from unexpected angles-taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs who wrest control of the city's byzantine political and commercial systems . . . following the life of a bar dancer who chose the only life available to her after a childhood of poverty and abuse . . . opening the doors onto the fantastic, hierarchical inner sanctums of Bollywood . . . delving into the stories of the countless people who come from the villages in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks-the essential saga of a great city endlessly played out. Through it all-as each individual story unfolds-we hear Mehta's own story: of the mixture of love, frustration, fascination, and intense identification he feels for and with Bombay, as he tries to find home again after twenty-one years abroad. And he makes clear that Bombay-the world's largest city-is a harbinger of the vast megalopolises that will redefine the very idea of "the city" in the near future. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, "Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world. "From the Hardcover edition.
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Product details
Paperback: 560 pages
Publisher: Vintage; 60568th edition (September 27, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 9780375703409
ISBN-13: 978-0375703409
ASIN: 0375703403
Product Dimensions:
5.1 x 0.9 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.0 out of 5 stars
142 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#165,423 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
This is a book for anyone interested in Bombay or India or the world. The author, Suketu Mehta, who grew up in Bombay, immigrated as a teenager to New York, and has been back and forth between his two countries ever since, has a wicked sense of humor, a blunt tongue, and a keen insight into why Bombay deserves the name "Maximum City." Its glories and shames, its complexities and seemingly insurmountable problems, are explored in one fascinating anecdotal chapter after another. In the end, you learn a lot about cities in general, politics in general, corruption in general, all while examining the intricate tapestry of the great city now officially called Mumbai -- but always Bombay in the author's heart.
This book is aptly titled because everything about Bombay/Mumbai does indeed sound "maximum." Twenty-three million people in a space that should accommodate more like 10 million. People living in extreme poverty, sleeping on the city's footpaths and bathing near an open sewer. Police shooting suspected criminals on sight, in what are euphemistically called "encounters." Commuters falling off the morning train because they are, literally, hanging onto the outside of the car by their fingers and toes. Bollywood film stars consorting with criminal gang members and throwing lavish parties where just the hors d'oeuvres would feed a poor man for a month.And then, on the other hand, a Jain diamond merchant and his family giving up all their possessions to wander the countryside seeking "moksha." A cross-dressing bar dancer who leads a painful, double life in order to support his extended family. A talented boy from the hinterlands who is happy to sleep in the street and starve so he can follow his bliss writing poetry. These are people living on the edge, right to the max of whatever situation they find themselves in. As I read I was both thrilled and horrified.Suketu Mehta is a native of Bombay who is now living in New York City. He went back to write about his home town in a perhaps unconscious attempt to find some way to integrate his old world and new world selves. And to acquaint his children with their paternal heritage. The place was very different, and yet oddly the same.Knowing nothing about Bombay the place at first seemed utterly foreign to me. But as I read I began to see that in some ways it is not unlike my own New York City. A bit more "maximum" perhaps, but don't the police shoot to kill here in New York? Don't the rich throw obscenely wasteful parties (or didn't they before the recent economic meltdown)? Don't we see extremes of wealth and poverty, side by side, every day in Midtown?We too live in a city of stark contrasts, and yet we have one great asset going for us: a government that is, on the whole, not corrupt and a civil society that enforces the law in a more or less consistent manner. For sure it's not perfect, but if you doubt the importance of citizens being able to rely on the rule of law, try living in Bombay/Mumbai, or half of the other cities in the world for that matter. (Disclaimer: I haven't lived outside of the US, so my views are informed by what I read rather than first-hand experience.)Good government, it seems to me, is the required bedrock of a great city. It is both precious and elusive. See what Mehta writes about the takeover of Maharashtra state by the Hindu-nationalist Shiv Sena political party in 1995: "The government took a look at the awesome urban problems plaguing the city, the infestation of corruption at all levels of the bureaucracy and the government, the abysmal state of Hindu- Muslim relations, and took decisive action. They changed the name of the capital city to Mumbai."Do people get the government they deserve? Given what I know of Indians (admittedly not a lot), I don't think so. This great civilization and its people certainly deserve a better, fairer and more functional government than what they appear to have now. As India becomes an economic power in this century, perhaps that country will generate the wealth required to lift Mumbai's 23 million (and growing) out of poverty. The question in my mind is, how can we help them, and will we?
Written with love. Mumbai was always on my list of destinations - now even more. Brilliant character portaits and lifelines. Plenty of lessons in how to adapt to seeming chaos. Fantastic how all the characters portrayed all meld into their respective places in the maximum of cities. Wish I could read it for a first time again. Wish I could write like that. The author is also a mate of Vikhram Chandra, who wrote "Sacred Games" (among others). One of the best fiction books I've ever read. A real page turner - all 800 of them, and all the research backed up in real life by Maximum City. One of the characters of which was just recently executed after being found guilty for his role in the Mumbai bombings - something also forensically dissected in the book. Buy it, read it. Guaranteed you won't regret it. (Same applies to Sacred Games.)
In the tradition of the Bhagavad Gita, a no holds barred look at previously inscrutable city life on Earth today. Life is different in the big city, or at least there is certainly more of it! There are long stories, any of which could be expanded into a fine movie for a few crores of rupiyah, and fine short stories, some lasting only moments. If you are a lifelong resident of Bombay, or the prime minister of India, or an English speaking deckhand somewhere in the Pacific, you will enjoy an immersive experience of this narrative of yesterday’s true stories. And you will wonder what might occur tomorrow. And you may know Truth.
I bought this book in anticipation of visiting Bombay/Mumbai. I ended up going to Cambodia and Singapore. If ONLY I could have gone to Mumbai. If ONLY I could have experienced a sliver of an iota of a whisp of what the author experienced. I am so attached to this book that I am loathe to finish it. The last 1/3 sits on my desk, I indulge in 2 pages per day, I don't want to finish it because how else will I *know* about Bombay??
This has helped me to decide whether I could handle living in Bombay (sure why not; I would rather be challenged than bored). A really amazing study of the misdevelopment of one of the world's greatest Sprawls, this book could/should be in any college curriculum on urban development. It is daunting sometimes to realize how completely unplanned many of the world's newest cities are, and how little we may be able to do to change the course of their development.Mehta is a great story teller, and the tales of his Jain family are among the most memorable scenes in the book. Maximum City is also a great true crime thriller, and gives you a sense of a gritty city every bit the dark and exciting sequel to Al Capone's Chicago.Bombay is probably the most lively city in India now, and I hope that Maximum City inspires more writers to tell the thousands of stories that are buried there, in both the moneyed heights of Malabar Hill and the depths of the Dhaaravi jhuggi-jhonpri, from dimly lit kharkhanas to air-conditioned IT glass towers.
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