Suketu Mehta: Mumbai
Wednesday, May 6, 2009 at 4:38PM 
Writer Suketu Mehta glimpses our possible urban future through the lens of the vastly contrasting lifestyles in Mumbai, the biggest, fastest, richest city in India, and with a population of 21 million, larger and more crowded than many nation states.
PRAISE FOR MAXIMUM CITY: Bombay Lost and Found from suketumehta.com
Bombay native Mehta fills his kaleidoscopic portrait of "the biggest, fastest, richest city in India" with captivating moments of danger and dismay. Returning to Bombay (now known as Mumbai) from New York after a 21-year absence, Mehta is depressed by his beloved city's transformation, now swelled to 18 million and choked by pollution. Investigating the city's bloody 1992-1993 riots, he meets Hindus who massacred Muslims, and their leader, the notorious Godfather-like founder of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, Bal Thackeray, "the one man most directly responsible for ruining the city I grew up in."
Daring to explore further the violent world of warring Hindu and Muslim gangs, Mehta travels into the city's labyrinthine criminal underworld with tough top cop Ajay Lal, developing an uneasy familiarity with hit men who display no remorse for their crimes. Mehta likewise deploys a gritty documentary style when he investigates Bombay's sex industry, profiling an alluring, doomed dancing girl and a cross-dressing male dancer who leads a strange double life.
Mehta includes so-called "Bollywood" in his sweeping account of Bombay's subcultures: he hilariously recounts, in diary style, day-to-day life on the set among the aging male stars of the action movie Mission Kashmir. Mehta, winner of a Whiting Award and an O. Henry Prize, is a gifted stylist. His sophisticated voice conveys postmodern Bombay with a carefully calibrated balance of wit and outrage, harking back to such great Victorian urban chroniclers as Dickens and Mayhew while introducing the reader to much that is truly new and strange. Agent, Faith Childs Literary Agency. (Sept. 26)— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
India, culture, global, population, poverty in Pop!Tech 2005
Reader Comments (23)
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Having lived with my parents for 24 years… Let me rephrase that. Having lived with EXTREMELY PROTECTIVE parents for 24 years of life, I thought that I would enjoy the independence in Bangalore, where I had to move to for work, as a member of the ever-expanding IT brigade. And I do enjoy that… during the time I am not getting nostalgic about Mumbai.. mood ring Oh yeah… Mumbai… with its streets over-flowing with humans, with its acne infected roads, chugging and choking traffic… and a zillion other negatives… is a city I miss SO much… that I am surprised myself..
mood ring
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