Maximum City : Bombay Lost and Found

Rating:
Summary: A good 300-page book...
Review: ...trapped inside a 500-page book. Like the blurb says, Maximum City explores Bombay's underbelly, with stories of gangster life, the sex trade, the movie business, politics and other shady pursuits. It should have been a recipe for seedy fun, but sadly Mehta is that guy you get cornered by at the party. You know, the one whose anecdotes are a little too long; who forgets the punch line to the three-minute joke; who is interesting, but not quite as interesting as he believes himself to be. And my goodness, I don't even know who half these people are, but even I can tell that Mehta is dropping way too many names. Maximum City is full of bloated stories that would have soared at two-thirds the length. What with 18 million people in Mumbai you'd think Mehta could have found a good editor. I thought Maximum City was an interesting but flawed book. I'm glad it was written, I just wish it had been written a bit better.

Rating:
Summary: Drags in parts but brilliantly conveys what it set out to do
Review: A hard hitting book, mostly about the underbelly of Bombay. Suketu has managed to convey a surreal view of the city by getting gangsters, movie moghuls, a transvestite, a beer bar dancer, rogue cops, murderers, even a millionaire-turned-Jain monk to throw open their lives to him. And this ultimately is the strength of the book. While the book drags in parts, most chapters make for a compelling read. The tension of the Ganpati visarjan when it crosses a mosque is almost palpable, such is the power of Suketu's pen. Shades of Naipaul can be seen in Suketu's writing. It is a must-read for all Bombayites and those who wish to learn about the other India.

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Summary: "Bombay Nightmares" Explicitly Revealed, Intriguing Portrait
Review: As a neophyte traveler to India planning my itinerary a few years back, I chose to limit myself to the Grand Trunk Road and at the time had regrets about having to bypass Bombay. According to author Suketu Mehta, it looks like my decision may have been inadvertently wise. His portrayal of this megalopolis and its inhabitants is fulsome but frequently bleak and sometimes stultifying. He offers an insider's view of Bombay in a way that makes you feel you are experiencing all dimensions of it, no small feat for a city that contains 18 million people. Of course, some of the details are on the sketchy side, but frankly the city is so overwhelming, I don't mind some of the book's more cursory aspects. After all, Mehta has the daunting task of encompassing the gang wars, the corruption, the poverty and the prolific industry known worldwide as "Bollywood" into a single tome.

The author paints an almost surreal picture of urban life there, but through his determined and often risky investigations, he is also intent on showing the layers underneath to provide the typical outsider a more comprehensive understanding of how Bombay has become so out of control. Mehta is particularly riveting when interviewing the rioters and hit men on both sides of the long-standing Hindu-Muslim divide that peaked with extreme violence in the early nineties. Promising to put their lives in the movies, the author extracts brutal yet fascinating confessions from people who murder for a living and trust no one. The tactic seems questionable, but the resulting confessionals are worthwhile. The other high point of the book is his first-hand account of the Indian film industry. Since Mehta himself is a screenwriter for a film highlighted in the book, "Mission Kashmir", he is able to extract some interesting perspectives, including his own, on the filmmaking process and the surrounding business and politics.

I would imagine a lot of what he writes will not be popular with native Mumbaikars (as they are known especially since the city's name changed officially to Mumbai in 1996), but it certainly feels real, especially as he expresses outrage at the tightening grip of the underworld bosses controlling much of the wealth of the city. In particular, Mehta paints an incisive portrait of Bal Thackeray, the city's uncrowned king who exercises unwarranted levels of power and influence through his political acumen and questionable ethics. Just by the startling revelations he gets, it's obvious the author is incurring a great deal of risk by uncovering Thackeray in this journalistic manner. At the same time, Bombay holds a strange fascination over anyone interested in Indian culture, and Mehta's writing will certainly satisfy those in need of his amazing insight. Despite all the travesties there, I actually never questioned Mehta's admiration for the city and those who survive living there day after day. So order up some vadapav and a masala Coke and be prepared for a dark journey. Needless to say, this is no Lonely Planet guide. Fascinating reading.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating and Wonderful Reading !
Review: As someone who has lived in and loved Bombay - this is the type of book I'd strongly recommend . Mehta is a natural story-teller and keeps you engrossed while taking you on a voyage through Bombay's underbelly. Sure you can quibble at his choice of characters in the book ...he focused on the gangsters, dancing girls, corrupt cops a lot more than he focuses on the working class stiff's who make the city run ! He is also at his best when he's talking about himself and how difficult a city it is to get the basics of life in - like an apartment, a gas connection, and a good plumber - even if you've got the money to pay for them. Mehta does make the city seem a bit more dangerous and exotic than it is - and perhaps this is due to his focus on gangsters and the underworld. In reality Mumbai is a lot safer than New York or Chicago ...your purse may be stolen but violent crime is far lower. Most criminals don't have guns ...or as Mehta points out guns that jam.

Overall though a great and very believeable travelogue ! The characters ring clear...and Mehta captures both their voices and that of the city ! Great job !

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Summary: A Maharastrian and Hindu bashing Mumbai Kampf
Review: Here is the premise :

All muslims are good even if they are terrorists like Dawood. All Maharastrians are bad because they are "ghatis" and do menial work.
All Hindus are bad except those like the author and his ilk who bash other Hindu's.
Hindu god's are bad...why because the author had his shoes stolen outside Siddhivinayak Temple. What he does not mention is that he was cheap enough not to pay the 2 Rs to keep his shoes securely.
Bomb blasts in Mumbai carried out by Muslims were good because they allowed all the Mumbai Muslims to walk with their head high because they showed how "Dheela" they could be
One paragraph he says he is so angry wishes Mumbai was Bombed and obliterated out of existence.
Another paragraph he says that Rs 4400 is equal to $1100.
To use the authors own slang...he used Mumbai and its people and screwed them. Mumbai was his mother and he turned out to be a real life "madar**od" if there was one.

Rating:
Summary: Great read!
Review: I agree a lot of the content is sensationalized and sometimes the wrong kind of people are glorified. But then its just a point of view as he explains. I am sure the author does not really want his book to be textbook material. He has met up with murderers and smugglers to write chapters of how they work but do you really think handing these contacts down to the cops would really help the city even a bit. Most of us know how law and order is "selectively" enforced in the city. There is also some truly amazing information in there... things that I don't know about the city I have lived in for the first 18 years of my life. Overall, I think it is an amazing book and I would recommend it to any bambaiyya interested in reading about the city.

Rating:
Summary: This Book Pleases and Disappoints
Review: The strengths and weaknesses of this book stand out. For me, the strengths are more obvious. Mehta's writing style is clean and spare. He has a good eye for detail, and he fills this 542-page book with many, many details.

Mehta's descriptive powers are formidable. I can't recall when I've been more fixated by a passage than I was by his description of the slaughtering of animals. Sort of a literary Guernica. Prepare yourself for other forays into the realm of repulsion. Disgusting debris blows into open windows. Reaching down to touch a shoe, a hand instead touches vomit. On and on. After some passages, I was tempted to pick up Naked Lunch for a little light reading.

Given these strengths, the weaknesses of this book were slow to emerge. I had had trouble with some pieces along the way. The movement of Mehta's family to Bombay loomed large at the start of the book, but, except for needing family members at two or three points later in the book, Mehta lets them drop from sight. The treatment of the bar dancer was thin. Alright, she has trouble entering into loving relationships. Alright, everywhere Mehta goes with her, heads turn. Alright, she reconciles with her father.

But preceding the bar dancer had been the crime figures, who were scary and dangerous. I was scared of them and scared for Mehta. That was more than enough emotional engagement, and, in retrospect, the criminals, perhaps with the Indian film angle, would have generated a more coherent, satisfying book.

As I plowed on, I was increasingly frustrated by Mehta's shortcomings. I didn't understand his motivation for returning to his high school. I didn't understand the motivation of the wealthy diamond merchant giving away all--less a significant trust corpus--to become a Jainist mendicant. And, because of Mehta's ineptitude, I didn't care.

Spreading himself thin, Mehta reveals a bothersome superficiality. I guess my dissatisfaction came to a point when I read--smiling as I did so--on p. 473: "He cuts off his words, but the implication is clear: I am a foreigner. I cannot understand Indian customs. Here is the difference between us, out at last in the sunlight." Acceptable in the first 20 pages, this passage is laughable at the end of the book.

Maybe Mehta intended the loosely associated facts and details and narratives and descriptions to replicate the experience of Bombay. But I was disappointed to have gained no real insight into the characters on whom Mehta has focused or the personal journey of Mehta, and the book owed us one or the other.

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Summary: Typical South Bombay Elite
Review: This book could have only been written by a typical South Bombay elitist snob.Imagine not being able to find a single Maharashtrian of noble character. I guess if you keep thinking of them as Ghatis you will continue to miss them. No wonder the Shiv Sena thrives in Mumbai.Notice the only so called good cop is a Northerner.

Rating:
Summary: Great book. Shows a snapshot of current day Bombay
Review: This book reminds of me the naipaul travel books. More reporting and less opinions as compared to naipaul. Author actually lived in bombay for some years instead of just passing through it. Allows you to look at bombay from different perspectives of diverse kinds of people who live there. Illustrates the wonderful and tragic complexity of modern day life in an Indian city. I would like to see naipaul's review of this book. Where naipaul sees "Areas of Darkness" when he visits India, Suketu shows the real stuff, good and bad. Highly recommended. Should be made the "Official Book of Bombay".

Rating:
Summary: As sprawling as the city it describes
Review: Will Bombay soon become the world's largest city? Yes, says Suketu Mehta. And what are the implications? His personal portrait of this emerging South Asian megalopolis examines what happens when the incredible mix of modern India converges on a city unable to encompass it.
Mehta's Bombay (now known as Mumbai) is a miniature of India's broader problems. Religious tension between Hindus and Muslims, exacerbated by factionalist parties, colors his account of meetings with Shiv Sena boss Bal Thackeray, whose party instigated the deadly 1993 riots in that city. One strength of Mehta's account lies in its exploration of the civic context of Thackeray's continued influence. In a city growing too fast to put new residents in anything but ramshackle slums, he becomes both a ward heeler and an national influence. Reality, always hard in modern Bombay, amplifies the influence of anyone who can get the city to provide water to slums.
Maximum City can be read as a nightmare of urban sprawl. How can any city cope with the influx of thousands who are jobless, homeless, beyond the reach of civil authority ? For Mehta, though born elsewhere in India and now a journalist living in New York, Bombay is the "home" he had to confront during a year living there. And the city defies his sense of home. Seeking a place to put his son for a good education in his native tongue, he has to face the fact that only two private schools in Bombay offer instruction in his native Gujarati and then that his son, raised outside India, struggles in classes taught in his father's - not his - language. A strong sense of irony might tell Mehta that his son, fluent in English, might not be able to cope. But the boy's problem is indicative of the larger problem of trying to grasp the reality of modern Bombay. It is too big, too diverse, and yet too central to the India that has announced its importance in world politics.
A city too big to grasp becomes, for Mehta, a place of corners he explores, some corners more successfully explored than others. This is a book that could be five or six books, some of which should not be published, as the author dives into crannies and nooks of urban life in Bombay. A long section centered on the lifestyle of a transvestite in Bombay's sex bars reveals only that this city, like others, has its tenderloin. Much more interesting is Mehta's account of his connection, initially haphazard, with a film director who struggles to maintain status in Bombay's fickle "Bollywood" movie industry. Here, Mehta's tale is worth telling: how the choice of stars for an upcoming production (Mission Kashmir) is shaped by opportunism, then threats by gangsters, then by the sudden fame of an actor, then more threats. The backstory of the production of Mission Kashmir, in Mehta's account, is far more interesting than the movie itself. It makes me wonder how "real" such movies could be if the talents who make them could get real about the political and financial realities that shape the final product into an officially-approvable daydream of what India might be like. What India IS like doesn't make it onto screen.
That's only one story in this sprawling book, too long to get words around the reality of modern Bombay, a failure that comes from the complex reality of the city itself. Maximum City is nonetheless valuable for parts which can't cohere into a whole, a personal look guided mainly by what Mehta sought to encounter. His defeat lies perhaps in the extravagant variety of the city he sought to profile. If Bombay is too big for Mehta, who could have gotten five books rather than one out of his sojourn there, the maximum city is perhaps too big for an India trying to assert its place as a nation on the world stage. The city is a miniature of that nation's larger problems, but as a miniature, in Mehta's account, it magnifies them.