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Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

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Manufacturer: Vintage
List Price: $17.00
Our Price: $8.90
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A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.79205
EAN: 9780375703409
ISBN: 0375703403
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: 2005-09-27
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 2005-09-27
Studio: Vintage


SIMILAR ITEMS:

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CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Captivating take on Bombay...
Comment: Mehta: "I had the freedom - indeed, the mission - to follow everything that made me curious as a child: cops, gangsters, painted women, movie stars, people who give up the world."

He did, and both Hubby and I appreciated the roller coaster ride through his captivating version of Bombay that not even many locals often encounter. It's a breathtaking social whirl through the city that feels like a 'kaleidoscopic portrait', per Publishers Weekly. Brilliant fragments of color, but you won't get the whole picture. Funny, sweet, tragic, scary at turns. Feels extremely relevant still although it's several years old. Engaging writing style made for easy reading, but the -1 star was for the lack of tighter editing and sometimes flamboyant phrasing, as others have stated.

Customer Rating:
Summary: City's dark underbelly.....and more
Comment: One of the better books I've come across in terms of trying to capture Bombay as it is, and the author does a pretty good job....almost. Author does a pretty good job following the lives of some fascinating people, including those from the Bombay underworld. He paints a really vivid picture of the city, which is both fascinating and disturbing. Overall, it gives a pretty accurate description of the city and its workings.

Customer Rating:
Summary: "Maximum" Is Right
Comment: 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?


Customer Rating:
Summary: Maximum cultural eye-opener.
Comment: To someone like myself who had never been to India, nor had business dealings with Indians, this book was a Godsend. On the recommendation of a Bombay/Mumbai native I read it cover to cover before spending 4 months in India. The insight into the mentality and culture of Indian thinking is both entertaining and priceless to anyone wishing to visit, live or do business there. The author's personal adventure into the sometimes overlapping grey areas of law enforcement, mafia & underground, politics and entertainment make for a fascinating read that your average person, much less foreign visitor, may never get to experience in this land of a billion Gods. After recent terror attacks in Mumbai, the political Muslim/Hindu motivated clashes that are addressed become even more spine-chilling as this book was written years ago. In addition to being a good reference on the subject, the author's own life story and blind-siding humor make it often a book one won't want to put down. The "undercover" work it must have taken to put together as well as the fluidity of discourse makes this book a must read for anyone interested in India or the Maximum City itself.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Satisfied customer
Comment: Bought this book for my wife and was impressed by the state of the book. No pages were torn, though not all pages were cut in the right dimensions, which I take as the reason it was cheap. Doesnt matter to me, I love the book and the state it is in.

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