E-Paper
In their palace of dreams
A Bombay story that works admirably because of the city's optimistic and indomitable spirit.
Maximum City
Bombay Lost and Found
Suketu Mehta
Penguin Books India
2004
Sociology
Pages: 600
Price: Rs 595
ISBN: 0670049212
Hardback
“You know you’re a Bombayite when your idea of personal space is no one actually standing on your toes. You know you’re a Bombayite when you wade through waist-deep floods of mud and sewage in the monsoon and think that’s romantic.”
This is a favourite forward. To non-Bombayites it’s a joke. To a Bombayite, it sums up the spirit of the city. These things could depress you but they don’t. Other people could look at the heaving mass of brown-grey sludge that is the Arabian Sea on the city’s coastline and want to throw up. A Bombayite will gaze fondly at it, convinced that it’s blue.
That’s the spirit that comes through in Maximum City: Bombay Lost & Found. The spirit of a city that is, no matter what, always optimistic.
After 15 years of living in cities all over the world, New York-based Suketu Mehta returned to the city where he grew up. Bombay.
He gave himself an assignment to explore the city and find what makes it tick. And so he began the massive task of finding, talking to, and insinuating himself into the lives of the people who constitute the city of vada pao eaters: the slum-dwellers, the gangsters, the cops, the bar dancers, the middle class, the lafda-creating Shiv Sena activists, the commuters, and — naturally — Bollywoodites.
So welcome to the world of Sunil, the Sena man who’s organised riots, burned Muslims alive with pride, and is also a good husband and father. Enter the universe of Monalisa, the bar dancer who gives her clients a little bit of caring in exchange for money (sex is not necessarily part of the deal), but who’s slashed her wrists for love. Find out what it’s like to be a wannabe filmstar, constantly let down by producers who make promises, but finally make it as a hero in a C-grade flick called Jai Mata Shakumbhari Devi.
