Maximum City
Bombay Lost and Found
by Suketu Mehta
Alfred A Knopf, 2004
If you're like most of us Americans, your first image of India is of trucks driving through the streets of Calcutta picking up bodies of children who starved to death, largely because some kid in Detroit didn't finish his vegetables.
You know, the usual.
"Eat! They're starving in India!"
"Well box it up and send it to them!"
Slap!
Then we discover Ravi Shankar, then we discover that George Harrison discovered Ravi Shankar, and that's about where it ends.
Things are different in India these days, author Mehta is a Bombay (Or these days, Mumbai) native who moved back for a while after living for several years in New York. He gives an amazing portrait of this "Maximum City," with a metro area of 19 million people and getting larger all the time, people streaming in for opportunity and wealth that is often missing in India's villages.
Along with the usual bizarre statistics... you know... the hot water that never works, the flush toilet that... well never mind, the power that's on for perhaps a few hours a day, Mehta accomplishes his task by following several people through their daily - or in some cases nightly - lives.
He hangs out with gang members and murderers and becomes privy to some very classified information, he follows a young female club dancer through her lives and loves, meets up with aspiring poets and actors, reporting on their lives and dreams, trying at the same time not to become too mixed up in their lives but at the same time turning into their best friend and confidante.
He tries not to violate the "prime directive" of not interfering in their lives, and just reporting on it, but both writer and subject get tied up with each other until Mehta, as journalist, is forced to extricate himself, remind himself that he's writing a book. In each instance, Bombay means something special to these people. They're there for a reason... or not there, any longer, for a reason.
Eventually he winds up working on the script of Mission Kashmir, a Bollywood film (cool soundtrack, by the way) where all the dreams that are Bombay meet on a single doorstep: gang members, bar dancers, aspiring actors and writers, Bollywood for many is a picture of a Bombay they wished would exist, and that does exist for those who have made it... Mehta initially isn't terribly fond of the Hindi film industry, but in the end embraces it as his own.
Same with the entire city, in some ways... this is not a book to read if you're planning to move there for the high life. People who come there put up with a lot... or "not a lot" with the hope of getting a lot more later. One family he chronicles, for example, feels they've "made it" when they can finally move all seven members into a two room flat.
I could have done with a little less on the gang wars, and a little more on the other aspects of the city. He concentrates a lot on the underside, but there are millions on the underside. Two-thirds of the city, he points out, occupy 5% of the land. If you've grown up with the idea of hordes of starving masses, this book personalizes the whole Indian experience. Mehta is obviously passionate about this city, and gave up much of himself to report such in depth experiences. His family must have been very patient, for sure.
At 534 pages, it's a long read.. but it'll give you something to do on the long flight over.
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