Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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76 of 83 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating, October 4, 2004
It was with great delight when I found by accident this sizeable book on Bombaby. My delight only increased when I started to read. Suketu Metha was taking me into a world that I had long wondered about but had never been able to visit. His book, Maximum City, is easily the best book on 20th Century India that I have ever read.
It is not written as a typical travel book. The format is to take major aspects and dominant personalities of the city and give them each a detailed, richly woven chapter. You'll learn about the quirks and numerous pitfalls of Bombay housing and how the Renter's Act has made everything much much worse. You'll meet the head politician who seems to view Bombay as his personal fiefdom. You'll meet an amazing police detective who is unique on the police force in that he is the only one who won't take bribes, and you'll even sit in on a number of torture sessions of criminals. You'll meet a whole lot of people who kill people for hire, as well as members on police force who kill criminals because the courts didn't do their jobs of prosecuting them (that reality was drop jaw amazing). You'll meet some of the top women in the Bombay beer bar/sex scene, as well as an engineer who gave up a promising career to become a poet living on the Bombay footpaths. The list goes on.
As I read this book, I was amazed at the people that Metha got to agree to give him a good chunk of their time, allowing him to develop a vivid flesh and blood portrait. To top it off, he is an amazingly good writer, who has a great sense of humor (I guffawed out loud several times as I read this book) while casting an unblinking eye on filth and corruption so deep that you feel like you're going to choke on it.
Maximum City is truly a fascinating book to read. Anyone who is interested in either India or the phenomenon of the modern city can't help but love this book.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Found some; lost some, December 28, 2006
I actually agree with a lot of the reviews written on this book, especially in terms of the specifics they have captured on what works in this book and what does not. The purpose of this review thus is only to either reiterate the key points briefly, or to add a couple of new ones.
0. Context setting: I lived in Bombay for 6 years, hope to never live there again, but am fascinated by it, and can't read enough about it. I wasn't directly exposed to either the underbelly or the glamour of Bombay, but was definitely aware of it - something you can never avoid if you live there. My perspective is thus much more middle-class, which I think would be the broadest perspective on Bombay.
1. Bombay is a city begging to be written about, and despite the almost sudden rise in interest in writing about this city, there are still only a few one can really read, so Suketu's attempt is a welcome addition.
2. Suketa's heart in the right place, but his execution is confused. He clearly wants to capture the heart and soul of Bombay, but seems to be limited by his obvious journalistic and dispassionate style. At times the city gets the better of him and he lets go, but not often enough. This is in my opinion is the biggest drawback of the book - it's just stuck somewhere in between an extended non-fiction journal piece and a string of stories linked together by the theme of a city.
3. The book is way too long. Enough people have already pointed this out, so I won't belabour the point, but really, the obsession with writing about the Mafia is totally tedious. If that was what the book was intended to be about, I would have no complaints, but it wasn't, and I think it's unfair to devote half the book (directly or indirectly) to this subject.
4. The author is clearly star-struck (film stars, political stars, underworld stars, you-name-it stars), which biases the content in the book and makes it disproportionately and painfully heavy towards the warped un-reality that stars live in.
5. The depth of exploration of various subjects is clearly inconsistent, with some being ridiculously long (refer 3 above), and some painfully short. I am not sure whether that's because of the author's biases, or because of the information detail he was able to elicit on various subjects, but irrespective, it leads to some frustration.
In closing, let me state that I recognize that this review sounds harsh, but it is not really intended to be, and is just meant to prepare you for the long journey you will embark upon. In the end, all the above notwithstanding, I would still recommend this book as a second or third one if you want to get to know, and I mean really know, Bombay. My unequivocal first choice remains Shantaram, a book which never misses the pulse of the city in its much longer 1000 page journey, and remains the ultimate paean to Bombay.
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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Bombay Nightmares" Explicitly Revealed, Intriguing Portrait, October 31, 2004
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.
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