false 4364 0375703403 9780375703409 943 196 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1165429518m/4364.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4364.Maximum_City_Bombay_Lost_and_Found 3019 Suketu Mehta 1010 208 0 2008-11-13T10:42:25-08:00 94384 450 2008-11-13T10:42:25-08:00 3 0 false Thu Jun 18 11:43:50 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 01 09:23:28 -0700 2008 Thu Jun 18 11:43:50 -0700 2009
Much more detail about the police force, film industry, red light districts in Bombay/Mumbai. Interesting, kind of exhausting. Wondering how Suketu will tie things together in the end. Occassional flashes of bad writing, turns of phrase that are trying too hard to be poetic, but overall, very capably done, and carefully presented. Seeing layer upon layer of the city.

My favorite section so far deals with the simple difficulties of living in the city: finding a plumber, a maid, getting propane. India as a "culture of No" seemed to make a lot of sense with some of the gnarled infrastructure I glimpsed during my own visit. This book speaks very specifically to Bombay, less than being an expandable glimpse of India as a whole, as I hoped it would be.

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I'm about 150 pages in. It's giving me a good sense of how variegated, dense, beautiful and chaotic Bombay/Mumbai is. I'm guessing that is to some extend a picture of India as well, though a friend described Bombay as the NYCity of India, which suggests it is the extreme rather than the medium for intense juxtaposition and the dynamic of teeming masses in India.

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I want to read this in preparation for my trip to India later this month--two weeks in Chennai and Shadohl with my church. Read an interesting writeup on this book on BoingBoing, and hope it can give me a sense of the ethos of Indian city culture...and somehow do everything else needed for my trip. ;)]]>