Maximum City
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD.
Henceforth, these NONFICTION book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.
Today I read "Maximum City Bombay Lost and Found" by Suketu Mehta, published in 2004.
The author is a fiction writer and journalist who grew up in Bombay and Jackson Heights, New York. He discusses in intimate detail, the culture of Bombay, a city of 14 million people. Mehta also examines the lives of several Bombayites living in extreme situations, including an organized-crime detective and "mob" members, a strip club dancer and a club patron, a partial transsexual, and a Jain. He graphically depicts the activities of people living in the Bombay slums, and his own reasons for moving back and forth between India and New York.
He writes, "It's a good enough reason to go back: because your family misses you. It's the reason I've gone back, been pulled back, again and again...What I found in most of my Bombay characters was freedom. The pursuit of life unencumbered by minutiae. Most of them don't pay taxes, don't fill out forms. They don't stay in one place or in one relationship long enough to build up assets... Surviving in a modern country involves dealing with an immense amount of paper. He who can stay on top of the paper wins."
Mehta is torn between a city, New York, in a country with modern conveniences (but with paperwork and financial worries) and a city, Bombay, where his family lives (but with the stresses of simple survival-- its poor or nonexistent sanitation, and rampant corruption that obstructs the attainment of even basic services, such as water and electricity.)
The extreme contrasts were interesting.
Henceforth, these NONFICTION book reports will be a time-saving device. You need not read entire books anymore. Read these condensed versions instead. You'll have that much more time for your own blog.
Today I read "Maximum City Bombay Lost and Found" by Suketu Mehta, published in 2004.
The author is a fiction writer and journalist who grew up in Bombay and Jackson Heights, New York. He discusses in intimate detail, the culture of Bombay, a city of 14 million people. Mehta also examines the lives of several Bombayites living in extreme situations, including an organized-crime detective and "mob" members, a strip club dancer and a club patron, a partial transsexual, and a Jain. He graphically depicts the activities of people living in the Bombay slums, and his own reasons for moving back and forth between India and New York.
He writes, "It's a good enough reason to go back: because your family misses you. It's the reason I've gone back, been pulled back, again and again...What I found in most of my Bombay characters was freedom. The pursuit of life unencumbered by minutiae. Most of them don't pay taxes, don't fill out forms. They don't stay in one place or in one relationship long enough to build up assets... Surviving in a modern country involves dealing with an immense amount of paper. He who can stay on top of the paper wins."
Mehta is torn between a city, New York, in a country with modern conveniences (but with paperwork and financial worries) and a city, Bombay, where his family lives (but with the stresses of simple survival-- its poor or nonexistent sanitation, and rampant corruption that obstructs the attainment of even basic services, such as water and electricity.)
The extreme contrasts were interesting.
posted by Library Hopper | 3:23 PM
|
0 comments
