Book Review: Maximum City

Suketu Mehta’s book, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found , is a perfect example of the good and bad of travel writing. I consider it part of the travel writing genre despite the fact that the writer spent part of his childhood in Bombay because it really is a return and exploration of a place that is only partially the same place the writer left many years earlier. It is an exploration of a place in the way that all good travel writing should be. His writing is superb and by following the stories of individuals and himself he paints a protrait of the city that is complex and fascinating. His focus on communal tensions and his interviews with those at the center of those troubles, his descriptions of the trials and tribulations in the Country of No, his ability to talk with and befriend both the ultra-rich and famous and those eking out a living at the bottom of Bombay’s financial ladder are among the highlights in a book that is a must-read for those interested in that city or are more generally interested in this style of non-fiction.

I would also highly recommend it for those interested in the social geography of cities more generally. He eloquently discussed through personal stories issues such as rural-urban migration, class, corruption, etc. As someone who is interested in infrastructure issues, I also appreciated his discussions of what it takes for a city of this size to run (transportation, electricity, water, etc.) and the severe strain that Bombay’s infrastructure is under and why solving its problems is extremely complex. His exploration of himself through his exploration of the city is also a part of what makes this a good book. As I said, this is a return to the city of his childhood. Though he had made a number of trips back in the intervening years, the book deals with a period of time in which he moves back to Bombay for an extended period of time to live. His comparisons of the city of today with the city he remembers give the book a further richness.

One of the problems with writing this kind of book is the danger of seeing everyone as a subject for the book and the question of how one gathers material for a book of this nature. With complete recognition that what I am about to write can be seen as a direct contradiction of what I wrote above, I was left wondering what kind of person Suketu Mehta really was as I read the book. What was his motivation in befriending some of the people in the book? Were they anything more than fodder for his book? On the flip side, if he really is friends with some of these people, then I feel he did not go far enough in exploring what that meant for him since some of them were murderers, among other things. The book does go beyond the usual portrayal to give us a more nuanced view of these people, and that is important. He does explore important themes through his interaction with them. However, he is clearly entranced with the dangerous side of their lives, but to go the next step and become their friends deserves more reflection than what was in the book. There is also a question as to whether some people realized that their interactions with him were going to be revealed in his book. Another aspect of this is his treatment of his immediate family. His wife and kids are trotted out when appropriate, but I was really left to wonder what the hell his wife was thinking while he was out at times of the day and night to talk to perpretators of sectarian violence, bar-line girls, gangsters, etc.

Another aspect of the book that could be seen as either a positive or negative is its rather haphazard flow. It appears to have been written in bits and pieces over time and then put together. He moves from theme to theme, from vignette to vignette with the organization of it into a cohesive whole seemingly an afterthought. I actually don’t mind that so much, except at certain times. For example, he introduces someone in the book towards the end without acknowledging the fact that he was already introduced several hundred pages earlier in a slightly different context. As I said, this will bother some people, others will find it somewhat appropriately chaotic given the subject matter.

Note: Mehta tackles the issue of “Bombay” versus “Mumbai” very directly in the book. I’ve chosen to refer to Bombay in this post simply because that is how Mehta refers to the city, despite the official name change.