Book review: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta

It stinks, yet everybody wants to be there. It is a place where one can arrive with nothing but the clothes on ones back, and within a lifetime amass enough wealth to last several generations. It is also a city which can shatter a runaway’s dream in a heartbeat. It is the city of glitz and glamour, of filth and grime. It is also a city which I remember mostly as the place where I learned to write and read, to fly kites, to play hockey, to ride bus, to cross streets, to walk so fast that it feels like running but isn’t, to catch tadpoles in the deluge that monsoon was sure to bring, and learned quite early on that men can and will kill in the name of religion.

So, when an opportunity comes up to read about my first “hometown” I don’t let it go by. A couple of years ago, an Australian by the pen name Gergory Roberts captured the minds (and hearts too?) of us Indians with his largely fictional, yet loosely-based-on-my-experiences-as-a-mafia-“money-runner” account of the Bombay of the 1980’s. The book left us thirsty for more. We were hungry for more stories about the horrid slums. Yes sir, poverty sells. A sequel was planned but never materialized. Or did it? Anyhoo, the next book that I read about Bombay, is completely non-fictional, i.e. 99.99% true, and is set in the early 1990’s. In my mind this is as good a sequel to Shantaram as can get.

Suketu Mehta, what is the right word…, embeds, no, not really, but almost embeds himself in the Mumbai underworld scene. He interviews a top cop – Ajay Sharma. And the cop tells him about the brutal methods the Mumbai cops use to extract confessions from dangerous men. Methods, which as you read, screams human rights abuse.

He interviews men who killed their neighours in the madness of 1992. Men who drenched men in gasoline, lit cigarettes and then casually threw those cigarettes on the gasoline drenched men, and let them burn. Not in some movie. In real life. Men who show no remorse in killing other human beings.

He tells us the truth behind encounter killings, the power of money, the power of the gun, the power that the cops had to do what the pleased, and of that none of these so called “sharp-shooters” were really that effective if the target was running or if the target was more than an arm’s length away. State sanctioned cold blooded murder.

He speaks to the certifiable nut case who called himself the supremo a.k.a. remote control. I need not say more about that lunatic pussy cat in the guise of a tiger. The author covers all the angles of the deranged, dysfunctional world of the Mumbai underworld, and he does so without prejudice, and without passing judgment.

He collaborates on movies, speaks to Sanjay Dutt who in turn speaks quite freely of his troubles with the law, and how he feels justified that his “drug fuelled” desire to protect his family resulted in keeping a couple of assault rifles handy.

The author also chronicles the life cycle of a dance bar girl (or is it a boy) and finds that where ever he goes he finds a magical Gujrathi connection. He chronicles the short stay of dreamy young poet from Bihar, and the bizarre journey of a family to attain spiritual enlightenment.

To sum up, it is a great book to read. I had no expectations, and was pleasantly surprised. I seem to pick the right books to read ;) Although, I admit, the book did not make me nostalgic or homesick. But, it drove home the point that, home is a place where you can go again, and you can also leave again. Thank you sir.

Book review: Maximum City by Suketu Mehta