“Ae dil hai mushkil jeena yahan, zara hatke zara bachke yeh hai Bambai meri jaan.”
This song was written almost five to four decades ago, but even today it truly signifies the spirit of Mumbai. The adrenaline rush you see around you while walking on the streets or traveling in a jam packed local, the innumerable people crossing the signal in front of Churchgate station every two minutes or the maddening traffic jam you fight everyday while returning home, you feel this song every moment you live here. I chose the book Maximum city to be reviewed to know and appreciate my city better. A mega city like Mumbai, which keeps expanding every day, has so much to tell us and teach us. Hence my search ended when I came across this book which did exactly the job I wanted to be done. It helped me to comprehend every bit of my existence in this city.
The book “Maximum city- Bombay lost and found” is about the city and the people living in it. Suketu Mehta in his sprawling 500 pages book has given an account of incidents about the various characters like people suffering the brunt of the 1992-93 blasts and riots, underworld hit-men, a bar dancer, a film producer etc. these stories are not connected but there is a common thread running through them and that is the city of Mumbai, which Mehta still prefers to call as Bombay. All these stories revolve around the various problems that the city faces and how the people of this mega polis also get affected by them. A lot of research work was done by him before actually writing the book. It’s a factual and ‘in your face’ kind of a novel which guides you to Mumbai’s history and back to the present condition. read this book and discover your home in a new way and in a new light.
