I have started reading Maximum city By Suketu .. i dont remember the last name of the author..it is Mehta i think
anyways this book is supposed to be about my city. a city that i have spent about 24 years of my life..
i had read a few reviews of this book when it was newly published.they praised the book said there was no other book that covered the essence of mumbai like this.... i was curious. but then i never picked it up to read..
that day while looking around in the library...just cos i didnt have anything better to do. i picked it up .

before issuing out that book. i read a few lines.. from the first page.. from the middle .. just like i always do... just to makes sure the writing style is soemthing that i am comforatable with..
it was.. i picked it up.. and enjoyed reading the intial few pages.. that the author narrates his experience of childhood in the city and coming back to it after decades in the US.. to set up a  semi permanent home.. for the time it takes him to write this book.

the initial pages.. were good... sarcastic humor.. with the hope of setting up a new place to call home.. the glitches.. the hurdles.. that ppl face with the various authorites.. et all.. it was great.. it was something that i as an average mumbaikar could identify with..

I was going to like this book.. I said..

but the topic was soon forgotten.. the author.. goes on to research the riots.. the hindu muslim sentiment in it.. the police and gangster struggle..the politicians and their dirty philosophies.. the bar dancers.. the prostitues et all..

and finally in the chapter that i have just begin.. he discusses the film industry............

3/4 of the book gone.. and other than the initial 10 pages that i could identify with.. there was nothing else.. i could...

well this is a book about mumbai.. and spending about a quarter of a centuary here.. i should have already knows most of the things that would be in the book...but it was not..

probably the author has written it from a very outsiders prespective... he is not concerned about the way the majority of the city lives.. he is only interested in the things that make news.. this is a book written to explan to the oursiders.. why and what has happend or is happing in mumbai...

it glorifies the gangsters... makes the dirty politics played by the limited thinking goons... sound nothing more than a fairy tale.. he has written about the under belly... of the city.. something that most middle class ppl like me.. pray we never have to come face to face with..
somthing that we strive to keep out of our homes.. away from our children..

but then it may be true.. how much true i dont know.. i dont think it is entirely true though...
but reading of the travails of the various personalities that he describes in the book.. makes me thankful for being the average Middle class mumbaikar...

i still have a quarter of the book to be read.. and i may probably have a different opinion about it by then... but right now.. this is not a city that i can identify with... not one that i call my own...