Suketu Mehta, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
This book describes Mumbai City in terms of its richest and poorest. Both classes live together despite the giant gaps in their lifestyles. The writer has come back to India 15-20 years after staying in the US. And he witnesses the changes that the country has gone through in the years of his absence. This is a compact non-fictional tale that travels through the dance bars of Mumbai and the life of the dancers and moves on to the poor people living on the railway tracks. It speaks out the shocking story of an assassin who kills for mere fifty Rupees.[break]
The writer, who has also written movie scripts, presents the firsthand interviews of movie stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Amitabh Bachchan. He also showcases direct dialogues with the cops as well as murderers. He focuses on giving many sides of the same story. He delves into the Hindu-Muslim religious riots and violence in Mumbai. There is the portrayal of the never-ending conflicts between the Hindu extremist Shiva Sena and the Muslim dons from the Mumbai Underworld. This is probably the most important aspect of the book.
Keshab Thoker
What doesn’t Mumbai have? The fascinating city has money, love, sex, death and show business. The different characters are real but have been assigned fictional names. There is a millionaire who renounces everything and walks away barefoot in search of spiritual truth and inner peace. Ultimately, this book carries an underlying message of giving up on the worldly affairs after a certain point and setting off in the quest for something greater and more precious than what meets our eyes in the everyday and ordinary sense.
Suketu is an internationally celebrated author. He had even visited Kathmandu in 2009. His book had been presented to me in 2006 by a friend. I finished these 500 pages within a matter of a few hours while I was in China. They were that captivating. I had even emailed Suketu and he had replied. A book indeed has the power to establish a connection between a reader and a writer, two complete strangers from different corners of the world.
About Pradhan
Pradhan is currently working as media consultant at the Tourism Service Center of Nepal Tourism Board. He had been a journalist for about seven years before that. He started out with Amar Chitra Katha as a school kid who was completely in awe of books. An avid reader who had stepped into the world of books and reading at the age of 14, he even has a wide circle of friends who are as voracious readers as himself.
He is not much of a fiction fan. He has always been a great lover of non fiction. “I believe books teach you the philosophies of life,” he comments. He is motivated to read by the idea that reading not just gives you perspectives to life but also meanings. His idea of a good life has always been associated with the notion of a good reading. “Can a rich man with no education live a momentous life?” he questions.
He recollects this incident when he at the Westminster Bridge in London. “Long ago, I had read a poem by Wordsworth, ‘Upon Westminster Bridge.’ When I reached that place, I could feel what the poet must have felt at that moment since I had already familiarized myself with this place through his eyes and words.”
Reading, he says, is a way of armchair traveling and a wonderful means to surpass all kinds of temporal, physical, geographical and psychological boundaries.
After the Prophet by Lesley Hazleton
This book talks about people killing their own compatriots. It also discusses the history of division between the Shia and Sunni sects in Islam. It is the story of Prophet Mohammad who could recite the whole Koran as if he had memorized it. This is a balanced book with equal and ample space for multiple perspective.
North of South by Shiva Naipaul
Despite being a fine writer, he was overshadowed by his brother, VS Naipaul. This is an account of Africa and Africans. The writer has often been criticized for being harsh and racist. This book actually contains a lot of research and travel stories. During the 1970s, many African countries had just been freed from European colonial rule. He presents a very grim picture of Africa where people are lazy and even the cab drivers at the airports are cheats and frauds.
In the Company of a Poet: Gulzar in Conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir by Nasreen Munni Kabir
Nepalis are closely attached to Bollywood with respect to culture and entertainment. Kabir is a Muslim writer originally from India but has been living in England for many years. This book is like a casual conversation between two individuals. This is a story of Gulzar’s life about how he came to Mumbai from Delhi and became a lyricist and director in Bollywood.
Nine Lives: The Search of the Sacred in Modern India by William Dalrymple
Dalrymple is a historian. This book is about nine little slices of lives of people involved in nine diverse professions. The writer has written about a Jain nun. In Kerala, there is a dancer from the Dalit community with a split personality disorder. When he starts dancing, “God” enters his body and he becomes divine. There is also the tale of the girls who are offered to the gods and are manipulated by Brahmins. His characters include singers, travelers, monks, sculptors and others whom he met during the course of his travels.
The World is What It is:
The Authorized biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French
Patrick French, a British biographer, is a young fellow who was given the access to Naipaul’s entire archive. This is a rag-to-riches tale of a young Caribbean lad from Trinidad and Tobago who came to Britain as an ordinary international student on scholarship but went on to marry a British woman, have an Argentinean mistress and become a famous author.
As told to Nitya Pandey
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