My Space

Initially I thought it would be just another book about the megapolis. Every year there are scores of movies produced on the same theme -- underworld, gangwars, prostitution, and Mumbai police. But the book is not only about Bombay. It is much more than that. It is about the endless struggle of human beings pushed to their edge. In the end, I got a feeling that every character in the book is right in it's own way. The ruthless murderer, the bar dancers (whom the author refers to as the "sorority of the slashed"), the super-cop, the footpath poet, the man who played women. Everyone is right. They were all pushed to this state by their own tremendous desire to survive and flourish. In turn the society squeezed them from all directions against which their solitary revolt might sound a little ridiculous by normal standards. But you need to look a little closely to understand what forced them to do what they did, sorry, are doing. Not to say Suketu Mehta is brilliant at portraying their dangerous, dismal, yet candid lives.

Out of the many gripping sequences in the book I liked this one the most: once the author asks a ACP-turned-friend about the cheapest supari (contract killing) that he has ever witnessed in his carrier. The ACP narrates a story about a seventeen year boy whom the police had detained in a murder case. After a couple of slaps and punches from the police he confessed his crime; he was not an hardened criminal after all. The ACP asked him how much money did he take to do the job. The boy replied, "fifty". The ACP shouted angrily, "fifty thousand?". "No, fifty rupees", replies the boy. He further explains that he needed a big trampoline sheet to cover his roadside shack for the upcoming rains so he killed the man for this meager sum (of one dollar, roughly). This is a city where people did not kill out of greed, revenge, or rivalry but out of need. For me, Mumbai has always been a city where people lived, in millions.

In the end I found the book shocking and thrilling both at the same time. It was grotesquely different from the books I have been reading recently (about which I did not feel like blogging), the ones where a MI5 agent kills a top military commander in Iraq or where a sixty year old male romances a girl of his daughter's age.