Maximum Filmy: Lost in Bombay

When you read Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, you get the feeling that someone is looking over your shoulder. As you meet the well penned out, and interesting characters, you can't shake off the obligation to the person who has introduced you to them. That is because this person makes sure that he is in every page, in every experience that you have through his book.
So you have to acknowledge: Ah! Suketu: Must be one ideal Gujju boy. He does not drink more than necessary, feels the necessary pangs for his country, will not make love to anyone but his wife and is a family man. Maybe most writers cannot separate themselves from their work. Fair enough, but when you have such powerful characters and the skill to potray them in the most vivid manner, then probably you could take the back seat.
But no, in the middle of all that is happening within the pages of his books, Suketu tells us the most inane things such as the gangsters/slum dweller used his phone to make their calls. He puts all the people he met into this one sweeping sentence of `the whores, the murderers, the criminals'. And at all given points, the division is clearly Suketu and the rest of the world. So as a reader, the derogatory sentences put me off track. ``Is he talking about me?'' you think. Or maybe not.
The Bombay in this book is as filmy as our films are and thats what makes it a good read. You cannot put the book down. Every city has interesting stories. But as pace is the quality that appeals to most, when it comes to stories, Bombay has the best stories. One good thing that comes out of it is that, this proves that anything that visuals capture well, words capture equally well.
And then there is the vague Naipaulesque style, though it is not as effortless.