Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Seuketu Mehta

Reviewed by Rachel Stoll

After his 21-year absence, Seuketu Mehta returned to Bombay, his childhood city, and found something very different than he remembered. Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is an autobiographical narrative about Mehta’s rediscovery of the multicultural city he was born in. Upon his return, he was drawn to the darker sides of the city’s history and economy, providing an image of internal and external conflict in Bombay.

Initially Mehta is frustrated by the challenge of hooking up his electricity or gaining water in his apartment. Everything requires an additional bribe or waiting period, a clear sign of how corrupt the city has become in his absence, and it seems to foreshadow what his experience will be. Depressed and disappointed, Mehta looks at the years that transpired when he was living in New York, and begins researching the darker histories and stories of Bombay.

Mehta is drawn into the underbelly of the city when he investigates the city’s 1992-1993 riots. While interviewing Muslims who massacred Hindus and Hindus who massacred Muslims, he also meets the founder of the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party, Bal Thackeray. Mehta desires to delve deeper into the city’s criminal underworld of assassins and the Mafia, and into the continued violence between the Hindu and Muslim gangs, leading him to meet people who feel no remorse for the horrific crimes they commit.

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found reads like a documentary, especially when Mehta makes connections with people in organized crime, the sex industry, and dishonest police officers. Mehta’s encounters with people in the underground economy are fascinating and full of darkness and grit. In parts of this book it seems as though the city is about to burst into flame from the violence; in other parts, it's as though the real economy and people above are really just being manipulated by those beneath.

With its well-written and compelling stories, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found is highly recommended for those interested in underground economies and issues around racial and religious tensions. Definitely not for the faint of heart or for those who are easily offended, this book is gripping and feels like the labyrinth that Bombay’s underground clearly inhabits.