The history is told here how, within three centuries, seven west-coast islands evolved into the Bombay peninsula, then into a flourishing center for trade. It ultimately became the cosmo politan, high-rise metropolis of Mumbai.

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs, following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse, opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood, and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks. As each individual story unfolds, Mehta also recounts his own efforts to make a home in Bombay after more than twenty years abroad. Candid, impassioned, funny, and heartrending, Maximum City is a revelation of an ancient and ever-changing world.

A fascinating history of a great cosmopolitan port and industrial city

Mumbai has been extensively photographed over the past century. Like New York, it is a city full of men and women with aspirations of making it big in life. Mumbai is also known as a dream factory because of the overwhelming presence of its film industry, one of biggest in the world. This book collects nearly three decades of work from Raghu Rai, one of Indias foremost photojournalists. The pictures encompass life in all its manifestations from the high-rise skyscrapers to the gushing waves of the Arabian sea. It shows movement and activity that almost never ceases fairs and festivities, political demonstrations, films in the making, and the advertising and modelling scene.

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a “State of Internal Emergency.” Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

Every day in Mumbai 5,000 dabbawalas (literally translated as "those who carry boxes") distribute a staggering 200,000 home-cooked lunchboxes to the city's workers and students. Giving employment and status to thousands of largely illiterate villagers from Mumbai's hinterland, this co-operative has been in operation since the late nineteenth century. It provides one of the most efficient delivery networks in the world: only one lunch in six million goes astray. Feeding the City is an ethnographic study of the fascinating inner workings of Mumbai's dabbawalas. Cultural anthropologist Sara Roncaglia explains how they cater to the various dietary requirements of a diverse and increasingly global city, where the preparation and consumption of food is pervaded with religious and cultural significance. Developing the idea of "gastrosemantics" - a language with which to discuss the broader implications of cooking and eating - Roncaglia's study helps us to rethink our relationship to food at a local and global level.

Starting from the catastrophic floods and terrorist attacks of recent years, Prakash reaches back to the sixteenth-century Portuguese conquest to reveal the stories behind Mumbai's historic journey. Examining Mumbai's role as a symbol of opportunity and reinvention, he looks at its nineteenth-century development under British rule and its twentieth-century emergence as a fabled city on the sea. Different layers of urban experience come to light as he recounts the narratives of the Nanavati murder trial and the rise and fall of the tabloid Blitz, and Mumbai's transformation from the red city of trade unions and communists into the saffron city of Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena. Starry-eyed planners and elite visionaries, cynical leaders and violent politicians of the street, land sharks and underworld dons jostle with ordinary citizens and poor immigrants as the city copes with the dashed dreams of postcolonial urban life and lurches into the seductions of globalization. --

When King Charles Ii Of England Married Princess Catherine De Braganza Of Portugal In 1661, He Received As Part Of His Dowry The Isles Of Bom Bahia, The Good Bay. Reclaimed From The Sea, These Would Become The Modern City Of Bombay. A Marriage Of Affluence And Abject Poverty, Where A Grey Concrete Jungle Is The Backdrop To A Heady Potpourri Of Ethnic, Linguistic And Religious Subcultures, Bombay, Renamed Mumbai After The Goddess Mumbadevi, Defies Definition. Bombay, Meri Jaan, Comprising Poems And Prose Pieces By Some Of The Biggest Names In Literature, In Addition To Cartoons, Photographs, A Song And A Bombay Duck Recipe, Tries To Capture The Spirit Of This Great Metropolis. Salman Rushdie, Pico Iyer, Dilip Chitre, Saadat Hasan Manto, V.S. Naipaul, Khushwant Singh And Busybee, Among Others, Write About Aspects Of The City: The High-Rise Apartments And The Slums; Camaraderie And Isolation In The Crowded Chawls; Bhelpuri On The Beach And Cricket In The Gully; The Women'S Compartment Of A Local Train; Encounter Cops Who Battle The Underworld; The Jazz Culture Of The Sixties; The Monsoon Floods; The Shiv Sena; The Cinema Halls; The Sea. Vibrant, Engaging And Provocative, This Is An Anthology As Rich And Varied As The City It Celebrates.

Mumbai India s financial nerve centre & biggest port is a melting pot with a population of over fifteen million.Bursting at the seams, the crowded, pulsating city is not just a city of gold but also a city of dreams it is home to the Bollywood. BOMBAY: THEN Enriched with in-depth historical research and exclusive photographs, Bombay: Then documents the transformation of the once insignificant cluster of islets into one of the most exciting spots for cultural exchange in South Asia. Among other views, the book illustrates the Mankeshwar temple and the Rajabai Clock Tower wrapped in scaffolding; the construction of Victoria Dock and the opening of its massive underwater gates; a lush and sparsely populated Malabar Hill; a rare view of the interior of a Parsi fire temple; factory scenes inside the Royal Mint and the Times of India units; what the stock exchange looked like nearly a century ago; and many breath-taking aerial shots of this beautiful island-city. Bombay: Then is a sheer visual treat through extraordinary historical photographs. MUMBAI: NOW Mumbai India s financial nerve centre and biggest port is a melting pot with a population of over fifteen million. Bursting at the seams, the crowded, pulsating city is not just a city of gold but also a city of dreams it is home to the Hindi film industry, also known as Bollywood. Mumbai: Now captures the city s chaotic but spirited and robust present, and brings this shape-shifting, elusive city to you from the stories of the first Goan migrants to the lives of native Koli fishermen; from the tradition of dabbawalas to that of cutting chai; and from the potters in Dharavi to the pink flamingos in Sewri in a series of beautiful, moving pictures that capture the many moods and faces of Mumbai.

Guiding the reader on a tour of the sights and sounds of an emerging city struggling to shake off colonialism and wrestling with the formation of its own budding identity, Narayan’s beguiling book offers descriptions of Mumbai’s daily life, its people and its institutions: the parts of the whole that come together to create this diverse and vivacious place. This valuable text is a rare and enthralling glimpse into a fascinating period and place otherwise lost to time.