Reading: Maximum City

I'm reading this remarkable book about modern Bombay, Maximum City, by Suketu Mehta. This review by the Times of London pretty much sums it up:

Maximum City is, in all senses, a revelation. (The book depicts) Bombay as a city of such tensions, violence, corruption, fanaticism, fatalism, humanity and beauty that it is almost impossible to imagine why it does not implode in chaos. The extremes are as jarring as they are incongruous. Millionaires, film stars and mobsters lavish luxury on themselves with a ruthless selfishness unmatched in any medieval court. Only streets away, millions of destitute immigrants struggle to exist in shacks pitched on pavements, beside railway tracks or over putrid rivers of sewage, battling against bureaucrats, criminals, degradation and the raw unfairness of daily life in pursuit of dreams and imagined riches. Hatreds, religious and ethnic, define unseen boundaries between caste and creed, between haves and have-nots. Riots, murders and the daily maiming of rivals make existence more precarious and unpredictable than anything known in India's dreary, benighted villages. Politicians lie to win votes and incite to keep office. Despairing officials and principled judges exhaust themselves in the attempt to impose order. Overworked police torture and cheat...

Shocking. I wish there were such a book about Bangalore, but that's probably like reading a book about New York and wishing there were a similar book about Denver.