There was something about the high rises that appealed to her particularly. Sometimes, she�d wonder whether those high rises had a heart since they were a witness to so much happening around. She would look at them, and just ponder deeply about their existence, her existence, and where she belonged in this naked world. She continued contemplating and looking at those buildings when her eyes rested on the most simple, dilapidated one where Alex Ford worked. She always felt an undiscovered, and unjustified attraction towards that building. Even though it was a high rise, this building was designed differently and was in no way similar to one of those typical architectural skyscrapers that filled the whole of New York. There was something special about this that no words or adjectives could substantiate� The tip of the building resembled a cone that went steeper and sharper towards its vertex. Whenever she felt exhausted from the day�s work or the times when she�d be losing her motivation to slog , she�d just be staring at the cone, trying to decipher its meaning. Her eyes would move in oscillatory, linear and circulatory movements and she�d notice the caricatures even more minutely. What amazed her the most was that no one design was identical to the other. Somewhere they appeared a little cylindrical, and in some places, elliptical. Looking at them, and studying them deeply, Shan could say that each of them had a story to tell.

Riots and After in Mumbai provides a synoptic record of events in Mumbai, focusing essentially on the history of riots in the city. Using this framework, it attempts to understand the sociopolitical and cultural realities of present-day Mumbai through a collection of narratives of the people affected by the communal riots of 1992–93. Author Meena Menon uses a novel approach, combining historical records from the pre-Independence era (1893–1945) and personal interviews of both Muslims and Hindus living in the city. It also looks into the political manipulations that ordinary people of both communities alike are subjected to by the ruling powers and political parties.

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. --

Mumbai is an ever-evolving city, bustling and brimming, never sleeping for a wink. But the past four decades brought upheavals of great magnitude that shaped the city as we know today. Marred by communal riots, gang wars and terrorism, the spirit of Mumbai has emerged indomitable every single time. Born and raised in the lanes of Bombay 3, this is the story of Jagan Kumar who dreams of being a television journalist and changing the world. But once he achieves this, he realises that television journalism has lost its path, now afflicted with sensationalism, corruption and bias. As a crime reporter, he comes across various unscrupulous means that law enforcement agencies adopt to combat organised crime syndicates. He is shocked to witness interdepartmental rivalry that often jeopardises public security. Disenchanted, in conflict with his conscience and confused about his calling, he is about to quit when something happens that changes the course of his life. Bombay 3 begins from the bylanes of old Bombay of the seventies and then takes you to Mosul in ISIS's Iraq of 2014 and finally to the streets of Bangkok where the underworld of Mumbai has spread its tentacles. A fast-paced thriller, it answers certain questions about life in Mumbai and raises a few new ones.

Based on his own extraordinary life, Gregory David Roberts’ Shantaram is a mesmerizing novel about a man on the run who becomes entangled within the underworld of contemporary Bombay—the basis for the Apple + TV series starring Charlie Hunnam. “It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.” An escaped convict with a false passport, Lin flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power. Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart.

An extraordinarily moving memoir from an iconoclastic new talent—an artist, cook, and illustrator whose adventures at home and abroad reveal the importance of living life with your eyes wide open. Best known for her witty illustrations, and as a cook beside her mischievous father in her family’s legendary Manhattan restaurant, in Mumbai New York Scranton, Tamara Shopsin offers a brilliantly inventive, spare, and elegant chronicle of a year in her life characterized by impermanence. In a refreshingly original voice alternating between tender and brazen, Shopsin recounts a trip to the Far East with her sidekick husband and the harrowing adventure that unfolds when she comes home. Entire worlds, deep relationships, and indelible experiences are portrayed in Shopsin’s deceptively simple and sparse language and drawings. Blending humor, love, suspense—and featuring photographs by Jason Fulford—Mumbai New York Scranton inspires a kaleidoscope of emotions. Shopsin’s surprising and affecting tale will keep you on the edge of your seat.

From starry-eyed fans with dreams of fame to cotton entrepreneurs turned movie moguls, the Bombay film industry has historically energized a range of practices and practitioners, playing a crucial and compelling role in the life of modern India. Bombay Hustle presents an ambitious history of Indian cinema as a history of material practice, bringing new insights to studies of media, modernity, and the late colonial city. Drawing on original archival research and an innovative transdisciplinary approach, Debashree Mukherjee offers a panoramic portrait of the consolidation of the Bombay film industry during the talkie transition of the 1920s–1940s. In the decades leading up to independence in 1947, Bombay became synonymous with marketplace thrills, industrial strikes, and modernist experimentation. Its burgeoning film industry embodied Bombay’s spirit of “hustle,” gathering together and spewing out the many different energies and emotions that characterized the city. Bombay Hustle examines diverse sites of film production—finance, pre-production paperwork, casting, screenwriting, acting, stunts—to show how speculative excitement jostled against desires for scientific management in an industry premised on the struggle between contingency and control. Mukherjee develops the concept of a “cine-ecology” in order to examine the bodies, technologies, and environments that collectively shaped the production and circulation of cinematic meaning in this time. The book thus brings into view a range of marginalized film workers, their labor and experiences; forgotten film studios, their technical practices and aesthetic visions; and overlooked connections among media practices, geographical particularities, and historical exigencies.