Book Review on Piyush Jha's MUMBAISTAN

MUMBAISTAN
3 EXPLOSIVE CRIME THRILLERS
By PIYUSH JHA

Piyush Jha’s Mumbaistan is a novel that can be said to be composed of three different novellas. As the title of the book suggests, the entire plot has been drawn from the city of dreams itself, Mumbai. The characters have been picked from the myriad walks of life and the author seems to have picked them up deliberately in order to showcase the plurality of the old, brooding city.

The choice of crime fiction is though quite uncustomary for most Indian writers yet Piyush does handle the genre commendably. Piyush’s writing clearly shows that he knows the city inside out and this helps the readers in visualising the city by means of his words.

The characters in the three stories are commonplace and have been culled from different walks of life. Mumbai is the only link that connects them as they make their journey from revenge to redemption. The novel at times seems like an effort to disrupt the glitzy and glamorous image of the metropolis as it lays bare the squalor of poverty, corruption and crime that thrives within the superficial charms of the city.

The novel opens with Bomb Day, a story that revolves around a cop, a prostitute and her lover. The next story is spun around the life of a doctor who wants to avenge people involved in the illegitimate act of organ trading. The last of the three stories is centred on a man who wakes up to life after spending twenty long years in coma and is now trying to get a grasp of reality.

The diction draws the readers into the storyline which makes for a good reading experience.

Rating: ☆☆☆1/2

~overview~

Mumbai, a city of dreams for many. But for others, a nightmare. Behind the faade of lustre and glamour churns a seething underbelly of squalor, corruption and crime. 

Mumbaistans three explosive crime novellas unravel the subterranean secrets of maximum cityfrom the teeming maw of Dharavi and the wanton streets of Kamathipura to the swank high-rises of Bandra.

A prostitute, her lover and a policeman play for high stakes in Bomb-Day. Injectionwala exposes chilling medical malpractices and a lovelorn vigilantes twisted game plan. In Coma Man, a man awakens from coma after twenty years, and sets out in search of his wife and himself.

Macabre love stories, conniving cops and hard-boiled slumlords form the backdrop of a schizophrenic city that is brooding...dying. 

Welcome to Mumbaistan; a gritty, compelling take on the megalopolis that lives on the edge.