Book review: Mumbaistan

Mumbaistan by Piyush Jha

Author: Piyush Jha

Format: Paperback
Language: English
Pages:242
Price:195

Publishers: Rupa Publications

  ISBN Number: 9788129120175

 

Talking of Underworld- I am not surprised. Why! Because- you need to paint it in macabre colours- and the red and black combo with a silhouette guy pointing the gun at someone I can’t see is a perfect cover for Piyush jha’s Mumbaistan. Hoot! The name-you can only get them in this part of the world. “Stan”- is so Sanskrit and guys tell me it’s a dead language- say, that again and I will turn you into my punching bag. The book is indeed a punching bag. It never spills the beans, thus waits for you to discover the rotten seeds in our society all by yourself. 

I have this special liking for dark characters-no one seems to understand that kids are born angels- but events turn them evil over the years. Readers, who have already spent hours with Piyush’s new installment, can very well understand I am hitting at Rabia, Aalamzeb and Porus Udwadia. I am not so fond of the Coma Man- so I will keep that story out of our discussion.  But just in case you wish to hear some of the record babble- here it goes- a man wakes up from a long sleep shocking the good but big mouth nurse, rushes out of the hospital- and makes you walk backwards along with him- tasting communal and personal manipulation- love and jealous and finally getting drowned in tight embrace in the watery abyss.

Chased by windmills of one’s mind- the stories are just some delicious icing over the real Kill bills. You face the reels jumping out of the movie screen as you keep turning the pages. The stories don’t promise you to leave alone. Haunting to the core- justifying their plot line- as if establishing a extraterrestrial code of law. All the three of them are sensational pick depicting city life unless what we desire to see through high rising tinged glass walls. After all only a man behind the view finder is capable of dragging you out of your comfort zone and tell you how- pretty faces turn villains and how love get sold out during chaotic hours of existence. And I got my favorite among them- ACP Hani. Rumour has it- cops eat out from the hands of money powered ring leaders- but not this character. He goes out there and does just what the book asks him to do-hunt the predator and eliminates it as quietly as possible. Indeed a book that keeps you hooked up! Straight 4.5/5 from me!