Tuesday, June 30, 2009

The Lost Flamingos of Bombay
Book by
Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

I read this book almost a month back and have not written about it as i could not decide on my feelings for this book...I love and hate this book in parts.

The central character of this book is Karan who is a photographer and through one of his assignments he gets introduced to Samar, a retired pianist and Zaira, the top name in bollywood. Karan during his pursuit of his personal ambition of creating a book with photographs of Mumbai meets Rhea, an artist who chose to get married over her ambitions and is somewhere dissatisfied with her life, at Crawford market in Mumbai.

As I proceeded in the book I realised that it has similarities to the Jessica lal murder case. Of course you have to read the book to know more about the who got murdered and where and what happens. The book gives you a peek into the high society life of Mumbai. I loved the book for the the range of issues it covered - gay relationships, real friendships in a society that seems so shallow overtly, standing up against the corrupt judicial system in out country, extra marital affair, child sexual abuse, AIDS and the most beautiful was the way it brought out the images of the city of Mumbai. I disliked the book for the same reasons i loved it...its too many complexities in one plot and the superfluous language made it a very difficult read.

So overall, go ahead and read it once if you don't mind the language bit :)

1 comment:

The Unadorned said...

Hi gazal,

I too read this book and feel the same ambivalence as you do. "I read this book almost a month back and have not written about it as i could not decide on my feelings for this book...I love and hate this book in parts."

I've tried to key in my impressions about the book. You may perhaps like to drop in at my blog.

Nanda
http://ramblingnanda.blogspot.com