Mumbai I - Games Big Boys Play. Review on Sacred Games - Vikram Chandra

Mumbai:

Those who love the city do so with a vengeance.  I am a tad indifferent.  On my first visit I was lucky enough to be put up in a hotel right on Nariman Point by my office.  It was an amazing spot.  To see the sea hardly 10 meters from the hotel.  Later our office staff hosted a party on the 6th floor of the Office building which was another awe-inspiring sight.  It drizzled very lightly and everything became magical.  But that is it, Mumbai never excited me much.

The Mumbai Spirit, the city that never sleeps, the safe city, the city with the best policeforce, the city with the best transport system, the financial capital of the country, these are the tags the city is known by.

I read three books on Mumbai, a popular novel, a reality novel, a not so popular yet a very good novel.  I will deal with them one by one in three different reviews.

*SACRED GAMES by Vikram Chandra

This is the popular one.  Vikram Chandra is very readable.  He has set up an ambitious canvas and succeeds in painting it vividly.

Sartaj Singh is the world weary cop.  Ganesh Gaitonde is a Bhai, a mumbai mafia leader.  The novel deals with their lives.  Why Sartaj Singh is a good cop(because his father was one), why Ganesh is a robber(he was a disadvantaged poor son of a pujari and a libertine  from a small town and had no other way of making it big).  The story has all the elements of a thriller; romance, hate and sweat.(Sartaj Singh has to work hard in the Bombay heat as he goes about sleuthing)

In a Dickensian manner, Vikram Chandra presents a wide array of characters who have landed up in Mumbai from other places with a common dream.  To make it big.  They are mauled and hauled by the city until they turn into homogenous gaali spewing opportunists.

VC has a complete command over his subject.  Whether it is a Manglorean Village that he is describing, or Siachen, Punjab during partition, politics ridden Bihar he is sure of his foot.  Similarly he is sure of his characters, they talk and walk as they are supposed to.

What mars the story?  It is overlong, tad slow for a thriller.  I found the Ganesh Gaitonde story too long, tedious at times.

At 900 pages the tome is certainly good for the body . my biceps are toned already.

(suggested by Chippi)(w*ore taken off on the suggestion of cool_tanmay)