I'm still on the library waiting list for Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. But I just came across this conversation with author Suketu Mehta in The Brooklyn Rail, a great independent arts and culture magazine produced here in Brooklyn (naturally).

Mehta lived in Bombay until he was 14, and went on to become a writer in America. He returned in 1998 both an insider and an outsider, and has produced what by all accounts is a fascinating look at a city in the grips of globalization: new wealth and industry juxtaposed with endemic poverty and corruption.

Rail: India became a part of the “global village” in 1991 when the current prime minister and then chief finance minister Manmohan Singh engineered economic reforms to liberalize the country’s quasi-socialist economy. How has globalization affected Bombay?

Mehta: What I came to realize in Bombay was how globalization can both help and hurt Bombay. It hurts Bombay when it’s impossible for an Indian farmer to make a living because of the current system of agricultural trade that we have in the world. But one thing globalization did was create what we’re often told will be the world’s biggest middle class. So at the same time, I don’t want to knock globalization. If you’re in the slums and you have a son, what did he do before globalization? Work in a textile factory or something. Now he can go into an air-conditioned office and he can sit in front of a computer, programming. It helps when you have these call centers and software industries.…The problem is, it’s a hypocritical globalization.

Bollywood fan blog Sepia Mutiny linked Mehta's report from the set on an Indian film shoot, Welcome to Bollywood in the February issue of National Geographic--the online feature includes behind the scenes photos (requires Flash) by William Albert Allard, and a report on Pakistan's film industry, Lollywood.

(Whoops--and so did Alex, here.)