Revisiting childhood territory as an adult brings a transformed perspective. When, with excitement, I showed my young sons the old building compound I'd jumped around in, they quietly commented, 'That's a parking lot, not a playground…

Is he the insider, the outsider or a traveller in transit? Straddling two worlds, New-York based, award-winning writer, Suketu Mehta, is happy with the last description. His latest offering, Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found, outcome of a seminal study of the city, has notched its niche in literati and glitterati circles. In a seaside chat with MEHER MARFATIA in Mumbai, the wordsmith expounds on love, life and strife in 'the continent of Bombay'.

Extensively published journalist and fiction author, Suketu Mehta, has won the Whiting Writers Award, the O. Henry Prize and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. He also co-scripted the critically acclaimed film, Mission Kashmir. Now, Salman Rushdie hails his new work 'the best book written about that great, ruined metropolis'.

Penning with passion an authentic picture of Mumbai, the itinerant Kolkata-born writer's bond with the only place he calls his own - despite living in Paris, London and New York - makes a compelling relationship and reading theme.

When it has become fashionable to present books on Bombay, have you deliberately defined yours as 'an anti-travel book'?

This is not a romantic vision of where I grew up, till the family relocated abroad when I was 14. It's a book propelled by obsession, rather than idle curiosity about this landmark city. Caring for Bombay, I focus on its realities. Bombay is really a harbinger of the great sprawling mega-cities increasingly going to dominate the planet in our century.

What was your experience with racist encounters in the early days in the Queens neighbourhood of New York?

Schooling in that working class white enclave was bad. I was the odd brown boy out. Ironically, the same school is about 30 per cent Indian today. It's been tough enough encapsulating into a book a city like Bombay that one is obsessed with. To depict its polarities is even harder. In a place, putting in close proximity 14 million, soon swelling to 18 million, how can people possibly not have mutual understanding? We're absolutely meant to know each other's lives.

You've managed remarkable first-hand dope researching the seamier side of the city - slumlords, underworld dons, rival gangs, bar girls, eunuchs and criminals…

Yes, I became tremendously involved with them. They're incredibly dynamic individuals leading extreme lives. These people are a vital part of the city's underbelly that its other half doesn't want to acknowledge.

Originally from Gujarat, how did you react to news of the Godhra riots?

I was in Sri Lanka then and felt ashamed of being Gujarati. A sickness entered and has stayed in Gujarati society since. I still can't write about it. People actually believed 'It was justified…. They killed us, we killed them.' India lacks political will and an effective judicial system. The history of each city is marked by a catalytic event. Bombay's was the 1992-93 riots and bomb blasts period.

What would you want changed immediately in Bombay?

Mantralaya and other government offices must move out of the city. Having an administrative capital beyond Bombay is an idea I'd love to see implemented.

And what do you miss most when away from this city?

The people, their wonderful 'chutneyfied' street speech colloquialisms, the typical 'bindaas Bambaiya' local accents!