Maximum City.

Mumbai also described as the “maximum city” by Suketu Mehta like New York has become a maxim for the rise of volatility and density that is gripping Asia, a continent witnessing the imploding rise in displacement and the dislocation of most of its inherent values. Discarding its agrarian roots this continent propels all its inhabitants into capitalistic gamblers. Mumbai is the measure of India’s journey – a constant system of abuse, an unabashed route to seeking affluence, the new avatar, showcasing India’s new avatar, identity and primacy. Simit tries to explore and understand the furtive drive of an insatiable, collective greed to own any and everything at a spirally hyper-inflated cost. The poetic metaphor describes the conflicting duality that creates a rootedness as well as the difference to live and survive gracefully, if not in the utilitarian salvation of the cosmopolitan. This fuses the materiality of the urban mind scape, entrusting it to other sets of knowledge: including those from religious realms to spiritual and sensual desires – symbolically interrogating the entanglements in which we survive as a society in a competitive environment. A mitigating relationship within the urban sprawl, from spiraling land prices to the intense effects of ecological misdemeanor. The urban space called home becomes a metaphor, where spiritual primacy offers rhythms of numerological beliefs. In this steel and concrete jungle, with its marked territories, chants and own set of laws – herding the doubts, where cash – enhanced kismet (destiny) drives away the uncertainties of those still arriving. We float and fly to reach those faraway goals, in our eternal quest to reach a “destination”. – Simit Raveshia-