Episode 91: Suketu Mehta’s Love Letters to Bombay and New York City
Welcome back Tuckered Outers!
As many of you know, India just celebrated her 75th year of independence. Our fall season begins with one of India's most renowned authors, Suketu Metha. Suketu is the New York-based author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, which was a finalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize. The book was based off of two years of research and was an account of his personal experiences living in Bombay.
He talks to me about his latest article in which he shares his concern about the future of India, why it is crucial that India remains a democracy for all its citizens and the world, and the two biggest threats facing India today.
He gives me an update on his close friend, Salman Rushdie, tells me why storytellers are more powerful than we think, and how he handles our volatile environment as a writer. I ask him what Bombay and New York City mean to him, what his favorite memories were growing up in Bombay, and about his current project that he refers to as a love letter to NYC.
His latest book This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant's Manifesto, was published in June 2019 under a 2007 Guggenheim fellowship.