Izzat ka falooda city waits for new year

Mumbai Diary 2010 celebrates a city impossible to describe

Mumbai Diary 2010 celebrates a city impossible to describe

A cliche for every day of the coming year: that is what India Book House hopes to entice a large number of
stationery-craving customers with. It explains why every page of its Mumbai Diary 2010 tells the average Mumbaikar what the latter has always known about his or her city.

Mumbai Diary captures glimpses of life in the city. Pics/ Sameer Markande

Mumbai is where you go to "make it big". It "promises you a new life". The residents "refuse to be swamped". And alongside each exhausted line is the kind of photograph you can find on some page of today's newspaper. Go, check for proof.

It's still a great gift idea, of course, for those who don't know much about India's most vibrant city. For these folk, a diary celebrating a city impossible to describeu00a0-- by even a 1,000 Bollywood movies, and countingu00a0-- works like a ticket to another world.

A world that is home to one of the world's worst-run sex industries, where magic oils of dubious origins are sold, and where phrases like "izzat ka falooda" are coined in back alleys every other week. Some of these pages come alive, via the photographs they showcase. April, sadly, really is the
cruelest month.

The text comes from writer Jerry Pinto; the photographs, from a bunch of people we aren't told anything about. According to Jennifer Medhora at IBH, there are no other city-specific diaries being planned. Yet. If this works though, other publishers may well rush to print Hampi 2011 diaries, or Chikmagalur 2012.

Mumbai Diary 2010 (India Book House) is available for Rs 395. For further details, email info@ibhworld.com