Reimagining the urban stroller in Mumbai: Suketu Mehta as a flâneur in Maximum City

Suketu Mehta’s reportage cum travelogue cum memoir, Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (2004), is an insightful account of the complex and multifaceted yet intriguing city of Mumbai. This article aims to position Suketu Mehta as a modern-day flâneur of Mumbai, emerging during a period of significant urban transformation, much like the classic flâneur of nineteenth-century Paris who navigated a changing cityscape. Mehta embodies a modernised urban wanderer whose flânerie incorporates elements of ethnography and journalism, investigating contemporary urban reality. Besides, Mehta’s flânerie exemplifies convergences between transnational travel and flânerie in a global city like Mumbai. The article also demonstrates that through the exploration of both diverse and archetypal urban characters and the analysis of the city's urban myths, the text encapsulates Mumbai's distinctive spirit, or “urban charisma”. Finally, it illustrates that Suketu Mehta's postcolonial diasporic identity introduces innovative perspectives for comprehending the ambivalence that inherently characterises the flâneur figure.