"I like Mumbai, Veda, but I really miss the mountains of my Ladakh." Upon hearing Doma's words--the opening salvo of Labanya Ghosh's enchanting The Mountains of Mumbai--young Veda sets out to expand her friend's definition of what a "mountain" can be.
As Veda shows Doma around the coastal city of Mumbai--they pass a house of worship, an open-air market--she posits that a mountain can be "any shape" and "doesn't have to be only a big, brown triangle." Doma isn't an easy sell: "When you climb this colorful, funny-shaped mountain, will the breeze blow cooler? Will your cheeks turn red? Will your heart beat as loud as the drums at the Hemis Tsechu festival? And will you be able to see the whole world?" Undeterred, Veda leads Doma into a tall building and up to its mountaintop-like roof, where Doma, overlooking the city aglow at dusk, gets her longed-for cool breeze, red cheeks and loudly beating heart.
The Mountains of Mumbai contains some clichéd writing (an eye has a twinkle, someone sighs in yearning), but there's unremitting originality in Pallavi Jain's supersaturated watercolors, which the Mumbai tourism bureau would be wise to license. At times the cityscape recalls a cubist painting; an aerial view of a main drag reveals the eye-pleasing particularity of each rooftop below. While Jain's Mumbai won't be mistaken for any other city, Ghosh's message--that an open mind can conjure a world of possibilities--should resonate with readers wherever they happen to be. --Nell Beram, freelance writer and YA author