Reel life Bombay. Part 1

Starting this week, I’m kicking off a series on Bombay in movies. Guest-writing on my blog is Filmiholic. Based out of New York, Filmiholic is an avid lover of Hindi movies. And she’s not even Indian.

We should be joined by a couple of other people, depending on their availability. Between us we will be talking movies, talking Bombay, talking the whole lot of emotions that this one city evokes in its viewers and how it’s a separate character in a movie. With its own identity, its own presence – sometimes even towering above its actors. Think of this as a chota Bambaiya film festival being held across New York and Bombay.

First, here’s how Filmiholic describes Bombay

A salaam to Bombay
“The first movie memory I have of Bombay was not actually a Bollywood one. I was living in Madrid and had gone to one of the art house cinemas to see Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay. It was a long time ago and three memories stood out the strongest: the boys singing and dancing along to a Sridevi number in Shekar Kapur's Mr. India, Nana Patekar's magnetic and simultaneously menacing presence, and the gullible white tourist at the Gateway of India buying drugs.

The first thing that strikes me about the city is the architecture which reminds me of Belfast. Those ponderous brick buildings, for which, I guess, both cities have the Brits to thank for. So much of what I've come to love about Bombay is the fact that it reminds me of other cities I love. But it has its own particular Bombay/Indian twist to it.

As a native New Yorker, how could I not love a city that is also a magnet to so many other people? Just substitute our Italians, Mexicans and Senegalese for your Gujratis, Tamilians, Punjabis, et al and there you are. Then there's the fact that this pullulating city lives on top of the ocean, where prime seafront real estate is all piled up with high-rises, and it reminds me of the sensuous Rio de Janeiro, with the slight (but significant) difference that Mumbaikars don't run around quite as scantily dressed (yet) as so many cariocas do !”

Kick-starting the series is Filmiholic’s take on Salaam Bombay.


Salaam Bombay (1988): Mira Nair’s brilliant movie was my introduction to Hindi Cinema and to Bombay. So many details are familiar, having seen them on screen and in real life. I look at the scene where Krishna runs alongside the taxi that Sola Saal, the young Nepali girl, rides in, and I flash back to my first arrival in Bombay. The young girls begging for money, rapping with small fists on my hotel car’s window as we stood at a signal. Salaam Bombay’s scenes, shot around various bordellos around Grant Road, vividly show the pastel shades around the city. In between those walls and balconies, there are grey and crumbling bits. Sometimes, in between that, a flash of color from a religious poster, or a movie star in an ad. Or from the garish dress worn by someone like Sola Saal. Like the city, it's too much to drink in with your eyes as it goes by.

And then the clothes. Over a decade before the term "metrosexual" was ever coined, Bombay boys had it down pat. There's a scene where Krishna and his friends rob an older Parsi man and go out to celebrate by drinking while on a carriage ride around the city after dark. I looked at the garish shirts these kids had on, and I flash forward to the Saturday morning Bollywood shows we get here, and how in the weekly segment looking at what the man-on-the-street in Bombay thought about the most recent release, they'll tape comments from these guys exiting the cinemas, and as I watch them swagger on camera (never a shy guy in the bunch!) I can't help but thinking that in Bombay, men - on the whole - have no fear of color or accessories.

Picture courtesy: Mirabai Films