By Amanda D’Souza
There are two Bombays. There always have been. One, the Bombay of those who can claim to belong to the higher strata of the city, who have a roof above their heads, who can dance in the rains of Bombay without getting mud on their shoes. The other is the Bombay of the streets. The grimy, seedy underbelly of the city where dreams are shattered even before they can be shaped, where innocence is non-existent, where one must bathe in the mud if one has to survive the torrential rains.
The films that represent the former Bombay are those that we’ve grown to associate with mainstream Bollywood. Salaam Bombay attempts to capture the latter.
If you’ve grown up in Bombay, like I have, you know the instant the camera focuses on the train station that is Grant road, where the film is headed towards. To a Mumbaikar/Bombayite (Yes, there’s a difference) Grant Road and its surrounding neighbourhood is synonymous with a thriving life of drugs, prostitution and child abuse. Every citizen of the metropolis is aware of the gory reality of this southern underbelly and chooses to ignore it. Mira Nair forces us to sit up and take notice, and she does it the Golding way: by using children.
Indeed, Bombay was originally an island, but that’s not where the similarity ends. Much like in ‘Lord of the Flies’, we are called to question the innocence of children. We are forced to squirm in our seats, watching little children suffer at the hands of the very people that swore to protect them. We see them act more mature than adults in the face of death and despair, we witness their anguish as they struggle to grow up in a city that is constantly trying to crush them, we marvel at how they redefine everything you know about a city you call home and finally, we gasp when they go over the edge, becoming murderers in an attempt to free themselves from the madness. Who then is the Beast here? Is it Baba, who Chaipau/Krishna stabs in the back? Is it the lady pimp who makes you shake your head in disgust? Is it the tea vendor who exploits little children for labour? I think the Beast could be every single adult in the film, but finds its ultimate personification in the guardians of the law: the policemen and the authorities at the Juvenile home.
Though Mira Nair paints a vividly real picture of Bombay, she cannot help but tint it with shades of some classic Bollywood romanticism. Indeed, one cannot exclude Bollywood from any experience of Bombay. You can see it, in posters and hoardings that decorate the streets as much as they litter it. You can hear it, in songs on the radio and in the whistle of the autowallahs. You can taste it, sitting in cafés where dishes and even restaurants share their titles with Bollywood stars and films. You can even smell it, in the delicious fragrance of popcorn wafting in to your nostrils at cheap theatres that screen the same classic for 20 years. You can feel it everywhere. A Bombayite would be lying if he/she said that he/she doesn’t have a Bollywood song that captures their experience of the city. Salaam Bombay shatters the traditional perceptions of the city as one where dreams come true, as one where there’s always hope and always an opportunity. She uses the romantic association of Bombay with its rains and its domestic film industry to point out the ironies that are to be found in the city. In the real Bombay, nothing is safe from pollution, not even an enchanting Rajesh Khanna classic that becomes “Mere sapnon ki randi kab aayegi tu?” Indeed, if I had to pick from among any of the numerous paraphrased Bollywood songs abound in the film that accurately captures Bombay in all its filthy glory, it is this.
Josephite Literary Review 