Mumbai Meri Jaan

director : Nishikant Kamat.
Well i choose to mention his name since he deserves all the hoopla and honor for the movie he's conceptualised.

5 lead characters. 5 parallel lives. all intertwined into one being. the city they live in - Mumbai. yeh, dat seems the rite way to start. Like a documentary, though more interestin than it, but as real as if it is one. u go in th theatre thinkin about some same old shit about terorrism et al. I mean havent v seen dat before? wel u fill find dat, but there's somethin more to it. Emotions and other issues, from the eyes of a daily road travellin mumbaikar.

its true u dont experience d real city in a/c cars or airports. Our roads r where our hearts lie unleashed and uncovered. The movie covers issues that we would want to run away from, dat if v saw these on tv, we would switch over to some other channel; as if it never happened; like gratifyingly covering the eyes with a pair of glossy glasses, that give a glossy picture. The scene where dead bodies lie scattered, right after the blast, haunts u even after its all gone; simply because we wouldnt have ever bothered to see those disturbing images in the comforts of our homes. Its not an allegation. Its the truth. Why go through the virtual trauma when it fails to even touch u in reality.

The simplicity hits so hard that u wonder y did u ever think it was simple, just a fact, jus like a statistic in the first place.. It shows how these 5 protaganists get affected by a comman incident - the 7 consecutive bomb blasts in the mumbai trains one after the other, n how they n the city deals with it.

Its about more. Its about potholes, police and their bribes and the fight they go through with their conscience if they want to fight the age-old ritual (read: the ritual of bribes, which if one policeman opposes has a harder time, than the one who is being following it since years without questions or doubts n livin a happy man.)

Its about news reporters and what ridiculously preposterous questions they can come up with seconds after a disaster hits the common man, the bizarreness of which they realise only they unfortuantely have to face one. Its about the comman mumbaikar, with an average paycheck, with no inkling of the inflation, is awed by the sudden change in the face of mumbai; the mall culture and the treatment the city gives to his likes (all in the packaging people..u dont look presentable enough? no 10 grand monthly paycheck? Oh stay away from us. u dont belong here.) The comman man u see on the road when u travel, r.k. narayan's man who wonders where he fits in with his little family in this ever growing commercial concrete cosmopolitan jungle of people ridden by dreams.

Its about us. Its about people in this city who are constantly caught between the idea of workin here or settling abroad; of 'serving' ur nation back or of thinkin of ur own comforts firsts; of the moments when we wonder is it worth the risk of taking in the stress of the long commuting hours, the roads, the bribery, the people. Its about people who still look at other people of certain religion with a doubt, which we do considering our past experiences and fears. Its about those thousand times that we have argued with our friends in favour or against our city; if it will ever improve, or whether it even has a need to improve.

In spite of everything above that sounds unpleasant, everyone flocks here. The undyin spirit n all that? yeh may b. But there was a time when i wondered if the spirit thing about the city was a hoax. That even after a major disaster, we r not scared to travel by trains or get back to work just the next day. Well i as a matter-of-factly thought that its purely because the people just dont have a choice of not goin to work or travellin by trains. Many live hand-to-mouth here and that fact ends the so-called spirit thing.

But somewhere i was wrong, n i choose not to be that cynical. I guess the fact that u will never be alone on any street, at any given time in this city, overflowing with souls, that makes u want to take that risk, knowing that someone wil always be there to lend a hand, to let u not drown in a flood, or help u not get burnt in a blast, or at least take u to the hospital if u get hit by a car.

Anything can happen here. Well anywhere for that matter u'd think. Y single out this city? U r happy at the end of the day, that u r alive, u hv clothes to wear, n ur not sleepin hungry in the nite. Wel i m. Happy. And thankful. And may b after seein this movie, u'll think all this, salute it, salute the 'spirit' of the city, and be thankful too. And u would think its not such a bad city after all.