Ajinkya Hospital, Girgaum. 1964. The place where my love affair with Mumbai started, as a squalling newborn. A primarily Maharashtrian locality, Girgaum is part of my earliest memories of the city, especially recollections of visits to Samarth Sadan on DD Sathe Marg, the house of my maternal grandparents.
Girgaum was a veritable feast of ever-new sensations and childhood pleasures, with kite flying on 14th January being the highlight of the year. I still make it a point to revisit the place every year to pursue one of my favorite sports.
Girgaum also introduced me to the concept of street cinema. Traditional festivals like Gokulashthami and Ganesh Chaturthi were characterized with short films being screened in the various streets, their soundtracks mingling with each other and with the sounds of Mumbai’s daily living to invoke an experience that was far more immediate than any movie theatre.
If Girgaum was early childhood, it was Bandra that shaped my more conscious years. Still a developing suburb when I was a school bag toting youngster studying in St. Theresa’s High School, the area has always had a strong Catholic heritage.
In those days, Bandra was more than a suburb – it was almost an independent township. These, remember, were the pre-flyover days, and a lot of people in South or Central Bombay would find Bandra to be really distant, treating a trip here as akin to leaving the city and going out on a picnic. Over the years it has became a Sindhi-rich community, and most of my neighborhood friends are invariably Sindhis. Similarly, Pali Hill, termed as India’s answer to Beverley Hills, has gradually acquired a character of its own -- becoming a prime estate for the city’s rich and the famous, brimming with the homes of most of Mumbai’s film industry elites.
School picnics had us exploring Borivali National Park and the five great lakes - Powai, Vihar, Vaitarna, Tulsi and Tansa Lake, on the outskirts of Mumbai. I remember being extremely frustrated at not being allowed to go in for a swim, little knowing that the city’s water supply was in danger of getting contaminated.
Then came Mithibai College, which took me to the Juhu-Vile Parle Scheme, another of Mumbai’s landmarks. Primarily a Gujarati settlement, it finally brought home to me the adage that birds of a feather do flock together. Mumbai, I finally realized, was a city with distinct pockets for the various communities, yet which had managed to integrate its diversities so seamlessly that it took me almost 20 years to realize the fact.
But my most enlivening explorations of Mumbai began when I entered the film industry as an actor. My first shoot was for Mahesh Bhatt's Naam, and I was to report at a place called Ballard Pier. Ballard Pier??!!?? Where was that? Even the name seemed peculiar. To simplify matters I took a train to Victoria Terminus and then relinquished the task of hunting the place out to a cabbie. Ballard Pier turned out to be in Docks area. A riot scene was being shot, and it was taking a long time to set up. As this was my first shoot, I was very edgy, and decided to take a walk to calm my nerves. That night I walked all over Ballard Pier and discovered its old-world charm, and knew that it was a place I was never likely to forget again.
The next time I got an opportunity to become a part of a Mumbai-based shoot was in Saeed Akhtar Mirza's Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro, a movie about a small time
crook on the path of self-discovery. I played the character of Abdul, Salim Langda’s buddy. These fictional characters inhabited the very real areas of Dongri and Do Tanki, pre-dominantly a Muslim community. These were places that I had only heard about quite a bit, but had never seen. And the 35-days that we spent there doing our homework on the lingo and lifestyles of the place were a lesson in how most of Mumbai lives.
I was a little apprehensive about spending so much time in the city’s underbelly, but was surprised to find that the place was far more open and real than most of the haunts of the richer and more famous, its people enveloping us in a warmth and hospitality that was all the more charming because of its lack of superficiality. If my rendering of Abdul has managed to give the viewers even a glimpse of Dongri’s true character, I shall consider it one of my best performances as an actor.
Pehla Nasha, my directorial debut, was a total counterpoint to the world of Dongri, set as it was in the swank localities of Malabar hill and Walkeshwar. This was moneyed Mumbai at its ritziest best – though, I could not help but experience a pang of nostalgia for all the old bungalows and lush forests that have been replaced by the back-to-back high-rises. The sea facing areas, however, are still a panorama of refreshing sea breezes and one of the most dramatic views of the famed Queen’s Necklace.
Surprisingly, the project that took me right to the core of Mumbai was BP Singh-Pradeep Uppoor's CID, in which I played the CID officer Virendra. This television series consists of different stories every week, and each story takes the officers to various areas of the city in the course of their investigation. This was a downright treat for someone like me, who had by now started cherishing the fringe benefits of discovering places while acting or directing. It took me to Ghatkopar, Mulund, Kalyan and various other parts of Mumbai, and brought a veritable smorgasmaboard of experiences, sights, smells and sensations that have been mentally filed away for use in future ventures.
And use them I will, as Mumbai is too precious and rich an experience to be allowed to stagnate. Even though Lagaan did not provide an opportunity for a Mumbai-based shoot, it is the city has helped shape the person I am – as an actor, as a director, and as an individual. It has also taught me that an exceptional film does not come merely by the brilliance of scripts or scintillating performances by the actors. It comes by understanding the land where you root the story, by understanding the people whom you wish to replicate. Mumbai is more than just Film City. It is an experience that stays with you in every one of its myriad areas, and fashions your subconscious wherever it is that you are shooting – whether in India or abroad.
With Lagaan, though, there started another journey of learning – the heartland of Bhuj (Kutch), which otherwise might just have remained the stuff that newspaper headlines are made of. But that, as the great bard said, is another story altogether!
Read the complete transcript in India Today Plus (November, 2003)
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