For the past month, this city’s been in my head almost every day.   The days I spent  there earlier this year just reinforced my initial impression that it’s so thick with  striving people and quirky architectural details, and moments of beauty exist cheek by jowl with  ugliness.   On the train to and from work, I’ve been reading Pinky Virani’s Once was Bombay, her 1999 book that’s a regret-tinged collection of profiles of people from different walks of life who live there.   Regret because it laments what the city has become, and, Pinky says, we’ve only ourselves to blame, look at the people we elect and what we tolerate.   Interestingly, she devotes several pages to the trains, and the crowded slums that have grown to the point of encroachment on the rail lines,  complete with children pelting  stones with formidable  accuracy at the commuters.

Next,  I discovered the amazing Bombay photographs of  Chirodeep Chaudhuri, photo editor at TimeOut Mumbai.

And a fortnight ago  Bombay Addict tossed me  the invite  to drop in on his blog to chat about the city of his birth  and its portrayal on screen.    I happily agreed and hit  the local DVD rental place, carrying  home a stack of movies set in the city formerly known as Bom Bahia that I’d not seen yet.  

Last weekend I watched Mani Sir’s 1995  opus  Bombay.   It’s a beautifully  photographed (by Rajiv Menon) story of personal and urban conflict when Hindu and Muslim encounter each other.   On the small scale, Arvind Swamy (the most un-herolike hero I’ve ever seen) plays Shekar, the journalist son of a conservative Hindu father, who falls in love at first sighting of Shaila Bano, a Muslim girl who lives in the same TamilNad town, and has an equally staunch father.   Manisha is gorgeous in this movie and the lengths  her suitor goes to are perfectly understandable.

Facing parental opposition, the two flee to Bombay so they can marry and live in peace.   Things go fine for a few years, though there are hints of what’s to come when Shaila is buying vegetables one day and a group of saffron-robed men pass by, chanting slogans.   Shekar works as a journalist while  Shaila tends to their twin sons, then Ayodya happens, and the city is torn apart by two spurts of rioting between Hindus and Muslims, in December and then January.  

During the first riot, the boys are terrorized by a group of men who douse them in gasoline and keep asking “Are you Hindu or Muslim?   Answer!”  while fumbling to light a match.   The sons  narrowly escape, but the effects are profound.   In a brief and wrenching scene, one twin, Kamal, riding on his grandfather’s shoulders as they head  home from a temple visit, reacts instinctively  when seeing  another small mob, reaching down with  a small hand to wipe the ash off the older man’s forehead while doing the same to his own.   In the January riots, as the family flees a burning home, the boys are separated from their parents and then from each other.   One is taken in by a hijra, the other by a Muslim woman.   The two boys (Master Harsha and Master Hriday) are solid little actors, and as in Kannathil Muthamittal, Mani Ratnam has succeeded in getting a natural performance from his child stars.

As the story builds to the tense climax, Arvind Swamy, searching frantically for his sons, is confronted by someone who asks him “Are you Hindus or Muslims?”   and he bellows in response “Hum sirf Indian hain!”   (We are  just Indian!)   His furor is matched by other typical, average citizens (a chubby housewife, an aging shopkeeper) who turn on the rioters.

And now  July 11 has happened.

So much of what’s in this movie must resemble what people have lived through yesterday – the flames,  the scattered belongings lost to their owners, the hospital and its mortuary floor covered with so many corpses that there’s no place to step – yet so far, thankfully, it seems that no one is giving in to  any temptation of anti-Other behaviour.   Instead, Mumbaikars are doing what they’re known for: carrying on and getting  back to business, regardless.   People came forward to offer cell phones and samosas to the survivors, and to give blood or a lift to strangers.

Never was it truer, yeh hai Mumbai, meri jaan.