Watching Salaam Bombay during lockdown was probably one of the worst decisions for my mental health but as a cine-lover, I couldn't be prouder of my choice.It's hard to be a cinema lover and not admire Mira Nair's work.?
Is there any filmmaker who understands the fragility and vulnerabilities of human emotions? Well, we all know the answer.?After Namesake, I turned to Mira Nair's directorial debut and watched?Salaam Bombay. ?Of course, I was numb for a few hours.
For the uninitiated,?Salaam Bombay! is a 1988 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Mira Nair. The screenplay was written by her longtime creative collaborator, Sooni Taraporevala.
Salaam Bombay revolves around the day-to-day life of children living in the slums of Bombay, India's biggest city. Starring Syed Shafi, Hansa Vithal, Chanda Sharma, Raghuvir Yadav, Anita Kanwar, Nana Patekar, and Irrfan Khan.
The film was India's second film submission to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It later made it to the list of "The Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" by The New York Times.?
But the awards and recognition that came its way in no way could do justice to the brilliance of this piece of art.?
What happened to Manju after her last meeting with her parents in the juvenile home??
Did Manju's mother manage to rescue her from the juvenile home??
After losing everything, was Chaipau ever able to rebuild his life??
Maybe an interaction with Mira Nair can only decode these questions but for all others, I had Wikipedia and google to my rescue.Sadly, what I found there was as heartbreaking as the film itself.?
To feed my curiosity, I wanted to know more about the real faces behind the most dependable team of child actors who did Mira Nair proud. I began with Chaipau AKA Syed Shafi (who is also my Facebook friend now!) and was stunned to know the reality.
The national award-winning child actor has struggled a lot to earn bread and butter for his family. He could never return to acting. He hopped on from one job to another in search of some stability which sadly, he couldn't earn. Then I delved deeper into his life to find out how a star that was born, appreciated and validated by the world only to return back to where he belonged- the darkness of oblivion.?
Suddenly, Shafi, who was sleeping on pavements in Churchgate took a leap, and after attending a month-long workshop with Mira Nair, he earned himself a role in Mira Nair's movie that chronicled the life of Mumbai's slum kids.
After working with Mira Nair and her international production team, he got roped in for his second film, Patang in 1993.?
In the film, Krishna AKA Chaipau chases dreams, money, takes up daily-wage jobs only to end up with nothing by the climax of the film.In an interview with the Telegraph in 2012, he admitted that his life sadly is similar to the reality of Salaam Bombay.?
He admitted that he tried everything-from driving an auto-rickshaw, earning Rs 150 a day, to being a light boy in movie units that paid Rs 200-300 for an eight-hour shift.In the interview, he said, ¡°I keep a low profile and never talk about my films. Sometimes, I get to travel with film units whenever they shoot out of Bangalore.¡±
Shafiq Syed who has driven autos had posters of Salaam Bombay¡¯ in his auto.?
In 2013, Shafi expressed his desire to make a film called ¡®After Salaam Bombay¡¯. He confessed that he has a 180-pages long script ready. He was quoted in one of the interviews as saying,
¡°I don¡¯t want my children to be like me. If I had studied, who knows, I might have even had a career as an actor. I could have been able to read the scripts at hand."
In 2013, Salaam Bombay was re-released but Chaipau's mind was scattered with worries about his kidsHe was in desperate hope of getting his third youngest child admitted into a school with some help from the Right to Education Act (RTE). In an interview, he said, "I will definitely go around neighboring schools and see if RTE applies to my children. And when Asenu is a few years older, then I will apply under RTE for him too."
What use are his national awards if his short-lived fame and stardom couldn't even assure him stability in the film industry?? Chaipau's real-story sadly looks like a leaflet straight out of Mira Nair's Salaam Bombay! wherein in the end scene, he cries inconsolably after losing everything he had.?
After reaching out to him, I got to know that he drives an auto-rickshaw in Bangalore and also works as an assistant in television production units in the Kannada film industry.?
(Added information:?In 1989, director Mira Nair established an organization called the Salaam Baalak Trust.?
With her trust, she aimed to rehabilitate the children who appeared in the film. Her trust actually helped many. The Trust operates till date and now lends support to street children in Bombay, Delhi, and Bhubaneshwar.)?