Mumbai Meri Jaan

The best thing about it? Its set of lead characters. It only helps that the key performances are in tune—sensitive and nuanced

by Namrata Joshi

Starring: Paresh Rawal, Kay Kay Menon, Irrfan, Soha Ali Khan
Directed by Nishikant Kamath

The best thing about Mumbai Meri Jaan is its set of lead characters. Their tragedies, dilemmas, frustrations, fears and suspicions create an immediate empathy irrespective of whether you’re a Mumbaikar or not. It only helps that the key performances are in tune—sensitive and nuanced. A Crash-like narrative takes us randomly through five lives in the aftermath of the Mumbai train bomb blasts. The techie Madhavan is earning well but still commutes by the local. Narrowly escaping the blast, he is left questioning his ideals. Kay Kay harbours a deep resentment against Muslims, which only worsens after the tragedy. Paresh Rawal is a soon-to-retire policeman who realises he hasn’t accomplished much in life and Maurya is a young cop deeply enraged at the thought that he might end up quite like his senior.
Irrfan, the poor coffee seller, loves the perfumes in the fancy mall and hits back at a society that has kept him on the margins by using the bomb scare. Soha plays the TV journo for whom all that matters is a story and some bytes, till she herself is reduced to one. The track is an overstated, ruthless jab at TV journalism but isn’t TV news quite the same?
There are some moving moments: Madhavan staring at the cars in the showroom. Or Irrfan helping his wife and kid up the escalator, a very real, Chaplinesque scene. The narratives do sprawl languidly and resolutions might seem simplistic—9/11 images making the Indian realise that he needn’t run away to the US, Sai Baba’s prasad bridging the Hindu-Muslim divide and an elderly cop’s tearful speech washing away the inner discontent. But would I have preferred each of these stories to have a more "realistic" end? No. That lump in the throat that the film leaves you with makes it affecting and uplifting. And it’s only in the fitness of things that the cynical Ae dil hai mushkil plays in the background. Even as the song talks of Insaan ka nahin kahin naam-o-nishaan the film celebrates the essential humanity that redeems a city.
What irked was the gory and gratuitous recreation of the bombings. Wouldn’t the film have made its point without showing us those torn limbs and bloody bodies?