Mumbai, the El Dorado
SAVITHA GAUTAM
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Filmmakers Paromita Vohra and Madhusree Dutta examine different aspects of Mumbai in their work, to be telecast on Documentary 24x7 (NDTV).
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Glimpses: Mumbai, a city of contradictions and diversities, on Documentary 24x7, NDTV.
Mumbai. The city where dreams are fulfilled. The place where money power and glamour exist along side one of the largest slums in the world. A city that’s replete with contradictions and filled with diversities, a preoccupation of many a filmmaker. Tru
ly, El Dorado.
It’s this Mumbai that fascinates documentary filmmakers Paromita Vohra and Madhusree Dutta. They have examined different aspects of this metropolis in their work, which will be telecast on Documentary 24x7, (NDTV).
Vohra is a scriptwriter and has scripted the feature ‘Khamosh Pani’ (that won the Golden Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival, 2003). Dutta has been making films since 1993 on varied subjects such as gender, identity, and marginalisation.
“The day every one of us gets a toilet to use, I shall know that our country has reached the pinnacle of progress,” said Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. In ‘Q2P’ (telecast date: July 20, 1 to 2 p.m.), Vohra tackles the taboo subject of public toilets, in particular the shortage of women’s facilities in Mumbai. The film opens with a man standing next to a signboard for women’s toilet. As the camera moves inside, you are surprised to find men there. “We use this place as women do not come here till after noon,” says one man. In that one shot, Vohra captures the state of women’s facilities in the city that has a population about 15 million and where out of every 1,000 men, 875 are women.
The pathetic condition of some of the facilities has to be seen to be believed. To add to the woes is the lack of water, especially in schools. The visit to the Toilet Museum where sits a replica of Louis XIII’s throne (perhaps the only throne with a hidden toilet) is delightful. Vohra also focusses on the work done by Sulabh International, a social service organisation, and talks to founder Bindeshwar Pathak.
The film looks beyond the image of Mumbai as a metropolis to examine the availability and conditions of public restrooms for women and discusses, at large, issues of gender, class, caste and urban development. And in a way, breaks several myths.
Interesting anecdotes
National-award winner Dutta’s ‘7 Islands and a Metro’ (July 23 and 24 at 9.30 p.m., and July 27, 1 to 2 p.m.) evolves as an imaginary dialogue between celebrated writers Ismat Chugtai and Sadat Hasan Manto, who pay homage to the seven goddesses who reign over Bom Bahia/Bombay/Mumbai.
Shot during the monsoon, the film captures the beautiful yet violent facets of a city which can trace its history to the Stone Age and which is a heterogeneous amalgam of seven islands.
‘7 Islands and a Metro,’ the first non-fiction film to be commercially released in India, is Dutta’s effort to get a peek at what lies beneath the glitz and glamour of a multilingual Mumbai, the city of closed mills, slums, the real estate onslaughts and reclamation. The image of giant cement mixers driving past in a convoy is arresting.
The film is filled with interesting stories. For example, in 1931, when maternity benefits were introduced, women and children were thrown out of the famed mills. Ironically, today with globalisation and greed for cheap labour, the number of women employees has risen multi-fold. The camera moves into a Tamil speaking area and you discover this was once a European graveyard!
Dutta’s interviews with the man on the street are telling. The chaiwala, the construction worker, the stuntwoman who played Hema Malini’s double in ‘Sholay,’ the slum dweller and some Parsi residents, are representatives of a people who may not be seen but are simply the soul of the metropolis.
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