Mumbai Meri Jaan

Watched the movie last night. I think it conveys several messages.

The movie tells 5 tales in the aftermath of the 7/11 Mumbai blasts.

The downtrodden tea-vendor-by-the-night Tamilian sees all the glitter and gold around him but can’t reach it. There is a very thick glass wall which he can never break. If he tries to find a duct through to touch the life beyond, he is humiliated and thrown out. He is punished for no fault of his. Freedom does not exist for him. He is an alien in his own country. The architects of India’s freedom did not have this in mind when they slogged. He devises a simple plan to get even – starts making hoax calls about malls having bombs. But life does not let him have the pleasure and he soon realizes his mistake, and makes amends. Very poignant.

The beat constable and his senior take the bombing incident in very opposite manners. The younger one feels handicapped and chained by the system he represents while the elder one preaches and almost reveres the do-not-care attitude that he has lived with forever. The interaction with each other makes their relationship so strong that they end up crying in each other’s arms – one for the lost chances, and the other scared and confused about what to do with the chances that he may get.

And then there was this Hindu chap who smells a rotten egg when the Muslim boy that he had seen in his hang-out place suddenly vanishes. He finds out the other’s house, makes enquiries with his mother, follows him to a girlfriend and hence to a dead end, ignores all affection given to him by the “other” community only to realize that his quarry had been to Shirdi to visit Saibaba’s ashram. He then fights an internal duel between Hindu propaganda and the very Indian values of secularism, to emerge a winner and make friends with the guy he thought was a terrorist.

The characters are very well etched out and have been played to the perfection by the cast. A must watch!