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Journalism of Courage
When Mani Ratnam’s Bombay released in 1995, a little over two years after the demolition of Babri Masjid followed by bloody riots that shook the city, it not only carried the weight of the recent communal history that had left a city burnt and hearts bruised, it also brought to the big screen what fortitude from a filmmaker looked like.
Here was a mainstream filmmaker looking at communalism through the lens of a family trying to be happy and hopeful in a cosmopolitan city, once a symbol of pluralism and which had embraced various religions and communities without any apprehensions. Ratnam had used art in the hope of change.
With a young inter-faith couple’s love story in the foreground amid a politically charged atmosphere, Ratnam showed recent historical events to ask pertinent questions: Who are we as people and who do we want to become? How long will we keep listening to the dangerous half-truths and divisive statements from those in power?
What made Bombay indelible wasn’t just the subject it showcased, it did so along with AR Rahman’s soundtrack — a score of conscience that stirred a nation. The pared beginning with a single flute played by flautist Naveen Kumar, followed by throbbing strings in what was called the ‘Bombay theme’, remains one of the most lasting musical pieces in Indian cinema. It seemed as if Rahman had taken Ratnam’s brief and turned it into a sort of requiem for a city. Upon release, Muslim political leaders called for a ban, which didn’t happen. Another demand came from Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray for major edits, which did happen.
In a conversation with writer Nasreen Munni Kabir in the book AR Rahman — The Spirit of Music: Biography (Om Books), Rahman talks about the theme piece that he’d composed in raag Jaijaivanti, the mood of which is a complex combination of joy and sorrow. “It made a musical statement about non-violence… and encouraged us to see the inner self rather than the outer”. The other famed piece in the raga is Mahatma Gandhi’s favourite bhajan: Raghupati raghav raja ram.
Rahman also rephrased the film’s theme, vignettes that could describe a moment or a state of mind at various junctures. He incorporated the Western sound but did not reject the folk roots that have always bound the nation and held it in a thrall. Bombay is also how the world got to know of AR Rahman.
In Elia Sulieman’s Divine Intervention (2002), the story of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the Bombay theme comes up as protagonist Sulieman reaches a checkpoint to cross over to Ramallah to meet his ill father. It was also used in Miral (2010), another Palestinian film about a young girl growing up during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war. Rahman reused it in Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) which was loosely based on Ismat Chughtai’s famed story Lihaaf (The Quilt) and the first Indian mainstream film to feature a lesbian relationship.
Other songs in Bombay, like KS Chithra’s Kehna hi kya where Shekhar (Arvind Swamy) falls in love with Shaila Bano (Manisha Koirala) during a wedding in a coastal village and Tu hi re, that brilliantly crafted song crooned by Hariharan and Kavita Krishnamurthy and shot at the stunning Bekal Fort in Kerala, remain a heartwarming combination of love, loss and longing. Then there was the sensuous and fun Humma by Remo Fernandes.
Read more – When Mani Ratnam wanted to fire AR Rahman during Bombay, but ended up in tears due to another song
One wonders if Rahman knew how poetic and soulful his music was going to be. A boy wonder, he had worked with Ilaiyaraaja and was just 27 when he composed for Bombay, after the immense success of Roja (1994) and Thiruda Thiruda (1993). The choice was, perhaps, apt for Ratnam. Rahman, who was born as Dilip Kumar in a Hindu family with pluralistic beliefs, had converted to Islam some years after his father’s death. At a time when religion was being weaponised, Ratnam placed Rahman and his music front and centre. A musician came with a lived understanding of religious co-existence.
The iconic Bombay theme grieved, letting one feel the pain — of losing family, of watching humans kill humans based on religion, of watching kerosene being poured over two children to be burnt alive as rioters asked: “Hindu ho ya Muslim?”
That question is still being asked. And the killings in the name of religion have continued, so has the politics. One wonders if the answer is in Ratnam’s solution of love thy human: extremely simplistic but probably the only one that makes the most sense. It told us that ‘being human’ was the only way. It still is.
Amid all of that, there is that haunting, raw score that stirred a nation once and ushered in an era before and after Rahman. Thirty years later, in today’s India, a filmmaker may not be able to make a Bombay. Which is also why the film and the score remain tender and compelling.
