What Do You Know?

I had heard about people pelting trains with stones and the harm it causes the hapless commuter on his daily trudge but I wasn’t prepared for what happened to me last Saturday as I passed under the Bandra-Mahim flyover. It was, as Snoopy would say, `A dark and stormy night’. Ganesha had obviously heard the groans at the weather bureau about the deficient monsoon season and decided to pave his homecoming with a final burst of much needed rain.

I was driving home after dropping a friend at Bandra Reclamation (which has been turned into a monstrous slum, thanks to the Bandra Fair) when I had to drive under the bridge, slowly wending my way through the pot-holes reminiscent of mine fields seen in WW II movies. All of a sudden a large stone, the size of a rugby ball, fell from the skies and missed smashing into the front of my car by inches.

Sadly it was too late for me to apply the breaks and my car went over the rock which in turn ripped the underbelly of thecar, causing some considerable damage. I stopped and got out to see what had happened (still not quite sure at that point if I had imagined something falling in my path or not) when another boulder came hurtling down from atop the bridge, ferociously smashing onto the road and causing the oily water to splash everywhere.

I looked up in fear that the bridge itself might be crumbling (given the ill-fated story of this particular flyover) only to hear a man curse the world loudly. I quickly got into the car and decided to warn the cops nearby that a lunatic was pelting passing cars. The only pandu on duty assured me that he would see what he could do when it stopped raining.

As I limped the car home I wondered if this was a stray incident or part of a larger social decay that seems to mar Mumbai’s march to modernisation and prosperity. That that march is on was very evident to me as I landed three weeks ago after a one year absence from this city of my birth. From the mushrooming of pool tables and bowlingalleys to the upgradation of rusty hoarding sites into luminescent back-lit posters (Hello Brother to you too!), consumerism and mall culture has finally hit this city’s mainstream.

But what has still to come, and come it must, is going to be the need to bring some dignity to the individuals that make this city populous. It’s only when we learn to clean our toilets with our own hands and wipe our piss-stained seats with our own rags that this city will start to truly appreciate the fruits of consumerism. Till then start looking out overhead as you cross under a bridge.

Forr sooth, yesterday’s single rock will become tomorrow’s avalanche of fire.

Urban nomads

One of my current assignments is curating a 70-minute programme for the Hanover Film & Video Festival. The programme is titled, in all Germanic seriousness, Wounds & Visions of a Megalopolis, and this year the festival has chosen to showcase four cities Mumbai, Peking, Chicago, and Bangkok.

The festival’s dynamic director is themulti-talented Harald in Hulsen and, in his own words, he poetically describes the programme as: "With nightfall, decay seeps into the megalopolis revealing its vision, its pain on the screen. Caught between robotronic virtuality and electrified outcry, these young film-makers are travellers with no memory.

They orientate themselves through images and sounds on site, where the broad beach of broken dreams and visions has been paved over in urban asphalt. The films to premier reflect the thoughts, moods, ideas, desires and refusal of the young generation, a generation accompanying the century to its close. How they see the world, fail to understand it, want to change it and how they live the lives they call their own … The wounds, the visions of the young generation, shattering the mirror they hold up to the city and maintaining their self-esteem.

These film-makers prefer very personal perspectives and stories. They are urban nomads, and visibly so. They have been underway and could continue theirjourney at any moment. Still they concentrate on the environment in which they live… at least for now, an environment no one ever leaves without it first leaving its mark on them. They roam the urban labyrinth along with their visions."

To represent Mumbai I have decided to showcase Aushim Ahluwalia’s excellent new documentary Thin Air, Paromita Vohra’s independent A Short Film About Time and a retrospective of the brilliant Cyrus Oshidar’s work as creative director of MTV. Ahluwallia’s documentary is a film that lives long in your mind after initial viewing. Set against the urban landscape, it chronicles the life of three magicians of different generations who share the urgent desperation of ordinary individuals to make an imprint on the world around them. The film’s protagonists have little choice but to confront the reality of their lives, their illusions and tricks disappearing into an ether, long evaporated.

Queen bee

On this trip back to Bombay there has been little that I can honestlysay I was looking forward to. Catching up with family and friends and eating at Rahul and Malini Akekar’s Indigo were the highlights. But I am thrilled that I am going to be here for the grand revival of Alyque Padamsee’s Evita. For my generation, fresh out of school and longing for the hedonism of the ’80s, this was the defining musical. We had no MTV then, no pool tables and bowling alleys. There were no trips abroad, no Mexx stores, no Levi’s jeans.

There was just aspiration, and testosterone and high-flying adored, Sharon Prabhakar. And through her voice and Alyque’s magic mirrors we all became transformed into instant queens. Oh to relive that moment in time!

Riyad Wadia, avant garde film-maker, is currently at home in Mumbai.