The Hindu Business Line : Mumbai on their minds

Mumbai is the subject of at least three new artistic endeavours. First, Sameer Hanchate's Rs 3-crore debut film, Gafla, is inspired by the boom-and-bust scam that sent the Indian stock market reeling in the 1980s.

Vinod Sharawat essays Subodh Mehta, the celluloid version of Harshad Mehta, the central figure in the securities scam. Hanchate plays the role of Mehta's sidekick, Ketan Parikh.

Needless to say, the scriptwriter has reworked and embellished the real-life happenings. But the Bombay Stock Exchange is singularly unimpressed, and has taken Hanchate to court.

I remember clearly a press conference at the Taj where the media was given audiocassettes of conversations pertaining to the securities scam. We'd gasped when Mehta claimed that he had personally deposited a suitcase stuffed with Rs 1 crore in cash at the residence of the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao. From the barrage of questions directed at the `Big Bull', here's one (the writer's) that I'd like to share with you: "Mr Mehta, why should we believe you?" His reply was mere verbiage.

For the subalterns in Madhushree Datta's film, 7 Islands and a Metro, there's a little bit of hope at the end of a dark, long tunnel. Sensitive films like I live in Behrampada are part of the oeuvre of this National Award winner who once dreamt of becoming an actress. She is an alumnus of the National School of Drama. This time around, Datta doesn't train her lens on parvenus or scamsters but on the eager and dispossessed who throng Mumbai by the trainload day after day.

Documentary footage is strung together by the philosophical ruminations of Ismat Chugtai and Sadat Hasan Manto, two writers who lived in Mumbai but never met. A successful screenwriter in Bombay's film industry, Manto would emigrate to Pakistan after Partition.

But Mumbai would remain a magnificent obsession for the writer of my favourite Urdu story, Toba Tek Singh.

What's in a name? Metromorph is the appropriately named title of Sanjeev Sonpimpare's solo show of faux-digital paintings and a pair of fibreglass sculptures currently on display at Yash and Avantika Birla's Fort gallery, Articullate. Sonpimpare engages with many faces and spotlights the psychological strains of life in the city in an exhibition that is a corollary to his previous shows, Recycled and Sceptics. Sonpimpare is a winner of the Solomon Abraham prize for portraiture and the UNESCO-Aschberg Award in Dublin.

All-women RAF contingent

Joan of Arc led an attacking army; women warriors from the Danube region fought for the Roman military in third-century Britain; and we've had our Chand Bibi and Jhansi ki Rani. And now, the Rapid Action Force (RAF) is deputing an all-women contingent to war-torn Liberia, the first all-women police force to be deployed on a UN peace-keeping mission. Do they learn karate, was my naïve query to J.K. Sinha, Director General, CRPF, who presided over the RAF's first-ever Raising Day celebrations in Mumbai.

The RAF, which is deployed for rescue and relief operations during natural calamities and communal riots, was celebrating 14 years of existence. The RAF's services are utilised by the Mumbai administration almost every monsoon when the city suffers due to heavy rains.

"The mission of the force, as always, remains to react in `Zero Response time' in case of trouble. We are pleased to have won the confidence of the people," Sinha said with quiet pride.

Mumbai's famed moon

What a pretty sight the Korean women of Mumbai made in their brightly coloured ethnic dress at their National Foundation Day celebrations hosted by the Consul General, Byung Seang Oh. Also in attendance were executives from Korean companies in Mumbai — from Samsung to LG. Koreans celebrate Chuseok (Thanksgiving) when they play games, eat a special rice cake and make a wish to the full moon.

On Chuseok nights, the full moon is said to be the biggest in the year. I wonder if it's as big as the moon over Mumbai whose fame has spread far and wide.

Two English medical students I'd met on a recent trip to Vietnam wanted to know more about the moon over Mumbai. I, of course, had waxed lyrical.

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