Mumbai on Screen #3 - Bombay (1995, Tamil)

Well, I had to do this one eventually. This self-styled definitive Bombay movie was on every recommendations list sent to me! It is the story of a Hindu man and a Muslim woman, who elope from their hostile families to Bombay, only to be caught in the crossfire of communal riots.

I don't know why I expected the romance half of the movie to be less problematic than it was. Sekar, Arvind Swamy's character, pursues a visibly uncomfortable Shaila Banu (Manisha Koirala), even dressing up as a burqa-clad woman to get close to her (in a weird inversion of offensive men-dressing-as-women tropes, this time he is the good guy doing it for love). Slightly later in the film he slices her arm with a blade to prove a point. Ultimately they do fall in love, though, and decide to get married. 

Sekar approaches Shaila's father, a very 0-to-100 man who reaches for his sword immediately. Only afterwards does Sekar even tell his own parents. Both fathers have it out in a vicious verbal argument that threatened to no longer remain verbal (Sekar's father is unarmed; but Shaila's father, as we know, carries a sword). The irony is very clear - the fathers are in a way on the same side: neither wants the couple to marry, and yet their anger is equally directed at each other as at their errant children.

The couple elope, in a bit of a staggered fashion, and get married in Bombay. There are the obligatory VT and Marine Drive shots. The city at this point represents freedom and a liberal attitude, the opposite of what they had fled - this wouldn't last long. Don't worry about how they both subsist on a proofreader's salary (minus Sekar's ongoing journalism degree fees). More uncomfortable non-consensual PDA later, they have a set of twin boys. Personally with Sekar's overbearing nature and Shaila's lack of personality and overall zero chemistry, I was mainly rooting for the little kids in the strife-ridden second half of the movie.

Then come some of this country's worst moments - Babri Masjid is demolished and violence breaks out in Bombay. The boys (named Kamal Basheer and Kabir Narayanan) are nearly killed when they are unable to answer a mob about what their religion is. The couple's parents come to stay with them, out of concern, ending a long gap in communication. The fathers initially argue but eventually thaw after Shaila's father saves the other from a gang. Eventually the violence manages to separate the family. The grandparents are killed in an explosion, and the children are lost and found after an agonising search. The film culminates in Sekar and others successfully appealing for peace, and everyone holding hands.

The philosophical core of this movie is a sort of both-sides-ism, condemning all forms of extremism, which was certainly a welcome message for its time. Years later, when we have had more riots and many years of a majoritarian government, it bears some rethinking. Within the film itself, when the arguments of Hindus and Muslims are compared, it doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. The extremist Hindus want to assert themselves by constructing the Ayodhya temple, showing Muslims that they're second-class citizens and eventually driving them out. The Muslims, barring those who retaliated for the demolition by starting violence in Mumbai, just want to exist. Their very existence is seen as political, because the film doesn't examine its own associations of Islam with violence. (Indeed, think back to Shaila's sword-toting father.) When Sekar's two friends fight, the Muslim is outraged at his community's houses and shops being destroyed, and the Hindu says something about minority "privileges" and appeasement. Are these two equivalent?

(Even the insults the fathers hurl at each other are laughably imbalanced if you think about them for more than a moment. The Muslim calls the Hindus weak vegetarians, and the Hindu says his blood is pure unlike the Muslim's.)

One thing the movie does nail is powerful forces stoking this violence for their own gain. The Hindu extremist leader fans the flames with his speeches and then drives though the devastated areas, silently observing. (The Muslim leader meets the affected families and sheds tears.) The police are also shown to participate in the violence and disproportionately kill Muslims. The film also rightly emphasises the horror of children and innocent people being hurt and killed in this clash. 

"What is a Hindu and what is a Muslim?" asks one of the boys, to a transgender woman sheltering him. 

"Hinduism and Islam are both ways to reach God." 

"Then why are they fighting?" 

While the socio-political realities are very important to keep in mind when looking for a solution, perhaps the spirit we should embrace is the childlike view. We are all mere mortals, following different guidelines in our spiritual quests, and we shouldn't resort to violence to solve what isn't even a problem - the fact that we are diverse. Maybe the Kamal Basheers and Kabir Narayanans will save this country.

Socially Distanced SciComm

One important (and honestly fun) duty of the science community is to keep the general public in the loop about what they are up to. It fosters scientific literacy among adults, in a time when anti-intellectual spirit abounds. And it gets kids interested in the reality of what we do, which is often nothing like the science or maths they are taught in school! After all, this field, like any other, has to sustain itself and bring in new people.

Some large organisations like NASA have excellent PR/outreach teams, putting out enough content to satisfy thousands of space nerds worldwide. (Did anyone else watch Perseverance landing on Mars?) Universities and teams of researchers carry out their own outreach programs - TIFR, for its part, has two open days a year apart from the fortnightly Chai and Why? talks.

One of these, National Science Day, was last Sunday! Last year's NSD seems like a geological age ago, but I do remember some of it - a college student asked for a selfie with me, and later when I visited a different department's exhibit, I was asked which class I was in.

This year it was fully online, and as a result could reach viewers who could not normally visit TIFR. That of course brought a fresh set of logistical challenges. There was a last-minute change of venue owing to a power shutdown. The anchor, demonstrators and speakers were all in different places. Someone had to repeatedly appeal to viewers not to spam the chat with larger and larger numbers, discussions of the time taken to cook rice, teachers taking attendance, or worst of all, people cursing at the first half being in Marathi and not Hindi.

Most viewers were probably watching on their phone screens, so we had to be super-clear and also mildly theatrical in order to hold their attention. Those demonstrating experiments with colourful acids, liquid nitrogen and superconductors had no problem keeping it visually engaging; we theorists had to work a little harder! Luckily people responded to our questions for the audience and seemed to overall enjoy our presentation.

Ultimately the event passed successfully in a whirl of Zoom spotlights and co-host handovers. It was an exciting new medium. But I look forward to hearing teenagers' wild lateral thinking suggestions in person once again.

You can watch the full thing here on YouTube. Some rough timestamps:

1:40:00 - Experiments (Duration ~20 mins)

2:03:00 - Mj Mahan's talk on "Hyperbolic Geometry in Nature" (Duration ~35 mins)

2:41:00 - My department's presentation, featuring me as main speaker and an untrustworthy postmaster (Duration ~20 mins)