Taj & Bombay

After a long shopping stint, saw two short documentaries today. Bombay: One City Two Worlds, and Taj Mahal. Mom had bought the DVDs quite some time ago. Today was to be the lucky day for them.

Taj Mahal is a straight forward film stretching not more than 20 oddminutes, rather long for a short film but not painstakingly slow. It opens with the Taj's structure, gives a bit of an insight into Indian Mogul architecture of the lineage of Humayun, Akbar, Shahjehan & the likes. It's a sweet film meant mainly for those who know virtually nothing about Indian heritage construction. For the more learned viewer though, it has nothing special to rave about.

Bombay: One City Two World though, is a different take on this city. It neither screams about how Bombay has changed for the worse nor proclaim its spectacular rise to a global city. It talks about the two faces of Bombay, the Static and the Kinetic as they choose to name them. Static Bombay is the 'pukka' city full of glass age buildings and wealth while Kinetic Bombay supports the former by providing unorganized services like 'Bazaars' and domestic help. The chief narrator quite rightly points out that the failure of Bombay is not in the growing slums but the lack of understanding on part of the town planners to consider the needs of this city for the same. He says that Kinetic Bombay is a force to reckon with and that this force has immense energy that can help sustain the unforeseen requirements of the city. Charles Correa, the famous designer and planner professes the need for Bombay to be ruled by the natives rather than a state cabinet elected from elsewhere in Maharashtra.

The thing that annoyed me was that the film never considered Kinetic Bombay as an identity on its own and never put forward the humanitarian needs of it. Rather this Kinetic Bombay only had the subordinate role of helping Static Bombay grow better.

Charles Correa summed up my views on Bombay much better when he concluded, "There are great cities that are also great places like San Fransisco & Paris. Bombay is a great city and a terrible place. But given a choice I will prefer living in this great city and improve upon its terrible side."

My advice to a first time watcher: Do go ahead if you have imbibed in yourself the spirit of Bombay. If you want a Shanghai here, rather give the film the backdoor.

N.B.: Thanks Marg Publications for the entire series of films on India and its heritage.