Indian web content can be distinguished from its television and film counterparts for taking the world that Bollywood films have depicted for generations and injecting it with a heady dose of grainy realism. Films likeGangs of Wasseypurhave gained international attention from cinephiles for its raw depiction of the underbelly of crime. However, the socio political situation in India has also impacted the kinds of content that is populating Bollywood screens. Films that have done well in India have often trafficked in the hate that has simmered due to extremist rhetoric over the last decade. TakeThe Kashmir Files,a largely fictional account of Hindu exodus from Kashmir that was championed by the likes of Prime MinisterNarendra Modiandderided by critics for being inflammatorytowards its Muslim community and inaccurate. The film was a major success, even as incidents of audiences shoutinganti-Muslim remarksbecame all the more frequent.
Bollywood has never quite beenkind to its minorities, but Muslims have often served as foil in its eight-decade long lifespan. In this backdrop,Bombay My Beloved(Bambai Meri Jaan)cuts an imposing but distinct figure. The series is inspired by legions of period crime thrillers both local and foreign,Mirzapur, another Amazon Prime Video thriller is the closest in DNA and worthy of your time. However, you’d be hard-pressed to not see shades ofGoodfellas, NarcosorOnce Upon A Time In America. The series — based on real life characters and events — is based on the bookDongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai MafiabyS. Hussain Zaidi.
What Is ‘Bombay My Beloved’ About?
The show follows the life of gangster Dara Kadri (Avinash Tiwary) through the perspective of his father, Ismail Kadri (Kay Kay Menon), an ex-cop. Ismail works as an honest police officer tasked with exposing criminal activities involving gangsters Haji (Saurabh Sachdeva) and Pathan (Nawab Shah) who run the underworld in Bombay (the old name of Mumbai). The series focuses on a sub-financial struggle that impacts his son Dara, who eventually joins Haji’s criminal enterprise and over timeembarks on a criminal journey of his own.
While the world it paints is rich, twisted and vibrant,Bombay My Belovedcarves out a niche for itself by focusing on a specific subset of people: its Muslim community. Nearly every character present in the series identifies as the minority and the series finds clever ways to use the religion and culture of its characters to add new narrative wrinkles to the series. An episode set on the day of Eid-ul-Azha (the Muslim holiday of sacrifice) uses the occasion to level up its characters and storylines by not so subtly contrasting the theme of the day with the moral conundrums its central characters find themselves in.
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Morality Is the Heart of ‘Bombay My Beloved’
There’s a lot onBombay My Beloved’s mind, but chief is morality. Nearly every character faces challenges about how they make their bed in a dog-eat-dog world where the socioeconomic conditions all but edge one to the brink of crime. Ismail, one of the central characters starts out as pure and goes on a journey one may not expect, testing his devout faith but also his own parenting and general belief in the might of the law. He isn’t perfect and the show goes to painstaking lengths to ensure that no one in the series is. Dara played byManthan Darjias the younger version and Avinash Tiwary as a grown up is similarly forced to make early decisions about the life he wants to live after his father’s insistence on right leads to the family suffering in a number of ways. Rather than take after his father, his character seems molded more in the shape of the criminals his father attempts to take down on the regular, setting upan explosive father-son dynamic. Yet, for all his natural instincts to do wrong, his troubled childhood and relationship with his father do make him question the choices he makes time and time again and the show also shows the toll it takes on him and his family.
Kritika Karma’s Habiba is the only one spared by any kind of doubt. She isn’t running around the city totting her gun but never questions using it when push comes to shove. For all its clichés, the show never once putsthe classic damsel in distress tropeon her. There’s no moment in the series when she’s used as a bargaining chip or is interested in love. If the other characters are written as very human, to let the blood on their hands seem less stark, Habiba is a contrast. She has little time for questions of right or wrong and is instead a silent agent of her brother’s, content with taking a backseat if it advances her family. She has few qualms about getting her hands dirty when needed and is a very fresh character in a genre both Bollywood and international, that has often sidelined women or used them as pawns in the men’s game.
What sets the series apart, isn’t just its roster of outlaws but the world it so vividly paints. As political undercurrents simmer to the surface of life in India dividing a nation, many may scoff atyet another representation of Muslims that paints them as the bad guys. But in a post-Trump world where populist politics reign supreme globally, focusing solely on one community so tied to the ongoings of the city of Mumbai, the show cleverly uses its characters and their humanity. None of the characters in Bombay My Beloved play like caricatures, nor are they pit against any kind of other nation within the country or community. In its debut season, the series is only interested in showing one set of players in all their glory, good and bad, even as the end of the series opens doors for others. The screenplay byRensil D' SilvaandSameer Aroraensures that the tussle it presents between forces of right and wrong in India is a zero-sum game where the heroes and villains aren’t defined by their religion. The series doesn’t shy away from diversity or the communal aspect of these characters, but it also doesn’t use their religious faiths against them even as it explains the vast impact they had on the city and country as whole.
If you do happen to take an interest ingang and crime films, you likely won’t be too let down byBombay My Beloved, which uses its fictional take on the real life events of 1960s and 80s Bombay as bombastic as possible. Making full use of the kaleidoscope of culture, period and religion present, the show is an elevated crime thriller with great performances and memorable characters.
