7 Islands and a Metro
My father came down the Sahyadris
And stood at your doorstep,
With only his labour in his hands.
The multilingual Bombay, the Bombay of intolerance, the Bombay of closed textile mills, of popular culture, sprawling slums and real estate onslaughts, the metropolis of numerous ghettos, the El Dorado. This film is a tale of the cities of Bom Bahia / Bombay / Mumbai, through a tapestry of fiction, cinema vérité, art objects, found footage, sound installation and literary texts. It is a chronicle of the journey of a scattered bunch of insignificant fishing hamlets to the coveted stature of a prime metropolis.
The narrative is structured around fictional exchanges between Ismat Chugtai and Sadat Hasan Manto, the two legendary writers who lived in this metropolis, over the art of chronicling these multi-layered overlapping cities.
Shot mainly during the monsoon the film portrays some strangely beautiful yet ruthlessly violent features of Bombay that, generally, are not part of the popular narratives.
This film has been commercially released in theatres in Calcutta and Bombay, a pioneering event in the history of non-fiction films in India. It has received the special jury mention in Film Southasia.
Film available on request