Mumbai is the city that never
sleeps or the city of dreams or say India’s own New York City, bustling day and
night with life. Call it whatever, it all eventually brings to light the
powerful nature of the city which gives people their dreams or takes away a lot
from them. But one thing that it surely gives a person is the opportunity—to
realise their mettle and prove it. It’s a city of paradox, amidst slums you can
see a high rise building. This paradox to an extent is a sad reality of the
city which has Asia’s largest slum and at the same time has “billionaire raj”
yet it has a silver lining which is that there are stories of rags to riches in
this city, where people have freed themselves from all the shackles of class,
caste, and their background, and have been able to make a fortune for them.
This city gives them the chance to write their fate unlike most of the cities
where, one’s birth decides one’s life and limits. As said by Napoleon Hill, “your
only limitation is the one you set up in your own mind.”
Mumbai gives this kind of freedom
and empowerment. No wonder then that thousands of people migrate to this city
from all walks and strata of life, to make a life and living in this city which
is known to be the land of opportunities. Mumbai has gained a reputation to
change lives through books, articles, movies and other media. These have thrown
light on how the city builds or ruins lives. There are success stories of
migrants who make it big in the famed film industry while there are others who
are lured and engulfed in the trap of glamour and the price it comes at.
The new medium of web series
addresses these aspects of society commonly ignored by the mainstream films.
Netflix recently unveiled its first Indian series, a compelling, cops-and-gangsters
epic, Sacred Games. With Sacred Games, Mumbai—called by its older
name of Bombay throughout the series—is
a magnificent backdrop to a series about police, corruption, rampant crime and
a mystery revolving around looming destruction that may or may not start with
religious factions rising up to destroy the city. Sacred Games co-directors Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane
take every opportunity to use the city as a functional, important character in
the story, as is the case with New York or any number of smaller but distinct
locales in American series. You can sense the gap in class structure, be
overwhelmed by the density and broil, heat, sweat, grime and rush of activity.
There are long stretches of beautifully shot scenes where Mumbai/Bombay is as
magnetic and nuanced as any character in the series. The series revolves around
a low ranking cop who is mysteriously contacted by a big gangster, Ganesh
Gaitonde, who has been missing and thought dead for 15 years. Gaitonde tells
Singh that he has 25 days to save Mumbai before everybody in it will die. It's
a nice hook that sets itself and then takes a back seat to Gaitonde's story,
which is narrated in repeated and long expositional phone calls to Singh.
The action then unfolds in
flashback as Gaitonde rises from street beggar to feared slum gangster. Before
we go forward, right here his rise to staggering power of a feared slum
gangster displays the power of Bombay in its full glory. This character was a runaway
migrant to Bombay and the city completely changed his fate. He knew he wanted
to overthrow his life of poverty and displace several powerful people in the
bargain. Bombay gave him that opportunity
Ganesh in the series recounts
that he is a son of a simpleton Brahmin, who spent most of time reciting god's
name and survived on alms. Ganesh disapproved of this practice and equated it
with begging. Ganesh migrated to Bombay and worked at a restaurant and
befriended Mathu who introduced him to the lucrative business of drugs. Fired
from his job at the restaurant, he worked with Salim Kaka, a tall & strong
and dreaded gold smuggler. The greed for money, ambition and power drove Ganesh
into believing that if he mustered the courage to kill Salim, he would be akin
to the legendary Ashwathama. He eventually killed him and started thinking of himself
as invincible like god.
Gaitonde’s friendship with
Paritosh Shah, a goldsmith, got him a mentor who opened new avenues of business
to him. Gaitonde’s rise to power from the garbage dump of Gopalmath gives an
insight into how opportunities and success came to him in the city in the most
unforeseen quarters. He built his own gang and became a force to reckon with in
the underworld.
Sacred
Games also takes a deep look at Bollywood in the fold. It shows
an up and coming actress with a certain connection with Gaitonde and threatens
someone to retrieve her file from a talent manager as soon as she learns of
Gaitonde’s death. The dead talent manager in fact has her own share of
mysteries which are uncovered by Sartaj Singh and RAW agent Anjali Mathur. This
Jojo Mascerenhas has huge stashes of counterfeit currency supplied by Pakistan’s
ISI and has been a dubious escort service supplying Bollywood and TV actresses
to clients, including Gaitonde. This shows the interlinked connections of big
powerful forces in a one web. The fact that ISI supplied fake currency is found
at the talent managers house shows that there is not only good opportunities,
the fact that what one is made of and what one is willing to do to earn money
decides what one can make of an opportunity. It’s a rat race and everyone is
trying to pave a way to success by sweat or by blood acceptable to oneself.
There are many characters which can be our prism, through which we can
look at the various colours of this city, on how it changed so many lives.
The character of Kukoo unfolded as Gaitonde’s ambition and pursuit. Events pace
up as Gaitonde clinched her from the rival gang leader, Suleiman Isa after a
shootout. Believed to bring good luck to the person she sided, Kukoo was
believed to be the roadmap to conquer Bombay. The revelation that Kukoo was a
transgender brings the role of Bombay in a whole new light. While transgender
community was considered as an outcast and looked down upon with immense
prejudice and live in the fringes of the society, here was Kukoo who was
considered a trophy to win over. The city allowed her to start her life as a
clean slate and create her own identity of the glam girl. The city gave her the
life of glitter, gave her the wings to live a life of her choice and disclose
only that part of her that she wanted the world to know of her.
Again, while Gaitonde climbed
his way up the ladder, he mingled with politicians and police officials. Some
of these rose to formidable positions of power through the years. A small time
sycophant and stooge to the gangster secured political favours from Gaitonde to
capture his communal votebank, over the years rising in political power and
becoming the Home Minister. DCP Parulkar also rose to his post over the years
despite his questionable ways of functioning.
Another character that draws attention towards the opportunities
that the city has to offer is the character of Zoya. The journey of this
leading actor in the film industry began from her home town in Afghanistan to
the city of Mumbai, changing and hiding identities and providing sexual favours
through the talent manager
The RAW agent in the series seems to have an eye for field
work but she is constantly reminded of how it is expected to be a man's job. She
got the opportunity to work on this case in Mumbai where she could fight male
chauvinism and work as a field agent. Bunty, who used to work for Gaitonde was also
another story of rags to riches.
Set in Mumbai, Sacred
Games delves into the city's intricate web of organized crime, corruption,
politics and espionage that lie beneath India's economic renaissance. It is an
epic masterwork of exceptional richness and power that interweaves the lives of
the privileged, the famous, the wretched and the bloodthirsty. Gaitonde’s rise
from the garbage dump to the King of Gopalmath serves as a definitive recap of
how religion and politics became mutually satisfied bedfellows in India. He
narrates his story in the context of landmark events like the Shah Bano case,
Babri Masjid demolition, Mumbai bomb blasts and the rise of the Hindu right
wing in the country, recalling how each of these events affected his life, his
gang, and his ‘karmabhoomi’ Mumbai. There are even mentions of the partition
and the 26/11 terror attacks, creating a timeline of intolerance and terror
that continues to add new dates to its tab. The series brings to surface the
various dynamics of the city of Mumbai and how everyone is in a race for power,
money and many other motives. The power of the commercial capital is portrayed
in sections where it was conveyed that even during the time of Emergency in
1975 when the whole country was in turmoil, anarchy and chaos, Bombay was still
growing. The city gave many characters the power to jump their social bracket
and enter places they never thought they could. The city makes one come in
contact with one's own self that one wasn’t aware of.
No other place could
seem to give as many opportunities to the characters. There is a thing in
Bombay--a phenomenon that it is a city is known to have work for everyone and
that no one sleeps hungry. As mentioned earlier, the series reflects on the
part where Bombay did not seem to slow down its pace, be it in response to the
Emergency in 1975 or several communal challenges that followed in the 90s. The
spirit of the city has helped it live through these situations with businesses
running despite challenging situations.
Like they say, where
this is good, there is evil and one can’t exist without the other. Similarly,
if it's a land of opportunities, Bombay/Mumbai comes with its own sets of
setbacks. When there is a race for power and money, one would be expected to
compromise on morality. The series contemplated this matter as well. So
winning elections through communalism and using religion to divide and may be
even kill people in extreme cases is one such example. Fame, glamour and
success would also come at a personal price. Where there is a race, there is
competition as the positions to hold as limited but the aspirants to those
positions are many, likewise the resources are limited but greed is never
ending. When the competition turns unhealthy, there comes a point where winning
at any cost is important which gives rise to the monster that can eat up all
the vitals of humanity like the series ends hinting at a chemical/ nuclear
blast.
In a nutshell, there
are always two sides of the coin. If Bombay offers opportunities, it also poses
moral dilemmas wherein one has to choose success or morality; glamour or
ethics. Choosing one over the other could lead to catastrophic events.
Bombay is a city of
paradox. Billionaires, Bollywood stars and slum dwellers are all part of the
same city. Bombay is a place where it is easy to die. But it is not possible,
even for a second in this pulsating city with its unrelenting assault and
success on the other hand to forget that one is alive. It is the commercial
capital, brings laurels to the country but at the same time Mumbai also holds
the dubious distinction of being home to Asia's largest slums where, according
to government statistics, 60 percent of all city residents live. Bombay a city
where people gain a lot, lose a lot, few love it and even fewer have left their
mark on it--THE CITY OF DREAMS.
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