On 27 November 2008, a film crew began work on location in Philadelphia, US, trying to replicate a terrorist attack. Most members of the crew, including the film’s director Rensil D’Silva, were from Mumbai.
Before he arrived on location, he had spent hours in front of CNN watching the Taj hotel under siege—and the surreal paralysis of his city that followed.
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For him, as perhaps for most members of the crew, recreating a terrorist attack that day, in front of high definition cameras, was a disturbing, even eerie, task.
Qurbaan (a working title), produced by Karan Johar (Dharma Productions), was suddenly akin to what was unfolding in Mumbai.
The film’s protagonist, played by Saif Ali Khan, an “urban, educated, liberal” Muslim, in love with a Hindu girl (played by Kareena Kapoor), was in the throes of a crisis because of a similar terrorist act. “I will never forget that shoot,” D’Silva says.
I met D’Silva more than six months after that day, at the ad agency where he works as creative director. “But now when I look back, I believe that the film, more so its main characters, are all the more relevant, and more contemporary in the post-26/11 world,” he says.
The film releases in theatres, uncannily, on 26 November. It will be the Eid weekend.
D’Silva’s hero (the screenplay is also by D’Silva), modelled on Muslim guys he interacts with in the city, can be monikered “the new Bollywood Muslim”—defined, unfortunately, more by what he is not, rather than what he is. He is not the decadent, sozzled nawab cavorting with courtesans; not “Khan chacha”, the benevolent other, wearing a Faiz topi, sneaked into the plot as a secular prop; not an underworld don or a don’s sidekick; and not a crazed, wronged jihadi.
Ironically, in an industry dominated by Muslim directors, producers, composers, lyricists, actors and junior artists, a Muslim character that doesn’t fall into any of these categories is rare. One that immediately comes to mind was created in the 1980s: Salim in Salim Langde Pe Mat Ro (1989), directed by Saeed Mirza, which subverted stereotypes for the sake of “mean streets” realism. It portrayed the existential and social frustrations of a young man from a lower economic class in Mumbai who resorted to extortion and petty crimes to defy the society. More recently, Iqbal in Nagesh Kukunoor’s eponymous film— again, a young man on the margins of society—had nothing to do with religious identity.