By Kayvan Kaboli
Salaam Bombay!, directed by Mira Nair (mother of Zohran Mamdani, New York’s new mayor), is a blend of the beauty and ugliness of life under the darkest and harshest conditions for children whose primary goal is simply to survive by any means possible amid the many layers of stench born of poverty.
The story begins when Krishna, an 11-year-old boy traveling with a mobile circus, is sent to a nearby small town to buy a few cans of food. When he returns, he discovers that he has been left behind, whether by accident or intentionally is unclear. With the only money he has, Krishna buys a ticket to Bombay and enters a city where he immediately encounters the madness of such a vast and chaotic world.
The film then follows the street children, portraying their struggles not only through the lens of suffering and deprivation but also through the moments of childish joy they experience, brief though they may be amid the harshness of life.
The idea for the film first took root in Mira Nair’s mind when she interviewed real street children (the very ones who later act in Salaam Bombay!), learning directly about their daily lives. In this film, Nair depicts scenes from these children’s real lives in the neighborhood where they live, shaping them into an engaging narrative. In this neighborhood, people, young and old, prostitutes, and drug dealers, tea sellers and shopkeepers, are neither entirely black nor wholly white. They are not good nor bad; they simply are. They live, laugh, cry, breathe, and intertwine with one another like a large family, trading and mingling together.
Krishna’s name in this neighborhood becomes “Chaipau,” the child who delivers cups of tea for the local tea vendor, taking them everywhere, from the shopkeepers’ stalls to the rooms of sex workers. Through Chaipau’s entry into each of these spaces, we encounter the film’s other characters, their worlds, and their stories.
Chaipau needs a certain amount of money to return to his village, a place and family that had cast him out. His daily work gradually brings him closer to the needed sum, but through a series of exciting and dramatic events, he never manages to reach the amount required for the return ticket.
The film is also remarkably successful in portraying its other characters and side stoires, men and women to whom Chaipau becomes attached, from whom he is hurt, with whose joys he laughs, and with whose sorrows he grieves. These are people who, for the sake of their own survival and their next breath, are forced to push someone else’s head deeper into the mud of poverty and deprivation. Their emotions surge and break in this struggle for survival, and in the midst of it all, Chaipau learns the lessons of life.
Throughout the entire film, from beginning to end, the viewer becomes familiar with the law governing life in this neighborhood. It is the same vicious circle in which everyone flounders, even as life moves forward, only to arrive back at the same point. Neither the glitter of Bollywood that enters people’s homes through television nor the god Ganesha and the elephant-worship festival, depicted symbolically in the film’s final scenes, can alter this law.
