The Mumbai way

A still from Mood showing the traffic in Mumbai

It was on display earlier this month when flower seller Kanta Murli Kalan stood before an open manhole on a flooded road in Matunga for seven hours, to warn people of the imminent danger. And earlier, in 2008, Karanbir Singh Kang possibly exemplified it best when the Taj Mahal Palace employee ushered guests out through a back door of the hotel while terrorists were creating a bloodbath, knowing all the while that his wife and two kids had already perished inside. We are talking about that intangible concept known as 'the spirit of Mumbai'. People vilify it as being over-hyped sometimes. But the fact remains that the soul of this city lies in the untainted kindness and empathy that locals display when the going gets tough, as it has gotten right now.

A new animated short captures this essence with a liberal helping of pop culture references to capture the flavour of Mumbai. It's called Mood, and while Sharanya Menon and Saloni Basrur are the illustrators, Parthiva Nag has written and directed the three-minute long film under the banner of Bharatiya Digital Party and Studio Fiction. He tells us that he wanted the images to flow as seamlessly as the city does. "Life here is non-stop, and that's the pattern I wanted for the edit," Nag says, adding that while his team was working on the script, the pop culture references changed along the way from a dog being depicted like a hip-hop 'bantai' to a tapori, a la Jackie Shroff.

Nag also tells us that these images were drawn from his own life as a Mumbaikar (he reveals that he gets especially infuriated by unruly autos). But there's a twist at the end of the film. We are living in a time when the spirit of Mumbai has again being called into action. This time, it's not the relentless monsoon or a terror attack that we have to fight against. Instead, it's an invisible virus that's brought the city to its knees, though given its past record, the megapolis will rise again like a phoenix from the ashes when the time is right.

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