Three years a gangster

There might have been scores of stories centred on Mumbai and yet every few years a filmmaker has something new to tell about the city Last weekrsquos release Bambai Meri Jaan in that sense is familiar yet novel The gangster drama reportedly inspired by reallife characters sees Kay Kay Menon play Ismail Kadri and Avinash Tiwary his onscreen son Dara Kadri The real names must not be taken the act of Voldermortifying it almost adding to the hype Instead we have reference points that are quite tellingmdashMenonrsquos Ismail Kadri is an honest cop while his son Dara rises through the ranks to become the cityrsquos most dreaded gangster Tiwary immediately discourages us from connecting the dots as he begins ldquoIt is a fictional account of all the stories we have heard of the underbelly and we have added our own colours to it Itrsquos a new paintingrdquoAvinash TiwaryRecreating MumbaiFor cocreator and director Shujaat Saudagar Bambai is the showrsquos primary character along with the protagonists Ismail and Dara The Amazon Prime Video series set in the rsquo60s and rsquo70s harks back to the city it once was ldquoWe had to visually get Mumbai right but more importantly we had to capture the experience that the city is There is a pulse and euphoria to itrdquo says SaudagarIn fact the cocreator says he witnessed the ldquoeuphoriardquo secondhand through his USbased DoP director of photography John Smith who first arrived in Mumbai in February 2020 to shoot the series ldquoWe shot the first schedule over 20 days in February right before the lockdown We restarted a year later on January 31 2021 Then John got COVID and was stuck in a hotel room for nearly two months We had to fly him out because it was monsoon by the time he got better and we couldnrsquot shoot in the rains When he came back to shoot the next schedule he was hit by denguerdquo Despite Smithrsquos harrowing time in the city he is smitten by it laughs Saudagar ldquoJohn jokes that he still wouldnrsquot mind settling in Mumbai if his wife agreesrdquoKritika Kamra in Bambai Meri JaanA long road aheadSaudagarrsquos tryst with the gangster drama began in 2019 as he developed the story with cocreator Rensil DrsquoSilva and wrote it with Abbas and Hussain Dalal He took it on floors in February 2020 unknowing that he was embarking on a tumultuous threeyear journey The first wave of the pandemic hit in March 2020 stalling his production A mammoth set of old Mumbai that had been built in Madh Island lay unused for months shooting up the showrsquos budget ldquoDuring the first wave for five months we had no idea what was happening There were fears we wouldnrsquot carry on at all We had not shot in the Madh set for a single day We rebuilt it twice over over the subsequent monthsrdquo says the creatordirector who then filmed the show intermittently through 2021 and 2022He wasnrsquot alone in living with the story for years It was an equally demanding process for actors Menon Tiwary and Kritika Kamra Menon says that staying true to his role for over three years has been an elaborate process of switching on and off ldquoIf there is a long gap between two schedules itrsquos no longer about the continuity of what you are wearing It is also about the continuity of the characterrsquos headspace It is a reinvestment of everything an actor puts into the character I believe that an actor primarily is in the business of emotions You have to reprocess to immerse yourself into a scene whose last beat was shot a while agordquo says MenonTiwaryrsquos approach however was different Contrary to his coactorrsquos onandoff process Tiwary had become Dara for the past threeandahalf years ldquoMy mind hadnrsquot stopped thinking about Dara For over three years this was the only thing I had When I chose it I felt it needed an immersive dedication I feared letting go of the character because if I did I would never be able to find that magic againrdquo recalls the actor In hindsight he admits he could have ldquochilled a bitrdquo before telling Menon ldquoI want to get to a point like you where I can switch off and onrdquoIt helped that everyone on the set was on the same page Tiwary recounts ldquoThere were 300 people cheering for the same thing I remember there were days I would walk in and they would call me Dara bhai As an actor I tend to do better when I am looked at in a certain way It was fun getting the lingo right and I enjoyed the touch of brotherhood where every line ended with bhairdquoHumanise donrsquot glorifyWhen telling a story about the mafia novelists and filmmakers are sometimes faulted for glorifying them The examples are manymdashfrom Gregory David Robertsrsquos everpopular book Shantaram to Vikram Chandrarsquos Sacred Games Bambai Meri Jaan too adds a tinge of heroism to its morally ambiguous characters Point this out to Saudagar and he views it differently ldquoStorytellers are merely telling a story and there is a human fascination with the world of crime Martin Scorsesersquos entire repertoire is replete with great gangster films The fascination exists because these are regular people who did deviant things and one wants to live vicariously through them As a filmmaker I donrsquot want to glorify or judge them I want the audience to judge the characters I only want to humanise the characters It is futile in any society to glorify crime There is a moral framework in this show where you see two men struggling to find their version of right and wrong Here we are telling the story of a family the choices they made and how they dealt with its outcomerdquo