Decade & half to this Black Beauty

Who plays Yakub Memon brother of Tiger Pawan Malhotra mastermind of 1993 serial Bombay blasts in Anurag Kashyaprsquos film Black Friday on the same subject Director Imtiaz AliKashyap never acted in Alirsquos films Which is ironic once you consider as Ali told me once the first time he ever saw an actorrsquos portfoliomdashbasically a bunch of photographs of an actor in multiple posesdressesmdashit was KashyaprsquosBack in Delhi in the early rsquo90s when Ali was scouting for talents for a TV show around Delhi University Kashyap was an aspiring actor Kashyap himself makes a splitsecond cameo in Black Friday yoursquoll notice as a Pak agent passing on terror consignment midseaAfter getting picked up by the CBI from Kathmandu Yakub was let free and then rearrested from New Delhi railway station Subsequently he claimed on the videomagazine Newstrack that no one from his family besides Tiger had any role in what was clearly the worldrsquos first terror attack of this scale 77 911 2611 etc happened years laterBlack Friday was based on S Hussain Zaidirsquos nonfiction book of the same name Which in turn was culled from a 10000page Bombay Police chargesheet besides personal interviews and case papers lodged at a ministerial bungalow in Nariman Point that CBI gave him access toDuring the bookrsquos writing trials of around 200 blasts accused were on between 1030 am and 5 pm at a special court inside Arthur Road Jail These prime suspects later stalled the release of Black Friday in 2004 until they were convicted anyway This is where during recess hours in the jail canteen Hussain met several accused including Yakub and Asgar Mukadam played by who in Black FridayAn unknown actor at the time Nawazuddin Siddiqui In fact Nawazrsquos lone stellar interrogation scenemdashwith DCP Rakesh Maria Kay Kay Menon and his cop crewmdashhas developed a life of its own on YouTube sinceThe interrogation room is lit in red As with all such sequences in Black Friday There is a distinctive blue tint during most scenes involving the blastsrsquo conspiracy itself Itrsquos the usual white light otherwise Never asked Kashyap if this was some sorta filmbuffery homage to Kieslowskirsquos Colours Red Blue White trilogyThe other sequence on repeat online is the sixminute chase between cops and a character called Imtiaz Ghavatemdashwhorsquos decidedly wearing red shirt here for audiences to easily spot him as the camera captures the hunt through multiple anglesshots over gullies gutters and general gunk across North BombayItrsquos the first time we see characters heavily losing breath while on the run Which should be the case unless itrsquos Bachchan in a rsquo70s potboiler Amar Akbar Anthony is referenced in this sceneUnsuspecting crowds fill up the frame just as they were in the edges of the SatyaBhikuGuru Narayan railway overbridge chase in Ram Gopal Varmarsquos Satya 1998The intro sequence in Danny Boylersquos solid entertainer Slumdog Millionaire 2008 similarly captures Mumbairsquos lower deck through a kinetic chase Here you can draw a straight line between Satya Black Friday and SlumdogDivided into chaptersmdashwhat we now associate with OTT showsmdashBlack Friday produced by Arindam Mitra from midday newspaper was commissioned as a miniseries for Aaj Tak news channel written by Kashyap directed by Aditya BhattacharyaFolks at Aaj Tak backed out reading the first episode Irsquom toldmdashtoo braveedgy for them I guess naming names seldom shying away from the politicsKashyap saw in the deeply researched case files a heavily factual documentarylike feature film Shorn of the usual threeact screenplay structure Inherently lazy masstheatrical audiences perhaps find it hard to instantly immerse into docudramas As it appears from the more recent Kabir Khanrsquos 83 2021Ram Gopal Varma told me he was approached to direct Black Friday He saw in the film a rather bombastic opening scene of mafiadon chief conspirator Dawood Ibrahim in Dubai receiving broken bangles from women in his Bombay neighbourhood Dongrimdashfor having failed to protect his lot during the 1992 riots Introduction sets the tone Varma was outThat Dawood scene is there in Black Friday But Kashyap opens with a guy called Gullu Gul Noor Shaikh a riot accused who actually informed Bombay cops of the blasts a few days before it This scene as a starting point is similar to the snitch who sets the ball rolling in the seminal doculike civilwar drama Gillo Pontecorvorsquos The Battle of Algiers 1966 that lenses onlocation Algiers but from a decade ago As with Black Friday shot guerillastyle in the early 2000s with top angle shots and tele lens on the streets of Bombaymdashconcealing cell phones satellite TV hoardings and snazzier vehicles not there in 1993It was Kashyaprsquos first theatrical release after a couple of aborted attempts I remember watching it overhearing him from the row behind me at the premiere joking with his friends ldquoNow everybody will know Irsquom a fraudrdquoItrsquos been exactly 15 years since Odd how fans on social media during landmark anniversaries of films wish that the picture celebrates 50100 years Of course it will Itrsquos not a person And a staggeringly faithful document like Black Friday I suspect will live on forever Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper