It often so happens, on a hot sunny day, when even the luxurious confines of your air-conditioned car seem stifling, a lonesome figure approaches your car. Even though the person approaching you is a complete stranger, the routine that ensues is strikingly customary: the beggar is greeted with either a dismissive hand gesture or an impulsive act of generosity. The routine is so placidly perfunctory that more often than not, there is not even a mere acknowledgment of the eyes. But when the eyes do meet, the gaze does bring to the fore a realization that we seldom stop and think about: beyond the black-tinted windows lies a world that we inhabit, but there also lies a world that is far removed from our own. And as the stop sign turns green and you roll up your window to once again blind yourself to a reality that is as inhuman as it is impersonal, the sheen of your window paints a canvas that fleetingly aligns the two disparate worlds. And so does Kiran Rao’s Dhobi Ghat, a movie that is a bit about you, a bit about the figure on the other side, and a bit about the reflection in between.
I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of the movie at the London Film Festival and to be absolutely honest, I am completely bitten by the festival bug. It’s a very special feeling to be sitting and watching a movie with a group of people who appreciate and honor quality cinema, but what makes watching a movie at a festival truly special is that it allows the audience the rare opportunity to interact with the director. This enables the audience to better understand the underlying motives and inspirations that helped make a germ of an idea into a 70mm reality. When asked about what inspired her to make Dhobi Ghat, Kiran started with the expected answer that she wanted to make a movie that explored the different dimensions of Mumbai. But apart from that, she said her true inspiration behind the making of the movie came from the fact that most of the houses in Mumbai come with very short-term lease agreements, which makes it virtually impossible for people to stay at one place for a long duration. She talked about how she wondered if she could write a story about a person who would be forced to move around to different parts of Mumbai (as a result of short-term lease agreements) and resultantly discover or for want of a better word, “rediscover” Mumbai.
And thus was born the story of Arun (Aamir Khan). Arun is shown to be a reclusive painter who has spent a fair amount of time in one of the many urban localities of Mumbai. Upon finding out that the lease on his current house will soon expire, he starts looking for a place in Old Mumbai where he wouldn’t be bothered to deal with lease agreements. Once settled, he finds an unusual company in the form of a set of old videotapes that were left behind by the ex-tenant of the house. The tapes belonged to one Yasmeen, a small-town girl from Uttar Pradesh who upon her marriage shifted to Mumbai. The tapes are recorded in the form of “letters” to her brother Imraan. Arun is fascinated with the tapes and finds himself drawn to the world of Yasmeen, and as Yasmeen shares her experiences in Mumbai with Imraan, Arun too finds himself reconnecting with Mumbai. A digitized phantom of a small-town girl not only helps Arun to reconnect with the beauty of a city he had lost his love for, but it also reveals a Mumbai so romanticized by the innocence of Yasmeen that makes it nigh impossible for even the reclusive Arun to not experience it first-hand. The recluse is taken out of his self-proclaimed confinement, and the city beats for him. Again.
The second story revolves around Kiran’s second inspiration for the movie, which was to explore the possibilities of a love story between two people from two different social classes. Hence, we have Shai (Monica Dogra), an investment banker from New York, who is in Mumbai to work on a photography project on small-scale business practices in developing countries. She finds a guide in her dhobi Munna (Prateik, terrific!), who aspires to become an actor and who promises to take Shai around Mumbai only if she shot a “portfolio” for him. Unaware of how servants are “treated” in the city, Monica bestows the same level of respect and affection on Munna as she would on anyone else, which leads Munna to conclude that Shai harbors romantic feelings for him. Personally speaking, out of the two stories in the movie, I found Shai’s and Munna’s story to be far more endearing because not only does the story provide Kiran the chance to ask us questions about the fragility of the fabric that holds our society together, it also allows her to showcase two completely different facets of Mumbai through two very extreme characters. Shai makes the audience come face to face with a side of Mumbai that is unfazed by its underlying socio-economic problems. She is representative of a class of people that are perfectly capable of shuttling around cities as long as they are wrapped in loins of their usual luxury and comfort. And hence, in a way she belongs to a class of people that are representative of a lifestyle, but not a city. On the other hand, Munna is Mumbai. He knows that the pelting rain means a leaking roof back home, he knows that food is not just one plate, but a plate divided in four and most importantly, he understands that an unattainable aspiration is his only driving force. Deep inside he knows that it is but a beautiful dream, yet he still chooses to believe in it. He is Mumbai’s soul, and he carries its darkest secrets.
Even though the two strands of stories within Dhobi Ghat seem unrelated, what makes the movie so fascinating is the manner in which the two polarized themes seem to permeate between each other, as if separated by a perforated line. Hence, even though Arun’s and Yasmeen’s story is largely born out of Kiran’s desire to tell a story of a person rediscovering Mumbai, it is extremely hard to ignore the love story that grows between a small-town girl (Yasmeen) and the cosmopolitan city that she now finds herself in (Mumbai). She is completely smitten by an experience that is alien to her, and in this regard, her story is not much different from Munna’s – both live in a make believe world in which their love blindfolds them from the impending tragedy that awaits them. And likewise, Shai’s story is extremely akin to Arun’s – both find themselves on a path of discovery that is laid out for them by others. But at this point, as one begins to wonder about the underlying similarities between the two stories, Kiran might as well have asked her audience the question, “Did you expect it to be any other way? Isn’t that what a city does, take a dot, finds another one, and joins the invisible line in between?” Because Dhobi Ghat is essentially about the city, about Mumbai. It is a study of how a singular city can make way for lives that converge and diverge from a single point, without compromising on its stability and structure. Dhobi Ghat is Mumbai diaries; each page a fundamentally similar story penned by different authors.
Since the movie tells the story of a city, it becomes imperative for it to effectively capture its sights and sounds, the two elements that invariably define the essence of any city. Dhobi Ghat excels in both categories. The camera speaks volumes long after the din of dialogues has died down, and manages to evoke feelings of nostalgia, delight, surprise and sorrow. Just when one has been flooded with a rush of memories over a sight of a familiar landmark, the camera yanks us out of our fond recollections and surprises us by revealing a side of Mumbai known to a very few – a perfume maker diligently working on a skill that is soon becoming obsolete in today’s mechanized world, a rat killer on his night watch, scouring the garbage for his next kill, a street dotted with thousands of people, who somehow still manage to enjoy a meal or two as chaos ensues about them. The camera reveals, not just by positioning of its frame but mainly by its decision to stand by and linger, allowing the city to tell a story of its inhabitants at a pace it deems best. However, the technical aspects that really make the movie soar are its background score and sound design. A city that is characterized by the medley of its diverse sounds, from the hawkers’ cry to the sound of rain drops, from the crashing of the sea waves to the silence of the night, the background score punctuates the dialogues in such a way that it always makes the audience aware of the presence of the city. It is Kiran’s honest attempt (with the help of the ever-wonderful Gustavo Santaolalla) to let the audience know that her characters exist because of the city, and their actions are in ways more than one governed by the collective consciousness of the city they inhabit.
Dhobi Ghat, simply put, is an attempt to encapsulate the tangibility of Mumbai from different perspectives. It does not have a definitive plot, a well-defined story arc, or an intelligent spread of the quintessential three acts. The movie simply offers a montage of the city, and the characters in it serve their purpose of offering their different outlook on it, subsequently revealing the city’s many distinct faces – some familiar, some unknown and some definitely worth a second look. As for the movie, experience it, just like you would experience a city and rest assured, you won’t be disappointed.
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