It was 1992 that redefined Bombay and also changed the course of Gitanjali Rao’s life. For Rao — now an animator, filmmaker and actor, then an 18-year-old student at the Sir J.J. School of Art — the megapolis had always been the centre of the universe, and a place where everybody lived happily with each other. “For a lot of people in my arts college, Bombay was a muse, a lover, something that inspired us to be artistic,” she recollects. The demolition of Babri Masjid, the riots, the divisiveness and hatred brought politics right to the centre of their world of arts. “You had a Riyas Komu, a Bose Krishnamachari writhing in pain as artists, seeing the city burning,” she says.
Over the years, she has found Mumbai becoming less safe for women, migrants and minorities, while growing more violent and aggressive. But then there’s also the city’s wonderful duality: there is still a reserve of love, a huge survival instinct that towers above all. “The infamous cutthroatedness and survival instinct that make you selfish also render you very vulnerable,” says Rao.
Bombay Rose, her maiden animated feature film, will open the Venice Critics Week at the Venice Film Festival in end-August. It’s about showing that side of the city to the world — and also to people who were born and have grown up in new Mumbai, who wouldn’t know the Bombay of old.
“It was extremely tolerant, versatile and a truly migrant city like New York; built by people from outside, for people from outside,” she says. So is it a love letter to Bombay, as someone has described it? “It is not a love letter to the city. It is a love letter about the city to the rest of the world,” she tells us, as we sip on kahwa.
A rose is a rose
The film brings three characters together. One is a Kashmiri man, another a flower girl from Madhya Pradesh who sells gajras in Juhu woven from flowers bought at Dadar flower market.
The third is an old Anglo-Indian woman, a character inspired by Cuckoo, the dancing queen of Hindi cinema in the 40s and the 50s, who was forgotten in her later years. A rose forms the essential link between the three; it’s the purveyor of love.
Rao’s love for flowers vies with her love for cats; she has eight cats moving in and out of her flat. Her family has been in Mumbai for two generations and she feels strongly about the migration issue. “I was born here, I am of this caste, this belongs to me and the rest are unwelcome — the moment you start getting these feelings [from someone belonging to the city], you know you are a migrant.”.
The essential dichotomy of Mumbai again comes into play here. “This city has been welcoming to migrants, yet the politics keeps pushing them out, doesn’t give them voting rights, neither here nor in the place they come from,” says Rao.
Mumbai’s physical spaces and architecture are a special force in the film. “The city and the people are not separate at all. Through animation I bring spaces and people almost into each other, offset by spaces that they might have left to come to Bombay,” she says.The film spans Juhu, Bandra and Mahim. Rao, a Borivli girl now living in Malad, has been in love with Bandra for the longest time. “To me Bandra is very interesting because it is where the town comes to meet the suburbs. You see a lot of Bandra as it must have been in the 1950s, and what it is now,” she says.
Merge with reality
Mandu, as a dream space, an inspiration for where the flower girl comes from, is offset against the reality of Bombay in the film. The characters don’t reject this reality. They merge into it, try to make the most of it. “Which is what migrants do,” says Rao.
Mumbai also inspires the film’s music. The soundtrack uses archival music from the 50s, not just Indian but Pakistani and Spanish too. There is one original song composed by Swanand Kirkire, which is the inner voice of the flower girl who doesn’t talk too much but sings in her mind. And then there is Lorna Cordeiro’s ‘Red Rose’ to tie it all up.
After five independently produced animated shorts — Blue, Orange, Printed Rainbow, Chai and True Love Story — that have been to over 150 film festivals, Rao is getting ready to take Mumbai to Venice through her first feature film. And to many other festivals after that, she hopes. Her immediate concern, however, is about who will feed her eight cats while she is away.
Gitanjali Rao: In her own words On her creative process : The story and telling are two different things. For me, everything is in the telling. In Bombay Rose the story is nothing unusual, the telling is. It uplifts it to a level where you can say ‘I have never seen this before’. Once I am in love with the character, the plot comes out and the story can keep changing. In this case, the characters and their love story never changed. The point of view changed through various labs, from that of the boy to the girl. The dreamscapes, graphic styles were set first. The animation was eventually finished in 18 months. It’s the storyboard that took 1.5 years. It’s while doing the visuals that the script comes into place for me. [But] I did not have the leisure here because I had to write the script to get funding. I don’t like writing scripts. I would love to make a storyboard and then write what the storyboard is doing. While writing the script I would keep making sketches and visually put things together and then transcribe them into the script. Doing labs and making people understand the visual I am going to create through the script and make the story evident: that was important. The story is at the back of my mind, but is not the predominant thing. Visually if a certain element works, I can change the story overnight and noone would realise it. On the predominance of a certain visual (Disney Pixar) language when it comes to animation : There is a good enough reason for that. Whether it is Japan or France, they have always had a culture of story books which were in their language and style. Russian fairytale books or Japanese Manga comics. That was then taken to animation and it became their own style. Kids are brought up on a certain art form, they want to see it as they grow up. So for a Triplets of Belleville or Persepolis, the graphic novel worked first, the style was introduced to people, then they watched it [on screen]. We have only had Amar Chitra Katha. If you have not prepared your audience for it over decades, and all of a sudden you show them a visual style, they will wonder where it came from! I did [shorts like] Printed Rainbow, True Love Story . People got familiar with my style and then wanted to watch more. After five minutes, people stop looking at the frame by frame painted style and they get into the story and characters. Tara Books and Tulika have now started very Indian books. Give 30 years to them. Then bring out the animation. You can’t fast forward this process. It’s also to do with corporate knowledge on Indian story telling. There is no confidence in the Indianness. Noone wants to take the risk of looking Indian. It’s... safe to look like a Disney film. |
