Mayank Shekhar: The quintessential Mumbai Mob opera

It was only while hosting a conversation with Saurabh Shukla cowriter of Ram Gopal Varmas Satya aka Kallu Mama as we celebrated 20 years of the July 3 1998 release of the masterpiece at the Jagran Film Festival last week that it dawned on me how possibly the most Bombay film ever was in fact made by a bunch of people with such little experience of Bombay itselfShukla who had earlier made his acting debut with Shekhar Kapurs Bandit Queen 1995 an acknowledged inspiration for Satya for its gritty realism had only recently moved to Mumbai to work on a TV show with Kapur Shuklas second film as actor was Sudhir Mishras Iss Raat Ki Subah Nahin 1994 similarly set at the intersection of the upperclass and the underbelly of Mumbai Its a film Shukla suggests Varma was a fan ofLikewise writer Anurag Kashyap who had not only assisted on Satya but led a team to screentest handpick the films cast hadnt been in Mumbai for long either having moved from Delhi like Shukla being originally from BanarasSacred GamesFurthermore Hyderabadi Varma himself had relocated to Mumbai to make Rangeela with Aamir Khan only in 1994 post the epochal 93 serial blasts that wholly redefined not just the citys underworld but the renamedcity itself Through his associate Kannan Iyer Varma had heard of one Gerard Jerry Hooper who headed the cinematography department at Drexel University in PhiladelphiaAgainst much resistance from the crew for hiring a gora American whod never been to India Varma had Hooper take over as Satyas director of photography DoP As Shukla puts it Varma was clear that he wanted an eye that gets excited by the visuals of this city Jerry saw Bombay from a different perspectiveHe came down for six weeks shot the crucial Daagdi Chawl sequences and others but importantly according to Shukla figured out a way to shoot in small dingy rooms bouncing light from the outside leaving enough space for actors to perform totally unperturbed by lighting equipment or heat generated from any strong lighting withinBeing a lethargic writer Shukla was keen to work on Satyas scripting so he could play Kallu Mama The first time he met Varma along with Kashyap and Manoj Bhikhu Bajpayee he quoted two existing Hollywood landmarkstemplates for underworld films Francis Ford Coppollas The Godfather 1972 and Martin Scorseses Goodfellas 1990Whereas both are incredibly realistic the difference he cited was that Godfather was set in a world that as a lay person you could maintain a comfortably safe distance from In Goodfellas the characters live in your world This became the reference point for Satya You could argue that was the case with Suketu Mehtas nonfiction masterpiece Maximum City as well also set in 90s Bombay written by an Indianorigin American outsider curiously looking inLike Maximum City Satya too was wholly inspired by urban legends anecdotal accounts personal interviews and news reports The third day of Satyas shoot for instantly had to be canned early because musicindustry czar Gulshan Kumar had been shot dead on a Mumbai street that day The episode made it to Satya as it wrote itself while being filmed at the same timeWas the USbased Bombay boy Vikram Chandras Sacred Games published in 2006a 900page tome that in the age before Kindle was impossible to lug aroundequally wholly inspired by the 80s90s Bombay underworld Admittedly so Very few nonIndians have seen Satya Exactly 20 years after its release a relatively fantastical broadly grim first season of Sacred Games dropped globally as a fine Netflix fixThe super series kicks off with a cracker first episode is by far the best gets slightly middling exactly in the middle episode four is undoubtedly the weakest before it fully settles into a selfassured pace and rhythm to fictionally chronicle how Bombay became Mumbai as it were The show is supposed to be a completely insiders takelike say Narcos from Colombia or Fauda from IsraelPalestinefor a universal audienceSatya didnt have a socalled sacred Biblescript Besides the doorstopper of a novel Sacred Games has three fine writers Varun Grover Vasant Nath Smita Singh put together in a room by showrunner Vikramaditya Motwane whos also codirected the series mainly the cop Sartaj Singhs Saif Ali Khan portions placed in contemporary Mumbai along with Kashyap chiefly concentrating on don Ganesh Gaitondes Nawazuddin Siddiqui track thats set in the pastKashyap considers Satya his film school Black Friday 2004 on 93 blast investigations was his first released film based on S Hussain Zaidis book that Vikram Chandra had unofficially mentored for its writingcraftChandra was also the first point of contact for Mehta who wrote Maximum City Likewise Zaidi was Chandras official guide to the Bombay copunderworld several characters from which have made it to a series of Zaidis journalisticnonfiction books since Sacred Games is dedicated to Zaidi Its been filmed by Kashyap along with Motwane Sounds like 20 years coming full circle to me Of course Bombay is not the same anymoreMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomCatch up on all the latest Mumbai news crime news current affairs and also a complete guide on Mumbai from food to things to do and events across the city here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates