The city is on the brink of rain when we meet Sagar Srivastava in Juhu. Shy at first, Srivastava is quick to extend a hand to shake. His spectacles communicate a certain seriousness, which quickly fades away once we get talking.
Other than spectacles, Srivastava is a wearer of many hats &mdash; filmmaker by day, map maker by night, writer by morning, film researcher by evening, and a history buff always.&nbsp;
His story begins in 1990s Bombay, when he was growing up in Gokuldham in Goregaon East, &ldquo;not to be confused with the Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah society,&rdquo; he jokingly clarifies. He remembers a time when horses would come around the neighbourhood for a ride. &ldquo;There was much less pollution, much less traffic, and much more greenery,&rdquo; the 36-year-old reminiscences, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s beyond repair now.&rdquo;
His nanighar (maternal home) in Varanasi, was the beginning of a long love affair with filmmaking. Right outside his house was a wall of film posters. &ldquo;Now neither my nanighar exists, nor does that wall. Some mall has come up there. But memories exists.&rdquo;
&ldquo;My family had the typical dream for me &mdash; engineering.&rdquo; And so Srivastava made his way to Bengaluru. Somehow, he finished the four years.
Meanwhile, he&rsquo;d just heard of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. &ldquo;So I went there, and the security guard judged me instantly because I was extremely skinny. He assumed I had come for the acting entrance exam and advised my father to feed me properly because I wouldn&rsquo;t survive otherwise,&rdquo; Srivastava laughs.
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/jun/Srivastava-map-2_e.jpg" alt="A more recent map-making endeavour" width="1280" height="720" /> A more recent map-making endeavour
As fate would have it though, Srivastava never made it to FTII. &ldquo;My parents insisted that I finish engineering first,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;According to them, filmmaking was just a phase that would eventually pass.&rdquo; He tried a couple of engineering jobs. But then, enough was enough, and soon, he found himself applying to foreign universities.&nbsp;
In 2013, Srivastava would find a home in Bournemouth University in England, &ldquo;back with the good old oppressor,&rdquo; he jokes. &ldquo;Bournemouth is a beautiful coastal town,&rdquo; he remembers. As someone who grew up in the heart of Bollywood, Srivastava knew filmmaking to be elaborate sets and dance numbers. &ldquo;I realised how shallow my understanding of filmmaking actually was.&nbsp;
Then people showed me my place,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;They introduced me to filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick, Quentin Tarantino, and James Cameron.&rdquo;
<img src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2026/jun/Sagar-Srivastava_e.jpg" alt="" width="1280" height="720" />
Even as he learnt about Western filmmakers, he was shocked to see how little they knew about Indian ones.
&ldquo;Throughout my entire course, I couldn&rsquo;t find a single mention of an Indian film.&nbsp;
Not even Satyajit Ray,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;So I started trying to introduce people to Indian films. There was an editing assignment where I used Rang De Basanti [2006] as a reference. &rdquo;&nbsp;
How did people react? &ldquo;They loved it.&rdquo; But his biggest regret is still the fact that he, &ldquo;couldn&rsquo;t make a bunch of British kids watch Lagaan [2001],&rdquo; he jokes.
In Bournemouth, he became friends with citizens from all different countries. And so, friends became muse for an old hobby of his &mdash; map-making. It&rsquo;s something he&rsquo;d picked up when he was a six-year-old, and spent years just drawing maps. &ldquo;One time, there was a professor of mine, who was from Canada. He&rsquo;d been living in the UK for almost 15 years. I made a map of his hometown, and I remember watching him trace places on it with his fingers. He&rsquo;d say, &lsquo;This is where my school was. This is where my college was.&rsquo;&rdquo; But this is a hobby he never wants to monetise. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s something I do only for me.&rdquo;
The hobby he is monetising is filmmaking, which has taken the shape of a production house called Mumbai Fixers. Here, he manages end-to-end production and logistics for foreign documentaries and corporate shoots. What does that mean exactly? &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s say someone from the US, Europe, or anywhere else wants to shoot in India. They want to make a documentary, but they don&rsquo;t know the rules, local crew, equipment, or logistics. I help them sort everything out.&rdquo;
Other than that, what lights up Srivastava is his love for history. And so, he&rsquo;s married it to filmmaking as well with his work as a film researcher. He tells us tales from one of his projects, &ldquo;One time, I was working on a web series about famous scams in India. I went on field where this scam had happened. I spoke to the victims. I spoke to supporters of the scamster, trying to give shape to a story,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;He had supporters?&rdquo; we quip back. &ldquo;He was a she,&rdquo; Srivastava says, coy now, with a smile.&nbsp;
His love for history means that he&rsquo;s always sharing trivia about the city, which he talks about on his Substack called &ldquo;Maps by Sagar&rdquo;. &ldquo;In Bombay during the seventeenth or eighteenth century &mdash; we&rsquo;ve all heard stories about Indians rebelling against the British &mdash; this was the opposite,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;British soldiers rebelled against the British in Bombay.
For almost a year, there were effectively no British soldiers in Bombay because they were protesting low wages and poor working conditions.&rdquo;
Another favourite is the story around the first train that took off from Thane. &ldquo;People were deathly afraid of them. Trains were called lokhandi rakshas &mdash; the Iron Monster. They thought it was a giant metal beast,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;Can you imagine a Mumbaikar ever being afraid of trains today?&rdquo; he quips.
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