Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Well the Bombay film wasn't always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.
I do think of Bombay as my hometown. Those are the streets I walked when I was learning to walk. And it's the place that my imagination has returned to more than anywhere else.
There are so many films which are my favorite in 100 years. There are legendary films like 'Bombay,' 'Dil Se,' and 'Guru' as I liked Abhishek Bachachan's performance in the film.
I come from a small town, so there we have this habit of talking to rickshawallahs while you are making a trip. So when I moved to Bombay, people found it strange that I do that.
I have been brought up around art. Even now, when I travel, I love going to museums and spend hours in front of paintings. Art is like oxygen for me. That's what I miss in Bombay.
Everybody I meet is a star. In Bombay it is crazy and even TV has become so big that there are just too many stars and there is too much greed for that little space on the newspaper.
In Bombay people know me as a Rituparno Ghosh actor but Calcutta gives me the comfort zone and that's why I love shooting here. In Bombay, the money is bigger, the stakes are bigger.
My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.
So, my sweetheart back home writes to me and wants to know what this gal in Bombay's got that she hasn't got. So I just write back to her and says, Nothin', honey. Only she's got it here.
The National Stock Exchange was strongly opposed by Bombay stockbrokers and captains of industry. I thought some competition is good. The exchange has given a very good account of itself.
Films were always a passion for me but it was when I saw 'Salaam Bombay' that I decided that it was film direction that I was interested in. That is when I decided I wanted to direct films.
Bombay was an expensive place and I didn't want to spend my nights without food in my stomach. For 400 a month, I would make bills from morning till evening and then would head to Prithvi Theatre.
Derek, my character, in 'Chhichhore' is actually based on the director's real life senior in engineering college and I had no clue about it till he took me to Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay.
Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.
What's interesting about Twitter is the unmediatedness of it, the directness of it. I'm on a train somewhere in New York and I send out a tweet. Somebody sitting at dinner in Bombay checks their phone and they see it.
Cinematically, anything like 'Khawto' in Bengali cinema hasn't happened. Yes, you get such films in Hollywood, a few in Bombay. In Bengali literature, you get such stories in the works of Samaresh Basu and Buddhadeb Guha.
In Bombay, people usually tend to cast you in roles that you've played before. Even though they may consider you to be a talented actor, they just think it's 'safer' to have you play the same kind of roles over and over again.
I'm deeply stressed as a filmmaker, and I know I'm not alone. The censorship crisis, the moral policing, the politics of it has most of us on edge. I'm scared to use certain words: like, if I use 'Bombay,' will there be a problem?
Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.
Four places in the country hold great importance in my life - Punjab, where I was born, Nagpur, where I did my engineering and where my wife is from, Bombay where I work and obviously, Hyderabad, where I learnt the craft of cinema.
As far as the industries go, in the North, they think I'm a South Indian actress; down South, I've always been thought of as a Bombay girl. I guess it's sort of an identity crisis, even though I'd like to belong to all the industries.
I've never lived anywhere else in my life, I have a massive love-hate relationship with this city. I grew up in the western suburbs in the '80s and for everything we had to go to south Bombay - so you lived the whole city, in a sense.
I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.
Everyone goes on about how Bombay is so similar to New York, so I had see what the big deal was. The bustling crowds are the same, but it's a lot quieter, it's a lot cleaner, and it's not humid. I think the energy is very similar to Bombay.
By the time I was 14, I had seen only three Tamil films - 'Anjali,' 'Bombay,' and 'Puthiya Mugam.' And I loved the music in the films. When I found out Rahman sir was the man behind the music, I made up my mind that I wanted to sing for him.
Traffic in the streets of Bombay is chaotic at best. Riding a bicycle is a dangerous occupation. However, there are hundreds of them on the streets competing with the cars and buses and lorries because it is the poor man's mode of transport.
When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog - big as a donkey.
The fun of sitting around Pangong Lake with 40 guys around a fireplace, having a glass of wine... staying in one camp together... that's an experience. Waking up at 5 in the morning, watching the sun come up. You don't do these things in Bombay.
It was in 1976, I think. I was in South Africa on military engagement when someone left a magazine on my bed with the picture of a beautiful woman on the cover. I read that her name was Parveen Babi and I thought, I must go to Bombay and meet her.
In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.
Back in the '90s, we saw prominent non-film artists like the Bombay Vikings do a splendid job on old classics and people danced to those new tunes without ever feeling that the song had been spoiled. We slowly saw this trend creeping into mainstream cinema.
In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.
In Bombay, we have a fine concert hall. I think it is high time we built venues in Delhi and Calcutta, not only for western music, but also Indian music. It doesn't matter which party is in power; don't you think the capital of India should have a concert hall?
I initially moved to Bombay to work in the corporate space. After settling my family here in due course of time, I turned to acting which initially started off as a hobby that I wanted to pursue on the side and then became my profession to sustain my passion around five years back.
I quit my job in New India Insurance and was confronted by various options. I could either go to Pune to do a course in acting from Poona University or shift base to Bombay or Delhi and study at NSD. I opted for the latter because it is the best place to get a formal education in acting.
When I moved to Bombay, it was very harsh. I was nothing like what I am today. I couldn't speak a word of English. In England, people might be very understanding about that, but in Bombay, they're not very forgiving. 'If you don't speak English, how do you expect to work in Hindi films?'
The writer, Ruth Jhabvala, livedin India but was German. My partner Ismail Merchant was from Bombay but was educated in England and he had a different view on the world. Probably they had to contend with some sort of Oregonian-ness in me that they didn't understand and didn't know where it was coming from.
Once I wanted to get into films, I took my time about it because when I first got to Bombay, I gave my photos and CDs to all the production houses. But the roles that came my way were the 'typical white girl dancing in the background' kind of roles, which I was not too interested in, or it was advertisements.
My first show was in Patkar Hall next to Bombay Hospital. It was a total flop. I was so nervous standing in front of all those people that I completely froze. I forgot all my lines and the audience booed me off the stage. I realised that day that you have to earn the audience's appreciation. They aren't fools.
I met my wife in Bombay at an official function. And then we courted for three years. That's a great old term, 'courting.' And we had to do it quietly, of course, because you would know the difficulties one might have with Indian parents. She was advised by her father that people in the West don't take marriage seriously.
For good or bad, there is a certain level of generalisation when it comes to my work. I want to break that perception. My decision to direct 'Bombay Talkies' or to present 'The Lunchbox' is an attempt to do that. These are the films that gel well with my sensibility, and it's unfortunate, it's not the perception out there.
As a child I played cricket as a hobby. Once you started playing for your school, you became more ambitious. You reckoned you could play for the state. Then you started to think about the country. But it happened so quickly for me, I started playing for the school at 13, for Bombay at 17, and at 18 I was in the Indian side.
These are stories you hear... of people sitting in a mall and being spotted, and you think it will happen to you. And when you're fresh off the boat, and new in Bombay, you want those kind of things! They are magical fables. You want to, somewhere, be a part of it, something people will read about. But reality is different.
If Bombay can become Mumbai, Bangalore can become Bengaluru, Madras can become Chennai, and Calcutta can become Kolkota, there is no reason why Allahabad should not become Prayagraj and Faizabad should not become Ayodhya. To re-establish our original identity, we have renamed these places. I am happy that people have welcomed this.