Dr. Swati Bakshi
Assistant Professor, SIMC
When Om Khandeparkar and Abhay Mehta’s Mi Hero Zhalo begins with the whooshing, hissing and whistling of a local train in Bombay, imitated by one of its protagonists, you immediately expect another tale of Mumbaiyya struggles involving misery and broken dreams. However, as you become immersed in the story, which revolves around a young SilverBoy (Vishal) and a street singer (Sunil Kumar), it becomes clear that this is not the case. In classic filmy style, Vishal left his village at the age of 14 to become a hero in Mumbai, only to be duped by a casting director.
This left him penniless and confused in the city until he discovered the ‘art’ of being a living statue. Ever since, he has earned a living by painting his face and body silver and standing for hours in popular public spots such as Bandstand Walkway or at weddings. The film’s second protagonist, Sunil Kumar, spent his early years singing in bars along the Central Line, Mumbai’s suburban railway. As he grows older, however, he takes his singing to the streets of Bombay, where people embrace him as a good singer, making him feel as if “he is a hero himself”.
With its focus on creative labour, dreaming and hustling, Mi Hero Zhalo is a complex, multi-layered narrative. It not only reiterates the pull factors of dreams and desires projected onto the glossy Bombay film industry, Bollywood, which attracts millions of dreamers to the city, but it also provides a lens through which to explore the multiplicity and fragmentation of a city that enjoys the label of ‘creative’. The strength of Mi Hero Zhalo lies in its depiction of dreaming and striving, as well as its portrayal of vulnerability as the essence of human creativity. This becomes especially nuanced in a world surrounded by the overconfidence generated from the manicured creativity of artificial intelligence.
Moreover, the relationship between the protagonists and the streets and public spaces of Bombay serves at least two main functions: a) It opens a window to the world of street performers, allowing deeper engagement with the compulsive desire to lead a creative life in the city, and the particularities of that life in Bombay. b) It engages with the construction of a sense of place, focusing on the interaction between local residents as an audience and performers whom they can see up close, touch and even slap. This, in turn, highlights the multifaceted nature of creative cultures, the everyday practices of performance that engender unusual encounters and intimate experiences. This presents a sense of Bombay as a fragmented space with a complex network of local practices that coexist with and quietly negotiate with the larger film economy.
Focusing on these micro practices provides a momentary escape from the larger, all-encompassing macro context of Bombay as a ‘mayanagri’ of Bollywood and the constellation of relationships that form its glamour-driven economy. By delving into the narrow alleys with their ‘heroes’, where performative practices are negotiated in hyper-local contexts and build on histories of personal loss and displacement, the film demonstrates how intense engagement with the visual and aural cultures of the Bombay film industry can imbue local performers’ creative labour with meaning, fuelling entrepreneurial energies that manifest as performative practices.
Mi Hero Zhalo is an important social document that sheds light on the micro-history of creative labour in everyday life in Bombay. The individual practices of its protagonists diverge from the predominant and predictable patterns of display practised by overtly visible stars and celebrities. Whether painted or bare, the faces of the protagonists and the props they use to create a distinct visual and aural world offer discursive, creative and material value.