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Remember Bombay Boys? Rewind 25 years with the OG Mumbhai gang
Kaizad Gustad’s campy Hinglish film released in December 1998. Feel old, feel cringey, sing I am Mumbhai, as the cast and crew serve up their best memories
Fresh out of New York University’s Film School, Kaizad Gustad – Mumbai-schooled and Sydney-bred – landed in Mumbai at an interesting time in the Hindi film industry. It was the mid-’90s. Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn were flexing their biceps, while the Khans – Salman, Aamir and Shah Rukh – were romancing their way into India’s hearts. The country’s first multiplex opened in New Delhi in 1997, making space for medium to low budget films. These broke away from the action/romance formula. Gustad jumped right in.
His was a story of three expat boys finding themselves on their maiden visit to Mumbai. Bombay Boys referenced the film industry, the underworld and homosexuality. It was irreverent and refused to be coy about sex or violence. It starred Naveen Andrews, Tara Deshpande, Rahul Bose, Alexander Gifford, and Naseeruddin Shah in one of his most feverishly outrageous roles as Mastana, a mobster and producer of B-grade films. The music, by Dhruv Ghanekar and Ashutosh Phatak, featured tracks by Indus Creed, Lucky Ali, Anaida and Jaaved Jaafery’s rap number, Mumbhai. Bombay Boys opened in Indian theatres on December 25.
“Though I had lived in Sydney, London and New York, Bollywood was king for me,” says Gustad. “I decided to write a small film based on my experiences with diaspora Indians, some of whom were more Indian than most Indians. I thought it would be fun to throw three NRIs head-first into what was then a very cosmopolitan Mumbai.” Naveen Andrews, was fresh off the success of The English Patient (1996). Alexander Gifford, half Parsi, half English was modelling in Paris. “I met Naseerbhai [Naseeruddin Shah] outside the NCPA [National Centre for the Performing Arts] and he promptly agreed to play Mastana.” Here’s how it all came together.
Alexander Gifford: I was 18. The only acting experience I had was from school (which included a role in The Taming of the Shrew alongside Benedict Cumberbatch). I didn’t love the script, I signed on only because Naveen Andrews and Naseeruddin Shah were already attached. I was still in school, so I had to take half a term off to shoot.
Tara Deshpande: I was an MTV VJ at the time. Kaizad had seen some footage of that. When he mentioned to Uma Da Cuhna, the film’s casting director, that he wanted to cast me, she got him to watch me perform in Alyque Padamsee’s play, Begum Samroo.
Luke Kenny: I was a part of Vikram Kapadia’s play Romeo and Juliet. Kaizad approached me to play Xavier, the lead singer of the band Bombay Boys, who are virtually unknown in India but are huge in Bangladesh. He described Xavier to me as ‘the coolest thing since Antarctica’, which is also a line in the film.
Dhruv Ghanekar: We were supposed to do just a couple of songs.The first was called Tabla Dholak, a spoof of B-grade film songs. This is the song Naveen’s and Tara’s characters dance to as a part of the a screen test for Mastana. The second track was Paisa Paisa Paisa, a cabaret song. By the time we were done, we had composed five tracks.
Kaizad Gustad: In those days, film stock was the single most expensive item in a film’s budget. I had won the Kodak Short Film (in Asia) Award and my prize was 100,000 feet of Kodak 35mm negative. This drastically cut down our budget. But it also meant that we couldn’t afford to waste any film. The shoot was meticulously planned but insane – a frantic guerrilla-style shoot on the streets of Mumbai. We shot for exactly 42 days and we could do this largely because I had talented assistant directors in Apoorva Lakhia, Zoya Akhtar and Reema Kagti.
LK: It was very hectic, especially when we’d be shooting in the streets. There’s a sequence where the band steals instruments from a store and runs through a slum. The shop was a set but the chase was shot in Andheri. Our DoP Kramer Morgenthau (The Game of Thrones, Thor: The Dark World and Creed II) had multiple cameras, including one on the terrace of a building. We had just one chance to get it right because we didn’t have permission to shoot there.
AG: I was an English schoolboy making a movie in Mumbai with some of the best actors in the world. It was surreal. Shooting Paisa Paisa Paisa was a bit of a shock, we had to strip down to our underwear and I was very, very shy. Through the film, my character, Xerxes, comes to terms with his sexuality and there was a kiss between my character and Roshan Seth’s. It was very awkward and a little uncomfortable but we managed to make it work.
TD: The majority of my scenes were with Naseer and we rehearsed a lot. There’s a kiss between Mastana and my character Dolly and when the film released I got asked so much about that. I used to joke that “I would give him my lips and he’d take them home to practise”.
DG: Mumbhai was composed and recorded after the film was edited. They wanted that one ‘it’ song. The first version was so expletive-heavy that the jaws of the music label executives were on the floor when we played it for them. So, we made a much tamer version.
KG: My pet peeve is that most audiences walk out of a theatre before the credits end. When Bombay Boys ends, the screen fades to black and a voice-over says ‘Khatam nahi hua, ch***ye’. That’s when Mumbhai plays. I had to make countless trips to the CBFC office for them to not censor the word. At one point, I even staged a sit-down protest outside the office. I said I’d cut a dreadlock for every cut they imposed. They passed the film without any major damage.
TD: The film got invited to festivals in London and Toronto, which was unusual for a Hindi film at the time. I remember going to the Toronto International Film Festival where our film played at the same theatre as a Pierce Brosnan film and we got to meet him after.
KG: When the film released in India, in Mumbai it played only in the matinee show at two halls. Nobody thought that a Hinglish film with no major stars would work. Then, something strange happened and we started getting more shows. The film’s music was on the charts for months and Amul even did a billboard about Bombay Boys.
And now, 25 years on, we’re writing about it.
