Evil, violence, gangsters, excess—these are elements that are bound to be glamorized in celluloid. The lives of gangsters and their chokehold over Bombay’s development and history are a matter of public record, books, general interest, and, finally, commercial masala movies. To ask “Bambai Meri Jaan” to be anything different from what had come before is asking too much, considering that it is adapted from the same source material numerous movies have adapted before: “From Dongri to Dubai: Six Decades of the Mumbai Mafia” by S. Hussain Zaidi.
It stands to reason that Zaidi’s documentation of the violence that had plagued the city of Bombay would be covered in successive seasons as well. But again, when you have movies like “Shootout at Lokhandwala,” “Shootout at Wadala,” “Mumbai Saga,” etc., that are all adapting specific chapters of this same book, asking “Bambai Meri Jaan” to be anything different is asking for a reframing or a recontextualization.
Because the idea itself is sound. Why adopt specific chapters of the book when you can adapt all the books and consolidate them into seasons of television? Give it a catchy title named “Bambai Meri Jaan” and semi-fictionalize but depict the real lives of these gangsters, just changing their names or specific letters of their names, such that the actual entities would not have avenues to sue the creators.
It’s in the execution where the show primarily falters, and even failing would be the wrong term. Conceptualized by Rensil D’Silva and directed by Shujaat Saudagar, “Bambai Meri Jaan” is the rise of the gangsters, primarily D-Company, led in reality by Dawood Ibrahim and in this fictionalized version by Dara Qadri (Avinash Tiwari), against the backdrop of a Bombay already ruled by a trio of gangsters: Haji Maqbool (Saurabh Sachdev), Azeem Pathaan (Nawaab Shah), and Anna Mudaliar.
The execution still follows all the commercial tropes of the gangster movies—the swagger, the potboiler dialogues—but because this is a web series, there is an ample amount of gore and bloodshed, and yes, there are sprinkles and shades of romance, and songs are too inducted in to give a breather to the audience. “Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai” stretched to over eight hours.
And that is not a bad thing. It is just not what web series primarily should be. Saudaagar and D’Silva utilize the longer runtime to cover a large amount of ground in terms of plot and runtime. Still, in terms of character development, the show doesn’t focus on its entirety. As a result, if commercial filmmaking also exists in web series, fatigue occurs, especially considering the genre itself. The rise and fall of gangsters using “dialogue-baazi” has been a trope since the days of Salim-Javed.
The new recontextualization, which does give the show its own unique identity of sorts, is crafting the story of the Mumbai Underworld through a family drama, especially through the guilt of an honest cop unable to steer himself and his family from the darkness of temptation that the wealth and excess of living the life of a gangster provide. The story of Dawood Ibrahim, the son of a police officer, becoming one of the most dreaded gangsters and terrorists the world has ever known is cinematic catnip.
And thus, reframing the story through the eyes of Ismail Qadri (Kay Kay Menon), an honest cop given charge of the Pathaan Squad to break the operations of Haji and Pathaan, is interesting. Menon plays Qadri with honesty, dignity, and the natural frustration that occurs when the world around him can’t allow him to remain humble, even as his honesty perilously reaches levels of stubbornness.
His compromise due to a key decision regarding a family member leads to domino effects, which could easily be identified as the inciting incident that pushes his kids into a life of crime. When the show “Bambai Meri Jaan” becomes the story of the father repenting and looking in horror as his sons look into the maw of evil and don’t even blink, it becomes a fascinating exploration.
Reframing “Bambai Meri Jaan” as a tragedy does make it more effective as a family drama where the familial bonds break because of a man’s conviction in his honesty and his son’s conviction in dishonesty. When convictions are so strong, clashes are bound to occur, and these are moments where actors like Kay Kay Menon, Avinash Tiwary, and even Nivedita Bhattacharya as Ismail’s wife Sakina and Jatin Gulati as his eldest brother Saadiq excel.
There are interesting touches in the editing and camerawork as well. In episode 7, the show flits back and forth between the lovemaking of the two brothers: Dara with his first love, Pari, in a room of splendor and sensuality befitting a five-star hotel, while Saadiq consummates in a brothel. The distortion is intentionally sudden and jarring, the music flitting between sensual and grunting. Or look at episode 8, when Dara and Ismail are talking, and there is a doorway separating them, almost showing how father and son could never reconcile because their core ideologies are completely separate.
Moments like these give “Bambai Meri Jaan” meaning because otherwise, it’s all routine, a rote story of the D-company’s rise as the dominant criminal organization. A storytelling style like this, rote or otherwise, would have been revolutionary almost 15 years ago, chronologically exploring the Bombay underworld instead of disparate commercial movies. In 2023, when the world will have an increased focus on financial crimes, or true crimes, the obsession with true crimes and detail-oriented work in the web space, “Bambai Meri Jaan,” will stand out as an oddity.
Considering the name, outside shots of Bombay are significantly low. The action mostly takes place in closed rooms, and when CGI is utilized, they look quite shabby. Most importantly, “Bambai Meri Jaan” is unfortunately dated, and it could have worked as a period piece if a significant amount of care had been given towards the recreation of the production and the period because the plot beats were already present.
Zaidi’s books aren’t exactly developed for the prose but for the facts, and the facts are pulpy and cinematic enough to give them added weight. However, as Dara Qadri says, every time someone asks why they yearn for more, “Hunger.” This is similar. As viewers, we yearn for more; we yearn for something different, and while the acting overall is top-notch, some characters work or are developed only as ideas rather than full-fledged characters. Perhaps “commercial” sensibilities, too, need an upgrade.
