Once again, Subhash K Jha revisits a film in his This Day That Year series, this installment shines the spotlight on the film Thanks Maa. A gritty hard hitting drama of a street kid’s search for an infant’s mother also, according to the director, paid a tribute to Salman Khan’s career.
Strongly reminiscent of Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay and far more resonantly representative of Mumbai’s slum kids than Slumdog Millionaire, Thanks Maa, which clocks fifteen years on March 5, is a journey into lives that were born into despair. Without the crutches of self-pity, debutant director Irfan Kamal (son of the reputed choreographer Kamal) enters the world of the orphaned protagonist named Municipality, who, on one of those routine days of scavenging, stealing, and hanging around with his friends waiting for the next meal comes across an abandoned little infant. The film shows the gritty, harsh reality of life on the relentless streets of Mumbai and how it toughens the tender ones. Real fast.
Director Irfan Kamal makes one helluva departure from the convention. He cruises the crowded areas of Mumbai with an eye for stinging details. The festive population of Mohammed Ali Road on a Friday evening, the red-light areas with their sleazy bustle, the beachsides with couples making out in the dark, the goons and touts, cabbies and pimps, bereaved mother and unfaithful husband (Ranvir Shorey making the best of a ridiculous character), wanton women and kind men…the crowded canvas of Irfan Kamal’s film hints hectically at the savagely insensitive quality of life lived on the streets.
Our young hero refuses to be like the routine scum. “Main tere jaisa nahin hoon,” he pleads and protests with his more street-wise pals, and sets off on a determined path to find the baby his lost mother. It’s a heartbreaking, enlightening journey undertaken by the director in a spirit of adventure, discovery, and tranquility. Teeming with characters, Thanks Maa still preserves a core of stirring stillness at its centre.
Often, you feel Thanks Maa is a romantic homage to the unbreakable spirit of Mumbai. But then you see the bitter and brutal truth about life on the fringes, as the young, brave little hero is almost molested by the warden of the reformatory, played by Alok Nath. Moving so far away from his Sooraj Barjatya image of benign family values, you salute the actor for his gumption.
Thanks Maa is a tender yet ruthless look-see at a city that claims to have a place for everyone but somehow neglects looking after children who are vulnerable to every form of attack on the streets. Quite frequently, we look at Mumbai through the eyes of the little boy and his companions as they encounter a gallery of weirdos and wackos…an alcoholic hospital attendant (Raghuvir Yadav), a doped-out cabbie (Sanjay Mishra), a paedophilic reformatory warden (Alok Nath), a cheesy incestuous upper-class father (Yateen Karyekar, gives you the creeps), an imposing eunuch (Jalees Shrawani) who offers to take the baby out of Municipality’s shoulder…an offer the boy firmly refuses.
The young hero, heroic in the truest, most basic sense of the word, and his shock and dismay when he finally finds the baby’s mother are so palpable they reverberate in our hearts long after the film is over.
The film has its flaws, the most glaring being the constant struggle to keep the homeless children’s story credibly contoured on the bustling streets. In many sequences, the young actor Master Shams can be seen carrying a doll instead of a baby. Also, because of the inherently dramatic nature of the theme, some of the characters and situations lose self-control. The kinky, sadomasochistic customer in the brothel is clearly not in sync with the rest of the characters.
The jagged edges do not undermine the film’s unique and thoroughly unorthodox blend of realism and social message. While the veterans pitch in brave cameos that take the narrative forward to its heartbreaking conclusion, it’s the child actors who proudly occupy centre-stage. All of them are so in-character you wonder which came first, the slums or the camera!
With its hard, unsparing situations and expletive-carpeted dialogues, you’d expect to be repulsed by the world that Irfan Kamal brings on screen. Far from revulsion, you are completely sucked into the Mumbai belonging to these street children.
Some of the editing (Amit Saxena) is uneven. But the camerawork (Ajayan Vincent) and background score (Ranjit Barot) add an extra dimension to this heartwarming tale of an orphan who won’t let another newborn suffer his fate.
The National award-winning kid Shams Patel, who played a street orphan in Thanks Maa, is not only a huge fan of Salman Khan, but he likes to be known as ‘Salman Khan’ throughout the film.
The film’s director, Irfan Kamal, said, “In fact, Salman plays a very important role in the film. Shams’ character is a big fan, and we see posters of Salman’s films like Tere Naam and Saawariya throughout the film. Considering how important Salman is to the theme, I badly wanted to show my film to him. But he was too busy.”
Kamal, struggled for more than three years to put together his story of a street kid’s search for an infant’s mother. Considering he’s the son of the legendary choreographer Master Kamal (who made every glam-queen of the 1960s and 70s dance to his tunes) the least Irfan expected was the bigwigs of the industry to take note of the film.
Trying not to sound bitter, Irfan said, “I knocked on every A-lister’s door in our industry. Let alone help my small film in reaching out to the audience; no one even agreed to see my film except Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar, and David Dhawan. But it’s ok. I’m not bitter. Of course my father was a very important part of this film industry. But why should I be granted any favours because of my father? I want my film to be judged on its own merits. But for that to happen, people have to watch the film.”
Irfan was keen that Salman watch the film. “Since Salman is a very important part of the script, I want him to watch the film. In fact, when I wrote Thanks Maa, the first person I narrated it to was Salman. He was very excited about the film then. I don’t know what happened after that. Salman’s father, Salim Khan Saab, saw the film. But not Salman.”
