A twelve-year-old boy lies on a wooden sleeper wedged between two iron posts at the end of platform number two of Bombay's Grant Road railway station. Drying in the sun behind him are a pair of brand new jeans and T-shirt emblazoned with the New York city logo. Shafiq Syed is just a street kid with a fancy pair of clothes. He is also the star of
Salaam Bombay!, adjudged a director's best first feature film at the Cannes Film Festival last May.
The new clothes are a gift from
Salaam Bombay'sNew York-based director, Mira Nair, 30, also known as Khashu Didi (tough sister) and Danger Director. Nair is back in Bombay to celebrate her triumph at Cannes and to arrange for the film's release in India. Many of the 17 street kids who feature in the film are still around. But the totally unexpected experience of performing in front of the movie camera has changed them all.
Shafiq Syed with his gang
Some of the children have returned to their villages. Some are going to school, some are working and some have gone back to their earlier life on the streets. Only Shafiq is caught in a limbo, seemingly poised between his earlier life as a runaway from a Karnataka village and his more recent transformation into the hero of an award winning film. He dreams of becoming a full-time film actor, but does not want to do anything about it. In a way he is as lost as Krishna the urchin he so effortlessly portrayed in
Salaam Bombay!
