The role of Bollywood in branding Bombay as the business destination has been pivotal. Several films have talked about aspiring businessmen making successful debuts and survivals in the big bad business world ob Bombay.
What makes the recent Guru special here is the striking resemblance of the plot with the lustrous and prolific commercial escapade of one of India’s biggest businessmen of all time, Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani. Though officially the certificate does read that the film is a work of fiction and no resemblances to the original story have been promoted, this film becomes important for this study as it is one of those films which brand the realities of Bombay.
The film also makes some subtle comments on the evolution of the business families in the city and its changing face with them. The main protagonist Gurukant Desai (referred to as Guru, henceforth) played by Abhishek Bachchan is a villager, who is a visionary and thus gives up on a high paying job in Turkey and decided to start up his own business and hence comes to the magical world of Bombay. The movie is set in the 1950s, a period when India was just basking in the recent glory of independence, however the traces of the Victorian influence were still intact, especially in cities like Bombay which were amongst the commercial capitals of the British Empire. Here one can trace the history of Bombay and speak about its importance as a trade centre due to the presence of the sea. The first business which Guru starts in the film is that of imported cloth. These business opportunities definitely gave Bombay and thereby the Bombayites to get in touch with the outside world much earlier than the other Indians. Thus a global approach and modern outlook became integral elements of the brand attributes of the city. And the mob of people flows towards prosperity. Thus, Bombay acquired its status as a mercantile destination.
History stands testimony to the fact that trade is supreme over all other cultures and thus the trade community acquires its own culture which is an eclectic mix of various cultural elements of different civilizations. This justifies the multi-cultural evolution of Bombay. The cosmopolitan set-up added further to the modern face of Bombay. These processes occurred simultaneously and in circles which certainly had their rub off on each other. Thus we can observe that there were several factors which contributed to the branding of Bombay, and the film essentially touches upon almost all of them. Also, the prevalent cinema of the 1950s showed the urban hero and a modern lifestyle as elements of Bombay. The focus here may have been on projecting a modern India to the rest of the country, probably just to highlight the accomplishments of the nation and celebrate its new found independence. Some of the early films of the 1950s in this respect were far more modern than the contemporary films which are set-up in a very modern format but still talk of archaic cultural values. Even the romantic scenes in the films like Awara show a much more modern approach that the characters had not only towards love, but towards life as a whole. And the fact that these films were set in Bombay, makes it the face of modern India. The social life and night club culture showcased either directly through songs in films like Aar-Paar, Awara and Shree 420 or the background setting of a high-society clubs in films like Asli Naqli add to the modern charm of Bombay.
These modern traits were certainly a British legacy and the films appropriately showcase the same. So much is the difference in the cultural values of the village India and this modern Bombay that the villager feels alienated, and if he doesn’t feel the same, the residents of the modern world make sure he does through whichever means that they can. This is one aspect which has been showcased in the film Guru. The upper authorities don’t really appreciate the progress of a villager in their established business kingdom, and thus try and get rid of him in every possible way, either through entry barriers for him or a legal takeover. These realities of the business world aren’t very specific just Bombay, but Bollywood has embedded them in their Bombay based biz-flicks since time immemorial.
Though Guru doesn’t intentionally make any links with any actual business tycoon, the very fact that it is set in the Bombay of the 1950s and discusses the issues of the politics of the trade world speaks volumes about the city’s business. Thus, though the resemblances with the business czar might have been co-incidental but in effect contribution to Bombay’s are certainly much more than just a co-incidence and also their impact is strong.
Certain key sequences at the start of the film rightfully establish Bombay as a modern and slightly alien city especially for the villagers, or strangers for that matter. Even the metaphors used to convey modernity versus traditions convey much more than their mere direct meanings. For instance Guru’s interaction with president of the trade union happens at the golf course, when the latter asks the former to play a shot of golf to and immediately get his work done. Guru, who is unaware of this present culture merely lifts the ball and places it in the hole. This scene indicates the seclusion of the richness and western influences with a few and exclusion of the rest. The use of golf as a sport in this scene is not only due to actual practice of the game in the city at that time, but also the fact that this game depicts the Victorian influence in very different way, than what a cricket shot could have. The sport speaks of a modernity which can be used as a distinguishing and discriminating factor, especially in a situation like this. Probably a Bombayite’s attitude of indifference towards the stranger stems form here.
Most of the members amongst the opponents of Guru aren’t directly named, but it is evident form their accent and mannerisms that they represent the Parsi community in the city, which was amongst the first business communities in the city. In one of his dialogues in the film, Guru mentions that the existing rich don’t want the new rich to be a part of them. This sentence marks an era of change in the rulers of Bombay from the Parsis to the Gujaratis. An interesting observation here is that the Parsi community doesn’t have its origins in India, and thereby its influence and contribution to the modernity of the city is greater than the one which could have been achieved from any other ethnic group of Indian origin. Guru doesn’t really talk directly about the branding of Bombay, but these subtle nuances in its picturisation can be used as tools to justify the appropriate branding of the city in the minds of the millions of viewers.
Another fascinating character in the film is the one played by Mithun Chakraborty, Nanaji. Nanaji represents the modern Bengali thought process and virtues. He runs a newspaper, not for commercial purposes, but actually speaks of journalism of courage. He represents the leftist philosophy and speaks of equality for all. His ethnic orientation also contributes largely to Bombay’s cosmopolitan existence. The film showcases the Parsis, the Gujaratis, the Marathis, the Hindi speakers and now the Bengalis, all as residents of Bombay in the 1950s, and thus adds to Bombay’s image of mini-India. The Bengali lineage is also associated with the first Victorian capital of Calcutta (now Kolkata). Calcutta in one sense is very important while conducting the study in the depiction of Bombay, not only because it was a preceded Bombay in most of its modern day brand virtues, but somehow lost out on that modern charm eventually; but also because of the fact that inherent communist philosophy of Calcutta is a complete contrast to the capitalist commercial approach of Bombay. The truth that several dream merchants of the Bombay film fraternity have their roots in the Bengali philosophy adds another dimension to the comparative study of the two cities. Also, in terms of the frequency of on-screen depiction of any city from India on the silver screen, Calcutta would rank at number two right after Bombay.
Nanaji represents a culture which originated as an outbreak against the British-Raj but has all those elements of that culture which can be termed as virtues. Just as Bombay today stands as a representative of all the positive effects which the British-Raj has had on India, Nanaji symbolises a society which is educated and which thinks. It is a fraternity which dissects and analyses every thing before believing it and intellectually assesses every aspect of it. His presence in the city of Bombay just conveys that the city had achieved this level of progression of thought, even in that period. Here we can see the origin of another form of an aspirational value for Bombay, this time not by the worshippers of goddess Lakshmi, but the devotees of goddess Saraswati, the intelligent, thinking clan.
By far we have observed that Guru depicts Bombay as a modern city, not just in its economic outlook and social life, but also in terms of its thought process. Another element of Bombay which the film speaks volumes about is the practice of business ethics. Although the film doesn’t really highlight too much about this, it subtly hints at the underhand means used by white-collared businessmen to achieve success and in effect get rid of their sins, by exercising corporate social responsibility. In one of the scenes, Shyam (the character of an honest journalist, played by R. Madhavan) mentions how Guru (and there by his obsession for power and money) is a disease which has spread in the society. He is amongst one of those who would fleece the government of its land, and then construct a beautiful park on a tiny portion of it, to beautifully hide his notorious acts. But at the same time, a poor taxi driver who is a stakeholder in Guru’s company tells him that it is because of Guru and the benefits that he made form his company that the could marry off three of his daughters. This irony in the characterization of Guru can be interpreted as a tweaked version of communism, where in Guru does pass down the benefits to all his stakeholders, and in a way does try and implement the Sanskrit philosophy of Bahujan Hitaay, Bahujan Sukhay; but the only twist in the tale here is that his intentions aren’t completely altruistic. We do see that he has made several compromises so that his business can flourish, and he is not apologetic about it. In one of his very first days in Bombay, Guru while chatting with Nanaji indicates that he hasn’t learnt how to lie, as he is just new to Bombay. This line brands Bombay as a place, where one needs dissociate him from the truth to succeed as it is clear that Guru is here to be successful and is also willing to learn the rules of Bombay. Eventually when we see Guru as a shrewd businessman, we can only assume the truth in the assumption made by him at the outset.
Ironically, in the climax scene he does give an analogy of Mahatma Gandhi, who has taught the Indians the power of truth and to fight against the laws and change them to achieve progress. He says that he is battling it out for the greater cause which is the vision of a modern India, which doesn’t belong to the third world, and does deserve to be amongst the best in the world. The very fact that Bombay is shown as the epicenter of his operations while envisioning a modern India, conveys a lot of Bombay’s role in the economic progress of the nation.
Guru thus represents the changing phases in the life of Bombay, the business world of Bombay, and the cultural variations across the communities in Bombay. In an era where plush exotic locations have become the in thing for the dream merchants of Bollywood, and all other cities are trying to ape Bombay in every possible way, Guru represents Bombay in the real sense.
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