Culturally, Mumbai is probably best known for its film industry, nicknamed Bollywood. Cinema in India is very popular and the city is responsible for the majority of the Hindi-language films that are made in the country. The
Mumbai International Film Festival takes place every even year and is firmly established as a major event in the cinematic calendar. It is staged at various venues across the city during the month of February. While cinema is popular (there is said to be in excess of 100 million paying cinemagoers a week nationwide), theater, music and dance also have long traditions
in Mumbai and remain important cultural activities. Mumbai is also home to a large number of public and commercial art galleries - the leading public ones being the
Jehangir Gallery (see
Key Attractions) and the
National Gallery of Modern Art, both of which put on regular exhibitions of contemporary Indian art.
Time Out’s fortnightly listings and reviews provide comprehensive coverage of cultural events in the city. Available from newsstands.
Theater,
Dance and Music: The most important venue for the performing arts in Mumbai is the
National Center for Performing Arts, Nariman Point (tel: (022) 2283 3737; website:
www.ncpamumbai.com). This complex of five theaters of varying sizes puts on a widely varying program of plays, musicals and dance. Normally, there will be something on that is well worth seeing. Important, too, is the
Nehru Center Auditorium, Dr Annie Besant Road, Worli (tel: (022) 2493 3340; website:
www.nehru-center.org), where there is an auditorium, as part of a modern complex that includes art galleries, exhibition halls and a planetarium. During the year, it stages theater, dance and music. It also runs workshops for educational purposes. For plays in English and programs of Western music,
Sophia Bhabha Hall, B Desai Road at Breach Candy (tel: (022) 2367 8550), is a good venue.
Film: The center of Bollywood is
Film City, at Goregoan (tel: (022) 2202 6713), where the majority of the film studios are located. It is possible to arrange visits to some of the studios. The bulk of films made in Bollywood are sugary love stories or action dramas; the aim of the industry is to produce the entertainment and escapism that its audiences demand. The industry is now gaining more international recognition, as the success of
Monsoon Wedding (2001),
Asoka (2001) and
Bride and Prejudice (2004) in the UK shows. Every other year in February, the city hosts the Mumbai International Film Festival (see
Special Events).
Mumbai has many cinemas, the best known one being the art deco
Regal cinema, Apollo Pier Road, Colaba (tel: (022) 2202 1017), itself a Mumbai landmark. Many other cinemas, particularly those in the city center, for example the
Sterling Cinema (tel: (022) 2207 5187) near CST, regularly show English-language films.
Literary Notes: Those who wish to immerse themselves in the spirit of Mumbai need look no further than Salman Rushdie’s
Midnight’s Children (1981). A dextrously handled cocktail of history, fiction and imaginative fantasy, the novel is partly set in Mumbai and provides a wonderful evocation of the city’s geography, atmosphere and history in the years following independence in 1947. ’What I can see: the city basking like a bloodsucker lizard in the summer heat. Our Bombay: it looks like a hand but really it’s a mouth, always open, always hungry, swallowing food and talent from everywhere else in India. A glamorous leech, producing nothing except films bush-shirts fish...’. It is an affectionate portrait celebrating the ’highly-spiced nonconformity of Bombay’. A different view of the city emerges from Anita Desai’s novel,
Baumgartner’s Bombay (1988), which conjures up the crumbling fabric of the city, its humidity and pollution. Or try
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found, by Suketu Mehta (2004), who paints, through a series of encounters with various colorful characters, an endearing portrait of this multifaceted city.
Mumbai is home to a number of contemporary poets, including Arun Kolatkar. Nissin Ezekiel is often regarded as the founding father of modern poetry in the city. From the 1950s onwards, he did much to encourage young poets in their work. It remains as difficult here as anywhere else, however, to find companies who are prepared to publish poetry. In the field of fiction, Mumbai novelist Kiran Nagarkar published
Cuckold in 1998.
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