Bombay

            Bombay is about a Hindu man, Shekhar, and a Muslim woman, Shaila, who fall in love despite their differences in religion and their parent’s protests. Their families get into a fight and they decide to run away to Bombay. They get married and are forced to live in an overcrowded apartment for a few weeks until the other family is able to move out. When the other family finally moves out, they create a family of their own, giving birth to a set of twins. One of the twins takes the religion of Hindu, and the other takes the religion of Muslim.  As the children grow up, the feud between Hindus and Muslims grow as well. Fights break out in the streets over religion. Both Shekhar and Shaila’s parents come to their house to meet their grandchildren and to stay awhile. They attempt to express their differences in private but the twins always end up overhearing. At one point, the Hindu father goes to pray with the Hindu grandson and the Muslim grandfather does the same with the other grandchild. The one pair almost gets attacked until the other pair steps in to protect them. A war breaks out on the streets and in attempts to escape the house the grandparents get blown up. The children get separated from their parents and then later from each other. They end up finding each other and, in the end, find their parents who attempted to put a stop to the war between the two religions.

            The themes of this movie are family and religion. Religion was very important to both families and would not accept a person from a different religion in either of their families. However, for Shekhar and Shaila, they would not let religion get in the way of their love and wanted to have a family of their own. It was not that religion was not important to both of them, but they did not think it was a good enough reason to separate them. Their children took on the two different religions. Their family symbolized that the two religions could live harmoniously together which is what Shekhar argues about towards the end of the film when he is looking for his children. The parents living together under the same roof but bickering was symbolic to the bigger fight that was going on right outside their apartment. But even towards the end, the one father protects the other father and treat each other like family before they die together.

            This was a very violent and unsettling film. The savagery of the town’s people was very upsetting. I did not like the movie very much. The violence reminded me of old war documentaries. However, I did like when both sets of parents were living in the house. The tension was comical.