Warning – Spoiler Alert
Mumbai Meri Jaan is an excerpt from the lives of a few people over a period of seven days following the bomb blasts that took place in Mumbai on July 11, 2005. The lives of two constables, a TV News reporter, a soon- to-be-father-cum-train-commuter, a roadside vendor and bunch of jobless vagabonds are woven in to each other in the back drop of the incident. These people suffer the incident in their own way and generate their unique responses.
This is a very watchable film. However, the movie, at the psychological level, addresses the issues of contamination and closure. Contamination is a narrative sequence of storytelling wherein the individual makes a negative theme out of events that potentially lead to negative imagery. Closure is the narrative sequence of storytelling wherein the individual makes a meaningful theme out of events that potentially lead to negative imagery. There is enough research to suggest that contamination sequences in life stories have a high correlation with depression and low life satisfaction. Tragedies like the Mumbai blasts pose a challenge to meaning making. A more meaningful imagery of such national tragedies, albeit a challenge, promises a better psychological well being. Understanding the way people make meaning of an event that throws up personal challenges, gives us an opportunity to understand the psyche.
Mumbai Meri Jaan provides us with this excellent opportunity to study some of the responses that may have generated in the Indian Psyche. However, the film examines both the contamination and the closure sequences and thereby adding a much more mature content to the film.
The serenity prayer encourages us to develop our ability to understand the things that we can or cannot control. A firm understanding of this can actually modify the contaminating sequences that we may experience.
Watch and Enjoy !
Copyright – Nitesh Kotecha
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