Mira Nair takes a look back at her 1988 film, ‘Salaam Bombay!’

In 1988, Nair bridged the gap from documentary cinema to narrative work with Salaam Bombay!, one part the former and one part the latter—a story about the street children of Bombay, indefatigable in their will not only to survive extreme poverty, but to live life to the fullest in spite of it. Recently, this touching vérité masterpiece found a spot in the canon of the Criterion Collection—the boutique physical media company, which over the last 41 years has prided itself on the preservation, restoration, and distribution of “important classic and contemporary films from around the world.” 

If the company’s nascent canon initially chiefly comprised white European and Japanese men, it has gained diversity over the years as it’s grown in scale. Salaam Bombay! marks Nair’s third entry in the library, following Mississippi Masala (released in 1991 and added to the collection in 2022) and Monsoon Wedding (released in 2001 and added to the collection in 2009), the latter being one of the earliest female-directed movies to carry the Criterion label. With Salaam Bombay! newly available for viewing, JoySauce spoke with Nair about what the picture means to her today, nearly 40 years since its release changed her career, as well as Bombay’s approach to welfare.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Andy Crump: How has your relationship to Salaam Bombay! changed since 1988? What does it mean to you today versus, say, 2001, when Monsoon Wedding came out, or 2009, when that film was entered into The Criterion Collection?
Mira Nair: I think of Salaam Bombay! in two ways. What fired me to make films in general, and particularly Salaam Bombay! as my first feature, was the idealistic question of whether art could change the world, or even impact it in any way. As you know, in India we live cheek by jowl with those who have and those who have not. What is extraordinary is that the kids who flock to Bombay think of it as almost the Hollywood of India, where the streets are paved with gold in their minds, because it's the movie city, and everyone sees movies. But when they come, they are just children, devoid or stripped away from childhood and family, but somehow creating their family in a very real way as the movie shows on the streets—finding their own community, if they’re lucky, and most of them are because there’s such a proliferation of children and people who are homeless.

What I think about Salaam Bombay!, not the film so much as the impact of what that film has done, that's what I think about even now. We built a foundation for street kids called Salaam Baalak Trust, which is now 38 years old, and 5,000 kids live in these centers, in Delhi and in Bombay. And it's not a pity party. It’s a great thriving place that offers children of all kinds, and young adults too, a home, vocational training, a place for the arts—all these things. It’s a lasting, permanent space that has actually changed even government policy on street children, and the right to be honored as a child. So that's what I also think about. Through love and through a great organization now of almost 178 social workers, we have created a place where it is not dishonorable to be a child on the streets. We have this enormous privilege of changing the world child by child, and it is alive and thriving.

I saw (the film) last when we were restoring it with Criterion about six months or so ago. There was an astonishing purity of music, of the silence of it, of the truth of it, and just the rhythm of it. It captured me. The Bombay you see is a way to revisit what it used to be. Cinematically—I don't want to just compliment my own work or the work of all of us who made the film—

AC: Go ahead, though!
MN: You get trapped in seduction in cinema, you know? It was such an unusual film when it was made that I wasn't modeling it on anything, and in that process, simply because you're listening and working with people who have actually lived that life, there’s a kind of energy that is unique to itself. And that taught me many things that I had actually forgotten.

AC: The impact the film has had is a magnificent achievement. Art can change the world, but to that extent, it’s uncommon. I wonder if you hope for that in your other films. It's a lot to ask of oneself. It’s reasonable to say, “I hope my film changes somebody's life,” but art so rarely achieves, in real-world terms, what this one has. Do you think of the movie in that regard too?
MN: Yes. You know, I’m extremely fun loving, mischievous, and life loving. I have a great appetite for living. And what drew me to the children in Salaam Bombay! was exactly that—that despite having nothing, they had this desire to live, and to live it up. That’s what inspired me to get into the story of these children. It's not like I set out with that flag with everything I do, but it is also true that I don't do that many Sunday afternoon pleasant rom-coms. I'm just not drawn to that. I'm drawn to making stories that teach you, and captivate you, but in the captivation you learn to look at something differently, perhaps, when you're done, and more importantly, you hopefully see yourself on the screen, whether you come from Brooklyn or whether you come from Bombay.

I've made a few films that have managed to literally directly impact people. To have films like Salaam Bombay! or Monsoon Wedding make a direct impact by lifting the prison of silence—that sexual abuse and incest, and these things that are in our close-knit family, so deeply taboo and never spoken of, even within the family—I never expected that kind of cathartic response to Monsoon Wedding. It did precisely that: it lifted that silence. Now, today, you can talk about these things. But even 20 some years ago, it was really unusual.

AC: I think about the cathartic feeling of watching Mississippi Masala as a film about what life in that part of my country can look like. The paternal side of my family is from Texas, and owns land in Mississippi. You can infer what that means.
MN: You’re landed gentry!

AC: I try not to let on about it, because I find it embarrassing.

A movie can reveal so much about ourselves, and show so much of the world that doesn't get seen. That’s what I think of when I think of your movies, and even though that version of Bombay no longer exists, I see the value of showing it now. What do you think the effect is on the viewer, to see what it was versus what it is now? Will we ever get to see through your eyes what it looks like today?
MN: When people see it, it's only some part of the physical landscape of Bombay that has changed—the cars, the fact that there are cell phones, the fact that there's so much opulence that is very overt in your face, Bentleys, everything. But the kids on the street are the same in the sense that they still come, it's still a community of poverty in that sense. They still sleep where they slept before, with much more oppression on them because they should not be seen in opulent places. But the aspiration to get a better life is the same. It is not a period film in that sense, you know? 

That's something to be kept in mind. The desire to live, the desire to be industrious and make your way in some fashion is still there, almost exactly the way it was then. So the human tale is unchanged. It's just the physical landscape and the opulence of it all, and therefore the injustice of the discrepancy slaps you in the face. But the aspiration of children, uh-uh, the aspiration of those who don't have continues to burn, you know, everywhere.