I still remember that infamous day very clearly.A young school boy of around 14 years starts his serious studies as only 3 weeks are left for the final exams and thus shuts his study room door and tries hard to study.Approximately at around 8:35 p.m., his cousin brother comes banging on the door after watching the Hindi News headlines on Doordarshan, and shouts ”Bhaiya open the door, Bombay has witnessed bomb blasts”.
But since some low intensity bomb blasts kept happening even then so I-(the boy trying to concentrate) casually shouts on him-‘Hone do blasts.They keep happening”.After about 1 hour of studying I came out of my study to watch the English news headlines on DD at 9:30 and was shocked to see about the kind of blasts my cousin was talking about.the date was 12th march 1993 and it was indeed the Blackest (I don’t know if there is such a word)Friday of the last decade of nineteenth century.Although the blasts happened in Bombay which is thousands of miles away from Lucknow, where I was sitting and watching the news, the impact was enough to depress us.Next day even on BBC radio the news of Bombay blasts rocked throughout the world.Unlike what I thought initially these blasts were not the usual low intensity ones.
They were the kind whose shock waves keep coming back to us even 13 years after the fateful day.They were arguably the first of its kind and in the last 13 years many more followed both nationally and internationally however this Black Friday holds the dubious distinction of being the most fateful atleast in our country.The conspiracy, motive behind conspiracy and the case findings are arguably one of the most disturbing in recent history.A person from Bombay’s most popular English daily -Mid day-S.H.Zaidi researching on it and going into each and every detail of the case shows his courage, dedication and determination to actually document the facts in his book-“Black Friday”.Although I have not read the book but it being the base of the movie is proof enough that such a book is written once in decades.books however famous they are will be books and they don’t enjoy the kind of audience which cinema has and a book like this and an event like this definitely deserves a bigger audience and hats off to Anurag Kashyap, his financiers and Mid-Day people for making Zaidi’s book into one of the best docu-dramas ever made.
I saw the film around 2 years back on the rare pirated cd which our CD guy had it.I was simply blown by it and had actually loaded it on my computer and have seen it around 4 times on cd and also showed the banned film to my relatives.Finally after a struggle of 2 years the film release on theatre compelled me to watch it on theatre as in the Cd version it was evident that many scenes were chopped. The Bombay police interrogates a criminal and he tells the police that the city is about to be bombed by ammunition-RDX.Although the police suspects foul play in his statement but they come out to be true as within a few days the city witnesses a series of horrifying blasts on 12th March 1993.
The city is paralysed, hundreds are dead, thousands are rendered homeless and the city becomes lifeless.The police spungs into action and appoints DCP Maria(Kay Kay Menon) as the head of the team who has to investigate the case.The team does everything possible and cracks the case with astonishing and disturbing results. The main mastermind of the case is found to be Tiger Memon(Pawan Malhotra).A small time smuggler, memon alongwith ISI, many wounded and revenge seeking Muslims-who lost their kith and kin in the 1993 riots-engineers the blasts and flees to Dubai.However the men who actually implanted the ammunition are caught one after the other and one of them Baadshah Khan( Aditya Srivastava)completely broken down by the mental and physical anguish which followed him while he was on the run confesses and helps the police in gathering evidence.
On one hand, the film boldly blames the Muslim fundamentalist who got support from Pakistan based ISI and Dubai underworld for the blasts.On the other hand it openly shows the outcome of Hindu fumdamentalism and the follow up of Babri Masjid demolition and anti-Muslim riots which made these blasts a follow up.the movie transports the viewer to those days when there were riots, blasts, curfew, closed shops 7schools and total hatred amongst the members of both the communities for one another.It raises several questions and it shows that this vicious cycle by both the communities will go on and on as we have observed in last decade.To quote from Amitabh’s lines in Kaala Paththar-“Yeh phir hoga, aur phir hoga, aur phir hoga aur phir hoga”, the lines aptly fit in this vicious cycle of bloodshed, riots and blasts involving both the communities of our country.
Hopefully one day this cycle of hatred will stop.mnay of the convicts of the blasts are behind bars but still some including Tiger Memon are absconding.However, none of the leaders involved in Babri Masjid demolition and anti-Muslim riots are behind bars.Because of such incidents all Hindus are seen as fundamentalists anti-Muslim rioteers and all Muslims as fanatic Pakistan funded terrorists.This should end else we will have many more Bombay riots, Godhra, Gujarat Riots, Akshardham and many more Black Fridays.<