Mogul Mowgli: Review

The poetry of partition is ripe in Riz Ahmed’s raps in Mogul Mowgli. From Manto’s Toba Tek Singh to the recurring generational memory of being lost in the sub-continental history of division, each scene is a lesson in carrying the psychosomatic illnesses of our ancestors - literally and metaphorically.

Mogul Mowgli captures the mundane diurnal existence of a British South Asian Rapper (and here I use South Asian, not Pakistani because that’s one thing Riz has made clear in his raps). In his way, he is representing the struggles of his people as honestly as he knows how – through his word and poetry, set to rap in a world where South Asian rappers get away with talking literal trash in their lyrics, portrayed as the rival rapper, RPG, who can’t string together meaningful sentences no matter how hard he tries. Riz, or Zed in the movie, is digging deeper, and that’s what he tries to capture with his words – with his family or with his audiences. From No Man’s Land which is where he stands – and from where he requests you to please not waste his time with the stupid cricket test (I agree, that one is stupid, stop doing it people, to him and to Kashmiris too).

In the desi-ness of it all, there’s every single character you can relate with. There’s the naturalness or the ease with which partition trauma interjects dinner table conversation, or rather the regrets and the deep pain of it all, just moves through the veins of the older generations. This generational trauma, which we carry in our bones, and which Zed can’t fight off – no matter how he tries. His verses carry its weight – the checking of the foreskins, the bloody trains, the jumping into wells to save honor. This is partition violence in all its glory, all too familiar and all too uncomfortable. A history we are yet to contend with as South Asians.

There’s the cousin, caught between a globalizing and modernized world but also trying to balance the culture of a country he may not soon recognize with the country he has adopted as his own, and in the middle of it all, there’s Zed. He tries to make sense of it all in his half Mogul, half Mowgli voice – acknowledging in the title itself – where does he stand? Mogul as in the royal blood that maybe runs through his veins (in terms of the cultural pride he carries), or the Mowgli part of him – the one run down by the orientalist version of our world, popularized by Kipling and the rest of the white gaze that befalls him.

I don’t even know if most of the audience sees how deep his words can go. His phantom, the partition singer with a floral facial cover, won’t even let him forget where he comes from. He stands there as a constant reminder and perhaps even mirror to Zed’s art.

One of the most powerful moments of the movie is when a very ill Zed is back home after a medical treatment and finds himself unable to complete a very basic human task – in the toilet. Dehumanizing for anyone who has been sick, and something we certainly all take for granted (kudos to the prop team for that plastic bottle lota in the hospital bathroom by the way). His long disapproving father listening to his track on the radio joins him in the rap, and they both chant Toba Tek Singh – in the same madness as the real character in one of Mantos’ most well-known short stories. The same repetitive tone, the reminiscent madness. Upar di gur gur di annexe di bedhiyana di moong di daal of di Pakistan and Hindustan of di durr phitey mun.

So why watch Mogul, Mowgli? As a sub-continental drifter, you will see much of the mundane, represented far more confidently than in the old school “East is East” franchise where a fantastically honest performance by Om Puri captures the British Pakistani experience rather deftly. But Mogul Mowgli is an essential watch for the more contemporary cinematic enthusiasts for the very reason that it claims the narrative so confidently.

The very desi restaurants which are deemed “tacky”, represented in the Karachi Chilli apron of his father’s restaurant which Zed wants to discard, perhaps remnants of his childhood which now present complex memories of how he wants to associate or dissociate with his background, which elite south Asian travelers proclaim that embarrass them of their culture, brings out the background of the people behind those doors. This immigrant experience of these communities is as important, if not more, than the high-flying version Karan Johar wants to sell us on. Now we have the BK Jani’s of Brooklyn or Priyanka Chopra’s SONA reclaiming a version of desi-ness that seems more acceptable or trendy. But there is something truly unique to the cumulative immigrant cacophonies that are the Jackson Heights or the Brick Lanes. Where in actual South Asia would you find the entire UN General Assembly of the United States of South Asia so integrated in its representation? Where else, would Shan Masala share the same shelf as MDH? Mira Nair’s son through his avatar as Mr. Cardamom may be yet on the right track to reclaiming the influential role the Madhur Jaffrey’s have played in mainstreaming this very desi-ness.

This is the modern re-telling of the subaltern version of the history we are confronted with. Riz or Zed’s words then are not just a musical rendition of his personal experiences – they are oral history tapes in the making, one for future generations to dissect in liberal arts universities (if they still exist…) But most of all, Mogul Mowgli reclaims the trains - from mainstream Bollywood cinema as romantic trope, to carrier of violent trauma from partition memories even though we know who came first. There ain’t no chicken and egg here.

Accompany this with Riz’s expansive discography on Spotify – from Cashmere to The Long Goodbye. And most importantly, his short but impactful verse in the Hamilton Mixtape for “Immigrants, We Get The Job Done.” Peeling the layers in his verses is an exercise in history, politics, art and culture like no other.