Top 125 Bombay Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

In Bombay, people usually tend to cast you in roles that you've played before. Even though they may consider you to be a talented actor, they just think it's 'safer' to have you play the same kind of roles over and over again.

Traffic in the streets of Bombay is chaotic at best. Riding a bicycle is a dangerous occupation. However, there are hundreds of them on the streets competing with the cars and buses and lorries because it is the poor man's mode of transport.

I didn't really enjoy modeling in Bombay. I floated through it in the hopes that I would get my ticket to the next big thing. There was no real joy that I got out of it, to be really honest.

In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.

I'm deeply stressed as a filmmaker, and I know I'm not alone. The censorship crisis, the moral policing, the politics of it has most of us on edge. I'm scared to use certain words: like, if I use 'Bombay,' will there be a problem?

Everyone knows Gautam Gambhir is a star who is going to be in Bombay, London, and Johannesburg. He is not going to be available to attend to people of his constituency.

Cinematically, anything like 'Khawto' in Bengali cinema hasn't happened. Yes, you get such films in Hollywood, a few in Bombay. In Bengali literature, you get such stories in the works of Samaresh Basu and Buddhadeb Guha.

There are so many films which are my favorite in 100 years. There are legendary films like 'Bombay,' 'Dil Se,' and 'Guru' as I liked Abhishek Bachachan's performance in the film.

Back in the '90s, we saw prominent non-film artists like the Bombay Vikings do a splendid job on old classics and people danced to those new tunes without ever feeling that the song had been spoiled. We slowly saw this trend creeping into mainstream cinema.

I initially moved to Bombay to work in the corporate space. After settling my family here in due course of time, I turned to acting which initially started off as a hobby that I wanted to pursue on the side and then became my profession to sustain my passion around five years back.

As far as the industries go, in the North, they think I'm a South Indian actress; down South, I've always been thought of as a Bombay girl. I guess it's sort of an identity crisis, even though I'd like to belong to all the industries.

My films play only in Bengal, and my audience is the educated middle class in the cities and small towns. They also play in Bombay, Madras and Delhi where there is a Bengali population.

I met my wife in Bombay at an official function. And then we courted for three years. That's a great old term, 'courting.' And we had to do it quietly, of course, because you would know the difficulties one might have with Indian parents. She was advised by her father that people in the West don't take marriage seriously.

Delhi is excellent. Everything looks so beautiful. In Bombay, we don't have such beautiful roads, spacious places, and you cannot have the luxury of having houses and bungalows. You have to live in little pokey flats and cost of living is extremely high in Mumbai. Delhi has a lot that people keep preserving... a lot of which is what Delhi is about.

Once I wanted to get into films, I took my time about it because when I first got to Bombay, I gave my photos and CDs to all the production houses. But the roles that came my way were the 'typical white girl dancing in the background' kind of roles, which I was not too interested in, or it was advertisements.

I have been brought up around art. Even now, when I travel, I love going to museums and spend hours in front of paintings. Art is like oxygen for me. That's what I miss in Bombay.

By the time I was 14, I had seen only three Tamil films - 'Anjali,' 'Bombay,' and 'Puthiya Mugam.' And I loved the music in the films. When I found out Rahman sir was the man behind the music, I made up my mind that I wanted to sing for him.

I quit my job in New India Insurance and was confronted by various options. I could either go to Pune to do a course in acting from Poona University or shift base to Bombay or Delhi and study at NSD. I opted for the latter because it is the best place to get a formal education in acting.

And at the moment of contact, they do not know if the hand that is reaching for theirs belongs to a Hindu or Muslim or Christian or Brahmin or untouchable or whether you were born in this city or arrived only this morning or whether you live in Malabar Hill or New York or Jogeshwari; whether you’re from Bombay or Mumbai or New York. All they know is that you’re trying to get to the city of gold, and that’s enough. Come on board, they say. We’ll adjust.

Well the Bombay film wasn't always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.

I saw Mani sir's 'Bombay,' and I wanted to be a Mani sir heroine.

When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog-big as a donkey. ... I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio. ... I've written so many songs about Englishmen, I have to go elsewhere. ... Our repertoire consisted of rhythm and blues, sort of country rhythm and blues, Sonny Terry things.

Derek, my character, in 'Chhichhore' is actually based on the director's real life senior in engineering college and I had no clue about it till he took me to Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.

The trains are central to Bombay just as the subway is central to New York; they are the great social laboratory of that city. And today, they became a charnel-house.

India's way is not Europe's. India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages.

Having plenty of living space has to be the greatest luxury in a city, and I guess in some sense Bombay is the antithesis of what living in Canada must be.

The writer, Ruth Jhabvala, livedin India but was German. My partner Ismail Merchant was from Bombay but was educated in England and he had a different view on the world. Probably they had to contend with some sort of Oregonian-ness in me that they didn't understand and didn't know where it was coming from.

Even in India the Hindi film industry might be the best known but there are movies made in other regional languages in India, be it Tamil or Bengali. Those experiences too are different from the ones in Bombay.

Growing up in Bombay made me immune to culture shock, in a way. So, culture shock is not part of my DNA.

While I was writing my book, I got a top police official in Bombay an invitation to study terrorism at the Rand Institute in Washington DC. This would have helped the city enormously, as he was the detective who cracked the '93 blasts case. But the commissioner declined to let his subordinate take up the offer from Rand, because of his fear that it was CIA-affiliated. That culture of suspicion needs to change; India needs to learn how other democracies fight terror.

Films were always a passion for me but it was when I saw 'Salaam Bombay' that I decided that it was film direction that I was interested in. That is when I decided I wanted to direct films.

For good or bad, there is a certain level of generalisation when it comes to my work. I want to break that perception. My decision to direct 'Bombay Talkies' or to present 'The Lunchbox' is an attempt to do that. These are the films that gel well with my sensibility, and it's unfortunate, it's not the perception out there.

So, my sweetheart back home writes to me and wants to know what this gal in Bombay's got that she hasn't got. So I just write back to her and says, Nothin', honey. Only she's got it here.

I was writing stand up comedy for TV for around 5 years and just wanted to attempt it myself. Vir Das started an amateur comedians' night in Bombay in 2009 and I went for the very first one. It was a competition and I won the first prize.

When I was growing up, everyone around me was fond of fooling around with words. It was certainly common in my family, but I think it is typical of Bombay, and maybe of India, that there is a sense of play in the way people use language.

Here is the full list of the banned words I used: active homosexual; career women; Third World; blacks; Asians; Australasia; Bangalore; primitive African tribes; crippled; in a wheelchair; hare lip; ethnic minorities; handicapped; spinster; committed suicide; gypsies; Bombay; illegitimate daughter; air hostess; Siamese twins; Calcutta; deaf ears; illegal asylum seeker; province of Northern Ireland; grandmother; bachelor.

I've never lived anywhere else in my life, I have a massive love-hate relationship with this city. I grew up in the western suburbs in the '80s and for everything we had to go to south Bombay - so you lived the whole city, in a sense.

The fun of sitting around Pangong Lake with 40 guys around a fireplace, having a glass of wine... staying in one camp together... that's an experience. Waking up at 5 in the morning, watching the sun come up. You don't do these things in Bombay.

I met my wife [Sukhinder Kaur Gill] in Bombay at an official function. And then we courted for three years. That's a great old term, 'courting’. And we had to do it quietly, of course, because you would know the difficulties one might have with Indian parents. She was advised by her father that people in the West don't take marriage seriously.

My first show was in Patkar Hall next to Bombay Hospital. It was a total flop. I was so nervous standing in front of all those people that I completely froze. I forgot all my lines and the audience booed me off the stage. I realised that day that you have to earn the audience's appreciation. They aren't fools.

At a few hundred kilometers altitude, the Earth fills half your sky, and the band of blue that stretches from Mindanao to Bombay, which your eye encompasses in a single glance, can break your heart with its beauty. Home you think. Home. This is my world. This is where I come from. Everyone I know, everyone I ever heard of, grew up down there, under that relentless and exquisite blue.

Some would assert that Providence was at work shaking out its pockets in Humanity's lap. Other would argue for that mindless choreographer, Chance. Either way it was a simple thing: a lost diary fell into the hands of a soul-sick war hero on a train from Bombay to Jaipur just when he'd grown tired of the scenery and needed something to keep his thoughts from the minefield of his wretched thoughts. In such mild ways is the groundwork laid for first kisses and ruined lives.

A city like Bombay, like New York, that is a recent creation on the planet and does not have a substantial indigenous population, is full of restless people. Those who have come here have not been at ease somewhere else. And unlike others who may have been equally uncomfortable wherever they came from, these people got up and moved. As I have discovered, having once moved, it is difficult to stop moving.

The Bombay-Pune Expressway, a spanking, modern, six-lane highway will, when completed, be India's first truly international road constructed on the lines of the autobahn or the turnpike.

What's interesting about Twitter is the unmediatedness of it, the directness of it. I'm on a train somewhere in New York and I send out a tweet. Somebody sitting at dinner in Bombay checks their phone and they see it.

Four places in the country hold great importance in my life - Punjab, where I was born, Nagpur, where I did my engineering and where my wife is from, Bombay where I work and obviously, Hyderabad, where I learnt the craft of cinema.

When I wrote the song, I had the sea near Bombay in mind. We stayed at a hotel by the sea, and the fishermen come up at five in the morning and they were all chanting. And we went on the beach and we got chased by a mad dog - big as a donkey.

Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.

In Bombay, we have a fine concert hall. I think it is high time we built venues in Delhi and Calcutta, not only for western music, but also Indian music. It doesn't matter which party is in power; don't you think the capital of India should have a concert hall?

Most of the top actors and actresses may be working in ten or twelve films at the same time, so they will give one director two hours and maybe shoot in Bombay in the morning and Madras in the evening. It happens.

These are stories you hear... of people sitting in a mall and being spotted, and you think it will happen to you. And when you're fresh off the boat, and new in Bombay, you want those kind of things! They are magical fables. You want to, somewhere, be a part of it, something people will read about. But reality is different.

In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.

It was in 1976, I think. I was in South Africa on military engagement when someone left a magazine on my bed with the picture of a beautiful woman on the cover. I read that her name was Parveen Babi and I thought, I must go to Bombay and meet her.

The National Stock Exchange was strongly opposed by Bombay stockbrokers and captains of industry. I thought some competition is good. The exchange has given a very good account of itself.

If Bombay can become Mumbai, Bangalore can become Bengaluru, Madras can become Chennai, and Calcutta can become Kolkota, there is no reason why Allahabad should not become Prayagraj and Faizabad should not become Ayodhya. To re-establish our original identity, we have renamed these places. I am happy that people have welcomed this.

Anurag was always too passionate about 'Raman Raghav 2.0' to care about anything else. There never was a 'Bombay Velvet' hangover.

Everybody I meet is a star. In Bombay it is crazy and even TV has become so big that there are just too many stars and there is too much greed for that little space on the newspaper.

As a child I played cricket as a hobby. Once you started playing for your school, you became more ambitious. You reckoned you could play for the state. Then you started to think about the country. But it happened so quickly for me, I started playing for the school at 13, for Bombay at 17, and at 18 I was in the Indian side.

Bombay was an expensive place and I didn't want to spend my nights without food in my stomach. For 400 a month, I would make bills from morning till evening and then would head to Prithvi Theatre.

George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker.