The City That Never Arrives: A Review of Safar Mein Shahar

When multiple films are made around a specific city, often it becomes more a character than a mere location. The visual, auditory, and psychological landscapes of a city get explored so intensely that the city begins to live and breathe on screen. Think of Satyajit Ray's Calcutta, Woody Allen's New York, Federico Fellini's Rome, or Wong Kar-wai's Hong Kong. Now, Mazhar Q. Kamran's Safar Mein Shahar adds Mumbai to this canon — not as a glossy postcard, but as a labyrinth of longing.

The title itself is a beautiful paradox. A city that exists within a journey, not as a destination. Throughout the film, Mumbai remains elusive, always just out of reach. The protagonists move through its spaces but never truly arrive. The city is always elsewhere, always a promise that remains unfulfilled.

Kamran's Mumbai is not the city of Bollywood dreams. It is not glamorous. There are no song-and-dance sequences on Marine Drive. Instead, we see the city through its forgotten corners — cramped railway compartments, empty late-night streets, chawls where lives intersect in impossible proximity. The camera lingers on peeling paint, flickering tube lights, and rain-soaked tarpaulin sheets. This is the Mumbai that exists between grand narratives.

What makes the film exceptional is how it uses sound. The city's cacophony — honking rickshaws, vendor calls, distant train whistles — becomes a kind of music. Kamran layers these sounds in a way that communicates the internal states of his characters. When a character is overwhelmed, the city's noise becomes deafening. When they are contemplative, the same sounds fade into an ambient murmur.