Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani kisses his mother Mira Nair as his wife Rama Duwaji stands next to them, after winning the 2025 New York City Mayoral race, at an election night rally in the Brooklyn borough of New York City.
Credit: Reuters
New Delhi: As Zohran Mamdani was elected Mayor of New York on Wednesday, rising up to touch the lives of thousands, his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, had initiated an effort many years ago that has since touched the lives of thousands in Delhi. Years before he was born, Nair started an NGO to help alleviate the lives of street children. Formed from the proceeds of a film called Salaam Bombay! by Nair, the NGO has now touched the lives of over 50,000 children.
The 1988 movie was based on the lives of a gang of ragpickers living in Mumbai’s Grant Road, with whom Nair and writer Sooni Taraporewala had spent over four months before the screenplay was written. After the movie was made, it got great critical reception as well as a successful run of the festival circuit, winning the Caméra d’Or at Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Nair wanted to invest the proceeds of the film in an NGO that worked for the benefit of street children.
At a programme in 2020, Nira recalled what led to the formation of the NGO. “The whole idea was to work with an organisation that would honour street kids for who they are and give them back a childhood, and at the same time understand that they are off the streets and they want a world that honoured their lives. But we could not find such an organisation, and so, created our own in Salaam Balak Trust,” Nair said.
Her mother Praveen Nair was the first chairperson of the Trust. Today, the NGO runs several residential homes for children and teenagers, day care centres, and toll-free helpline numbers that help children in distress. The NGO trains these children in theatre, dance, puppetry, etc. Nair has been an activist besides her filmmaking work. In 20025, she established in Uganda a filmmaking training lab called the Maisha Film Lab in Kampala.
Mamdani’s campaign, which heavily relied on reels on Instagram and TikTok, had several Bollywood references, and his speech after the win closed with the song Dhoom Machale from the 2004 Bollywood release Dhoom.