When Mira Nair was deciding to make Salaam Bombay her ground-breaking movie about kids on the streets of Bombay, she didnt want to work with actors, but real children.
She wanted authenticity and she looked to her friend Dinaz Stafford to help her. Dinaz was hoping to do her PhD in anthropology, but was swayed to putting her psychology degree into practice with the children on set. Dinaz went on to work on many of Mira Nair movies, and from the success of Salaam Bombay, they took the money garnered by the movie and gave it back to the street kids, setting up the Salaam Baalak Trust.
Eighteen years later, thousands of kids have gone through the project and it now has three centres in Mumbai, Delhi and Bhunebaswar.
The Salaam Baalak Trust is about giving children their lives back - giving them shelter, giving them vocational training, giving them a future.
Abishek's story is a common one. In 1993, though only 7 years old at the time, Abhishek decided that life should be able to offer him more than the penury of Bihar and the violence of an alcoholic father.
He fled to Delhi, and for 5 years, braved the mean streets of the capital. In 1998, he joined the Salaam Baalak Trust, where he studied through to the 10th grade, then decided he wanted to learn to cook. He gained admission to the prestigious Pusa Institute of Catering, where he trained for 2 years. The Trust then arranged a 6 month long internship for him, after which he was ready to go into business.
In December 2002, Abhishek set up his own 'dhaba,' or wayside restaurant. Three of the Trust's shelters are his clients, but he has also launched a take-out service for the scores of local guest-houses which populate the Pahar Ganj area in which he operates.
As well as schooling and vocational training, the Salaam Baalak Trust also offer health care and drug addiction programmes creating awareness about drug use and HIV/AIDS. As well as working with children, the trust also helps empower the women of the cities through an outreach programme, thus hoping to improve the overall quality of family life.
Theatre has always been proven an important tool in the development of the Salaam Baalak Trust. "The release offered by this medium helps children unleash pent-up emotions and deal with unresolved issues. In its long involvement with theatre, Salaam Baalak Trust has been able to identify and promote a large number of extremely talented children," says Dinaz.
The children get to write scripts, plan scenarios and design and create beautiful puppets, which are often used in shows dealing with social themes. "Together with street plays, puppet theatre forms part of our outreach program. SBT theater groups take their work to a wide range of venues - slum clusters, schools, public places, and dedicated campaigns & meets."
"Development projects now have to fit a business model with profitability and success rate," says Dinaz. "When people ask me about our success rate, I say as soon as a child is placed and out of my centre and I have room for a new child, that is a success.'"
So Dinaz has a foot in two worlds - real world and celluloid. Street life and make-believe... and she finds the magic crosses over from one to the other.
"I can say a lot about the state of the world working with street kids in Bombay, but I tend to do this work quietly. I reach a wider audience when I reflect the stories back through the medium of cinema."
In 2004, Dinaz directed Still the Children are There a short film made for the UN... it shows a slice of life in north-eastern India versus globalization. "Again, I really wanted to capture the story through the eyes and words of real people, rather than being presumptious and putting words into their mouths.
The people wanted to make the film really badly, because they wanted to tell their own story. But they didn't realize you could make films like that. I said, 'So tell me what your film is about?" and they said, 'but it will be boring, no singing and dancing!"
"When I work on a movie, my role is to create the magic, it is like the Tibetan notion of drala - awakening the inner magic of the individual to contribute to the external magic of the project. Then they feed off of each other and nourish each other."
Drala is like a cosmic mirror, it's about how we actually perceive reality. "I mean a film crew sticks out... it's a pretty obvious intrusion into the smooth running of a city... we need to slip seemlessly into the fabric of the society without causing too much disruption in order to create the magic.
One friend said to me that my approach was like the 'tao of filmmaking' to notice the creativity, but not the creator, not the ego!"
"I see my art as karma yoga - it's in the action, it nourishes me, it makes me a well-rounded person. I'm reflecting back a view of the world, creating a message and letting people know about major issues and influences in the world at large. I try and
capture a slice of time and space - capturing a view of the Kali Yug, this millennial time on film.
This current time, this Kali Yug is an incredibly potent time for us all as individuals to make a difference, to understand the self and to create awareness of others - it's a doorway."
Most recently, Dinaz has been working on the movie The Namesake set in Calcutta and New York, a film about forging a new cultural identity rather than blending in. But her next two projects will bring her back to Bombay.
"I am Bombay born and bred, but I studied abroad and could have led the life of an ex-pat, but it is the excitement of the city that brings me back each time... I find I can find the pulse of Bombay very quickly, although the city has changed and is changing a lot."
She now has two very different projects in the works... Little Zizou a small project which is a parable of two families in Bombay and contrasts bigotry and small-minded behaviour with the desire to follow your dreams.
"My role is to encapsulate a time and place - it's like capturing a memory. I'm excited to do my next projects in Bombay, because Bombay is on the edge... it's right on the precipice of a massive shift into becoming a global city. There will be a lot of change, so it'll be exciting to capture Bombay as it is right now, a city in waiting."
The other iron in the fire is the epic Shantaram which will be directed by Mira Nair and will star Johnny Depp. "It will be a brave and searching film - the story of a man and his redemption." Shantaram follows the story of Gregory David Roberts, an Australian robber and drug addict who reinvents himself by starting a medical clinic on the streets of Bombay.
So we come full circle from the streetkids in Salaam Bombay, through the success stories of the Salaam Baalak Trust and back to the streets of Bombay, just this time Johnny Depp will be there too.
Check out more about the work of the trust or to make a donation at http://www.salaambaalaktrust.com/