Teen from Bandra slum, noticed by a Hollywood actor in 2020, is now the protagonist of a ary that follows her day.
Maleesha Kharwa (centre) with her friends who also feature in the documentary. The 13-year-old lives with her father and brother in a Bandra slum. Pics/Shadab Khan
Most days in 13-year-old Maleesha Kharwa’s life look pretty much as the previous ones: Wake up, brush her teeth, have breakfast, study online from 10 am to 3 pm, wash utensils, eat dinner, sleep. What’s different now, is that the world knows about it.
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The teen, who lives in a Bandra slum near the Sea Link, became an Internet sensation when Step Up 2: The Streets actor Robert Hoffman chanced upon her early last year. Stranded in Mumbai during the pandemic, he took the opportunity to explore the city for future projects.
During the filming, the filmmakers decided to take the kids to a restaurant, who later requested if they could pack some food home for their family, says Sagu
Taken in by Kharwa’s disarming smile and easy charm, he launched an Instagram account dedicated to her and asked his fans and followers to help her make a career out of modelling.
A year down, Kharwa, with over one lakh followers on Instagram, is the star of Live Your Fairytale, a short film by filmmakers Jas Sagu and Arsala Qureishi. The latter is the associate producer and writer of the 2015 film, Angry Indian Goddesses. That film followed the lives of eight women fighting misogyny in their different worlds. That was fictional, this is for real. The common thread, though, is that both films incidentally revolve around “smashing patriarchy”.
Maleesha with her dad Mukesh and younger brother Sahil
“Maleesha’s story is a happy and inspiring one. We came back learning life lessons. People tend to view her life from the poverty angle, but she does not. Being older of the two siblings, she is responsible, assertive and displays a maturity that’s well beyond her years. She is supporting her family almost single-handedly at such a young age. Her father is a clown artiste whose work has taken a backseat due to the pandemic,” says Sagu. The duo never set out with the intention of making a film on Maleesha. “Yes, we wanted to document her and the other kids who are part of her universe. This 10-minute film, however, is non-manufactured storytelling and there was no agenda to achieve anything. We were mere observationalists with a camera,” says Sagu. They was introduced to Kharwa through Hoffman, who had flown down to Mumbai in February 2020 to be part of their music video Aag Ka Gola LA. “How we met Hoffman is also a story in itself. When we were in LA for work, we booked an Airbnb which incidentally belonged to him. We had absolutely no idea who he was. It was during a casual conversation that he mentioned that he’s an actor. We Googled him only to realise he’s quite big in Hollywood!”
They documented Maleesha—who has earned the moniker Slum Princess—going about her daily life, capturing moments of happiness when she is playing with her cousins and mohalla kids. They then extracted the most coherent moments to weave a story. “On the day we met them, we took them to a restaurant. But, before that we wanted to buy them shoes. None of them knew their size, so we sent a staffer to find out their size so we could buy them the right pair,” says Qureishi At the restaurant, she says the children had a ball of a time, feeling no inhibitions about coming to a fine dine. “It was their first time at a restaurant.
Filmmakers Jas Sagu and Arsala Qureishi
Once they were done eating, each of them came up to Jas and me with just one request: could they pack some food home for their family? It was such a tender moment,” she adds. The filmmakers plan to release the film on Kharwa’s YouTube channel this month.
Hoffman, who started a GoFundMe page for the teen, has claimed that he had done so in order to secure the girl’s future and her place in the entertainment industry. His efforts, however, well intentioned, ended up drawing criticism from certain quarters. Many raised concerns about the girl’s safety and potential exploitation. “That [criticising somebody who is trying to do good] is the easiest thing to do. You can sit with your smartphone in the luxury of your home and cast aspersions on someone who is simply trying to help. In that case, they should ask Maleesha and her family about what they feel. Whatever was done and is being done is entirely with their consent,” says Sagu. She says, the girl, as a rule, is always accompanied by her entourage—her father, a male cousin and other family members—to shoots and any work-meetings. “If she is not okay with somebody, she is blunt enough to say it, whether it is the placement of the microphone or camera angle. We are just grateful that they let us into their lives.”
Kharwa, who studies in a municipal school and speaks fluent English, tells us that she is “surprised” at the fame that has come her way. She has already made it to the cover of designers Shane and Falguni Peacock’s The Peacock Magazine and is fairly certain of becoming a dancer and pursuing a modelling career in the future. “My life has changed in the last one year. It feels unreal when people come up to me and say that they are my fans,” she tells us over a call. Kharwa, who is an Instagram buff and spends a good amount of time on social media, says her dream is to drive around in Kashmir. “The other dream is to buy a big house for my father and brother.”
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