Zohran Mamdani, the likely new mayor of New York City, was 17 in December 2008 when his accomplished filmmaker mother Mira Nair, with son in tow, led a free walking tour of Delhi.  She showed the stark realities of the lives of Indian street and working children.  The small group walked the rough, narrow back allies with her to the New Delhi Railway Station in Paharganj, where Nair pointed up to the rafters, explaining how the kids often slept up there, clearly seeking greater safety.  The tour culminated at one of the several shelters she has established – with  her diminutive, white-haired mother, Praeen, supervising at the front desk.  A huge roar of welcome went up when Mira entered the center’s main room filled with mostly boys, but some girls as well.  One would think a royal fairy godmother had descended.  The love was clearly mutual.

Candidate Mamdani’s solidarity with the poor and working class is a family affair.  To be fully understood, every reader must view “Salaam Bombay,” Nair’s first feature film, completed in 1991.  This is a painful movie, mirroring the typical plight of abandoned children and using mostly non-actor, homeless children themselves.  With sickening parallels to Jeffrey Epstein and company, the story centers on the sexual trafficking of a young girl and the boy who tries to protect her.  Proceeds from the Academy Award-nominated film went directly to creating the Salaam Balak Trust, to care for the very children who acted in the film.  Nair’s many successful successive films continue to support more shelters, providing housing, food, medical care and education.  There is training in the performing arts, as well as the City Walk tours, usually guided by older children who have graduated from the centers.  To have Nair as tour leader is a rare and fortunate gift.  While on the tour, teenage Zohran was attentive, but also checking out some of the crafts and jewelry on offer at Delhi’s sidewalk stands.  New York City and Africa-raised, he was a shy and quiet, slender lad.

Zohran’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, was teaching political science at the Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda when Nair arrived in late 1990 to film the luminous “Mississippi Masala,” with Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washingon.  Professor Mamdani, now at Columbia, is recognized globally for his incisive dissection of colonialism and imperialism, and is speaking out against on-campus repression of students and faculty.  Zohran’s mother, who keeps their home in Kampala, also launched in 2005 the Maisha Film Lab, a non-profit training initiative for emerging East African filmmakers which offers free programs in screenwriting, directing, producing, cinematography, and editing.  One could easily say that their only child, son Zohran, received the best immersive education in the core values of justice and equality.

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