Filmmaker Hansal Mehta, known for his candid opinions and no-filter reflections, recently stirred public sentiment with his blunt observations about Mumbai after returning from an extended shoot in Colombo. What was intended to be a moment of homecoming instead turned into a stark reckoning with the state of India’s so-called financial capital.
Reflecting on his time in the Sri Lankan capital, Hansal Mehta highlighted how even a country wrestling with economic crisis and recent political instability has managed to maintain a capital city that is noticeably cleaner, better organised and more dignified in its functioning than Mumbai. His return was not met with relief but with a familiar sense of dismay, one that has only deepened over the years.
Hansal Mehta spoke of a city plagued not only by dirt, chaos and collapsing infrastructure but also by something far more disturbing: a collective indifference. For Hansal Mehta, it isn’t merely the broken state of Mumbai’s civic systems that hurts, it is how people have grown used to of it. In his view, citizens have been conditioned to expect very little and accept the unacceptable, normalising decay in the name of population challenges and supposed resilience.
The filmmaker did not shy away from taking aim at the city’s real estate crisis either. He questioned the absurd cost of housing in a metropolis where residents are often rewarded with views not of landscaped parks or clean roads but of garbage-strewn streets, open sewage and institutional neglect. He described this contradiction as a soulless exchange, where people give up lifetimes and financial security for homes in a city that seems increasingly hollow at its core, commercialised on the surface, yet crumbling underneath.
For Hansal Mehta, Mumbai’s spiritual suffocation stems from those in power. He expressed a lingering affection for the city, calling it a place that has given him everything but lamented how it is being throttled by leadership that refuses to let it breathe. In his words, the ones profiting from Mumbai’s downfall are the same ones who disguise that decay as “resilience”, spinning civic failure into character-building mythology.
Here is Hansal Mehta’s post:
https://x.com/mehtahansal/status/1951893731361034616
His emotionally charged reflection quickly found resonance online, where netizens echoed his concerns. Comments poured in affirming his critique, many users noted that these complaints have persisted for years without any meaningful change. Others pointed to the absence of civic sense, the failure of law enforcement and the societal mentality that sees sanitation and responsibility as someone else’s job.
Hansal Mehta’s words read like a love letter written in anguish, a cry for the city he still loves, even as he watches it buckle under the weight of systemic apathy. For many, it was not just a director’s opinion but a shared truth, finally articulated out loud.
