Mumbai's oldest superhero Doga gets his first film

Doga, a superhero crime fighter created by Raj Comics in 1992, gets his first short film later this month

A still from the film

A cop gets kidnapped and rues that no one is safe in Mumbai, not even the city's rakhwala. His oppressor, a criminal, says that in this city, crime is the true rakhwala. Is this then Mumbai's fate?To the city's rescue comes Doga. A name inspired by the word "dog", an animal that is both loyal and watchful. A comic strip introduced in 1992, by Delhi-based Sanjay Gupta and Tarun Kumar — Raj Comics publishes other well-known titles like Nagraj, Parmanu and Shakti — Doga is the story of a superhero crime fighter in the Gotham that is Mumbai.

The comic itself gained a cult following over the decades. And now, a short film based on it, titled Doga — Mumbai Ka Rakhwala, is set to release this month. A teaser was released last week by RC Motion Pictures. Doga, says Gupta, was an orphan raised by dacoits and among his many super powers — quick reflexes, ability to dodge bullets, expert shooting abilities — is the ability to communicate with dogs. The muscles are down to the long hours that Suraj spends at his saviour (Adrak Chacha's) gym.

Gupta, who conceptualised Doga back in the 80s, says, he came after a series of other supers, and while they were based in fictitious lands, there was a need to find a hero who would stand up for the aam junta, trying to make ends meet every day. Mumbai with its organised gangs, topping the charts of the national crime graph, became the perfect home for Doga, aka Suraj.

But, before the 22-minute short was to come a web series by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, who Gupta, 52, says, is also a fan. In fact, in 2008, an announcement for a movie on the series was also made. "Gyan Prakash [a historian and professor of history at Princeton University] wrote a book titled Mumbai Fables, where he also wrote about Doga. Later, Kashyap announced again that he'd make the movie. We even signed a contract, but that has now lapsed. So, we thought we'd make something on our own. We started off by attempting a short," says Gupta. Final edits still remain.

Sanjay Gupta

Gupta, the owner and studio head at Raj Comics, says that plans for a ful-length movie haven't been shelved. They are also in talks with actor Kunal Kapoor for the same, "but in the meanwhile, we thought we'd work on something and use that video as a pitch." While a previous Raj Comic film on Nagraj was animated, Doga, says Gupta, is a live action video, because the character, he felt, lent itself to it, much like Super Commando Dhruva.

Directed by Wikki Kaul, the film stars Delhi-based Hazel Choudhury in the titular role. The film was shot over four months in Delhi, he adds. A resident of Delhi, how did he manage to get Mumbai right in the scenes? "We have travelled to Mumbai over the years," he says, adding that a regular character that appears in the short is Inspector Cheeta. Does he worry that Vikramaditya Motwane-directed Bhavesh Joshi: Superhero will eat into all the superhero/vigilante space? "I will know how similar the two are when I see the movie. It is, after all, being made by Kashyap's company."

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