'Local Dadas': Why Bhosle Brothers Are Much Sought After In Bollywood

Brothers Sagar and Guru Bhosle claim that they know Bombay like nobody else. As location experts, the brothers started young in the business. Their father, Mohan Bhogle, had been a taxi driver who first entered the Bollywood landscape when he helped a friend with scouting for locations for Bombay Blue (1997). It was 1996. Since then Bhogle became a locations person. “What I see with my eyes I can show,” he would say.

For a taxi driver who was always out in the city, he had known the cityscape by heart. When the brothers went to the sets, they always thought their father was the most important man.

“Papa had style and he would deal with the cops and the corporators and he was in control,” says Sagar, 33. The brothers have inherited some of the flamboyance from their father who wore thick gold chains around his neck. They sport gold rings and the cover of their phone has a tiger.

“You should live like a tiger,” he says. From the young age of 16, Sagar started roaming around the city to understand architecture, demographics and the character of neighbourhoods. Bombay, they say, is a city that has many souls. “The locations are entrenched in my memory,” he says. The younger brother Guru, 29, says he knows the alleys of Bombay by heart. He trained with his father and says he knows his father’s techniques.  “When my father stared, there was no location department at a film production unit. Back then, his father used to take photos and stick them in an album and carry to the directors. Later, CDs and other technology came in.“We changed with time,” says Guru. “Else, time will change you.” What sets them apart is the fact that they are local and grew up in a chawl and later moved to a house in Parel so they have an understanding of the city’s underbelly, its dark lanes and its slums. “Nobody can do what we can,” says Sagar. For them, Bombay is Bollywood. Every corner is a story. They see the city in colours, in patterns, in styles. “For instance, Bandra is good if you want bungalows. There is everything here. You get villages and you get towns. You can even find bits of Delhi here,” Sagar says. “There is the sea. There are mountains. All you have to do is see,” adds Guru. For now, they run three companies- Mumbai Pictures, Cinetree Productions and the View Pictures.  

(This appeared in the print edition as "Local Dadas")