ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Gully Boy and Its Silent Mutinies ADITYA MOHANTY Aditya Mohanty (r08am15@abdn.ac.uk) is a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. Vol. 54, Issue No. 8, 23 Feb, 2019 The film Gully Boy is a subtle introduction to the sociology of everyday life in cities of the global South. It rallies home the point that one of the easiest ways to work through the contentious spaces of urban social life in the neo-liberal Indian city is jugaad (the ability to juggle/ creatively tinker with the rules of the game). Kohl-eyed, moderately gaunt-faced, but with a dash of swagger, Murad, the protagonist of Gully Boy, played by Ranveer Singh, enters into a packed stadium that vociferously roots for him. For some, it is the rise of the subaltern slum-dweller to the status of a star rapper, who rallies through the numerous rounds of auditions, and beats contestants coming from rich families. For others, this rapping in Hindi is seen as an act of coming of age; a symbolic moment of social mobility where old-school, African-American hip-hop has been Indianised. The film takes the viewer on a parallel journey of transformation both at a personal level through self-discovery, and at a societal level portraying the salience of small, yet significant changes in the lives of people who inhabit a lower-middle class Muslim neighbourhood in a Mumbai slum. Though the film is an inspirational, reel-life adaptation of the lives of contemporary rappers Divine and Naezy, it is an allegorical smirk at the small ways in which the teeming millions living in the underbelly of glitzy cities carve a niche for themselves. The film keeps the viewer bemused and hooked to its meandering narrative, just as the claustrophobic yet lively serpentine gullies (lanes) of Dharavi, one of Asia’s largest slum