Sooni Taraporevala on Mumbai and ‘Last Man in Tower’

Sooni Taraporevala’s 96-year-old father still lives in the Mumbai building where she grew up. For the writer and filmmaker, returning there means familiar staircases, a familiar gully and memories from her school-uniform years.

That personal map of the city runs through Taraporevala’s work, including the film adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s *Last Man in Tower*. Directed by Ben Rekhi, the film follows a housing committee facing redevelopment after one resident refuses a deal accepted by others.

Taraporevala said she began adapting the novel in 2013, shortly after its publication. She and Rekhi worked on the project for 13 years. Adiga was not involved in the screenplay, she said, as with Taraporevala’s earlier adaptations of Rohinton Mistry’s *Such A Long Journey* and Jhumpa Lahiri’s *The Namesake*.

Mumbai remains central to how she writes and photographs, Taraporevala said. After college in the US, she returned to the city after borrowing money from a roommate to buy her first camera, intending to photograph the place she had missed.

Taraporevala described Mumbai’s mix of communities as a defining quality. Her 2020 film *Yeh Ballet*, she said, included Hindu and Muslim characters whose backgrounds reflected the lives of the performers involved.