Mehboob Studios

This guide to Mehboob Studios in Mumbai starts with a horseshoe repairer named Mehboob Khan, who arrived in Bombay from Gujarat and somehow talked his way onto a film set. It follows his rise through the 1940s to buying marshy land in Bandra in 1951 and raising a full studio by 1954, built for one purpose: to make an epic nobody else in India dared attempt, released in 1957 as Mother India. You'll hear about the Parsi school and vegetable farms that stood here before the cameras arrived. Look around at the five shooting stages still standing on this stretch of Bandra real estate.