Director Maahir Khan on ‘Buzz,’ the 70-minute documentary that dives into the life, art, and struggles of well-known tattoo artist Eric D’Souza, co-founder of Iron Buzz Tattoos in Mumbai
Buzz, the ‘anti-Slumdog Millionaire’ documentary currently streaming on Jio Hotstar, is not your typical rags-to-riches story, nor is it a reverential, run-of-the-mill homage to an artist who overcame adversity. Executive produced by Anil Kapoor and directed by Maahir Khan, the 70-minute documentary dives into the life and work of Eric Jason D’Souza, co-founder of Iron Buzz Tattoos in Mumbai, and one of India’s most renowned tattoo artists. It traces his journey from the chawls of Mumbai, where survival was an art form in itself, to the present day, where his ink is worn like armour by thousands. But Buzz does more than follow a success story — it interrogates the cost of visibility in a country that often overlooks its street-born geniuses.
In an interview to The Federal, Maahir Khan is just as unfiltered as his film. He doesn’t believe in hero-worship or sugarcoated narratives. He believes in truth — sometimes uncomfortable, often raw, always real. “To tell the truth, I never considered a fictionalised biopic simply because the cost would have been prohibitive,” he admits. “For me, as a first-time filmmaker, it would have been unreasonable to expect anybody to bet that kind of money in this sort of film economy on such a seemingly niche subject. What I did strongly believe was whatever way I could afford to tell this story, I absolutely must. And a documentary seemed to be the way to go. To me, it isn’t how the story is presented, it’s how well it is told no matter the medium.”
Baring an artist’s soul
Khan firmly believed that he and the crew could stay so close to the truth that it would have the same impact as a fictionalised biopic would. he says. “It was definitely, without a doubt, asking Eric to bare his soul,” Khan says. “And I believe he did because we had been close friends for more than a decade at that point. He knew this was not a transactional relationship.” Trust was built not through persuasion but reciprocity. “Had he not opened up as much as he did, it would not have changed our camaraderie. Moreover, I knew that by asking so much of my subjects, it would have been unfair to maintain my walls. Off-camera, yet in front of the whole crew, I would share experiences just as vulnerable as theirs — not for any other reason than to make sure they felt I was not asking for something I was not willing to give in terms of trust.”
Khan’s film doesn’t just document an individual; it captures a practice, a philosophy, a form of resistance, healing and assertion. Tattooing, often dismissed as a subculture, becomes a lens through which Buzz explores art, class, and identity. “It was imperative that we challenge preconceived notions of discriminating ‘real’ art from forms such as tattooing,” he says. “Tattooing is just as serious a medium as an oil painting — though it seems ubiquitous, it is a terribly difficult medium to introduce novelty into and to master. What constitutes ‘art’ is an eternal question, but I hope through Eric’s raw narrative, we were able to show that it is more than a trendy art form. It comes borne out of the same deep wound and drive that inspires so many great artists of every medium.”
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Beyond ink and skin, Buzz pulsates with tenderness. It chronicles Eric’s professional milestones and immerses itself in his emotional landscape. “The most important thing was to not doctor anything at all, be it an assumption, feeling, or point of view to suit the film,” Khan insists. “The trick with this film, and the most challenging part, was to never waver from a realistic, authentic narrative no matter what the price on the enjoyment of the film. What I am most proud of is that from what we have heard from our audiences, we have managed to keep the narrative immersion and pacing on track while making sure we are not doctoring or manipulating the truth through editing misdirection.”
Maahir Khan and Eric D’Souza in a still from Buzz
Eric’s relationship with Diana, his partner, is one of the film’s most moving threads. How did Khan ensure that their partnership, their shared labour, didn’t get lost? “Because I didn’t care if it was appealing, only that I did my friends and their journey justice,” Khan says without hesitation. “The beauty of independent filmmaking is the fact that you have nobody to answer to. The curse is you have very few resources compared to someone who has someone to answer to. And this gave me the ability to choose what was more important — the truth or what I believed would resonate with the audience, running through my own mental filter. I chose the former and I think that was the right choice.”
‘A good story always wins’
Khan says what it shows him is that if authenticity is achieved, the structure finds its way to its correct format. “The alternative is being so set on a POV as a filmmaker that the ego is larger than the subject, and that tends to dilute honesty, which can lead to a miss more often than not. And I think this applies to narrative as well as documentaries. In the former, if we stay true to the what the character and the intent of the story is, deflating the ego to the point where the director’s vision forms around the natural growth of the collaborations involved rather than overpowering it, a film will find its correct form.”
The Buddha tattoo popular at Iron Buzz Tattoos, co-founded by Eric D'Souza in Mumbai, known as the tattoo capital of India
One of the film’s subtle but striking elements is how the past never fully dissolves into the background. Eric’s story has a subtext — class mobility — but that arc isn’t made into a triumphalist narrative. Instead, there’s a tension — the past is always present. Khan argues that he never made the film to make a political or social statement, so he didn’t think too much about it. “I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. The truth is the only goal was to empower the countercultural movement in Mumbai that gave me a social home. I wanted to provide an ambassador to represent their stories.”
Honouring a medium
Buzz never pretends to be omniscient. The camera knows it is being allowed in — it doesn’t sneak, it is invited. “There was no way to make this film omniscient. It had to cost me something for me to ask so much, and in that process, I had to open myself up to complete vulnerability,” Khan reveals. “I never believe in asking for something I wouldn’t give back or have already given. I think Sashank Sana, our super talented DoP, saw that and allowed the camera to follow the nature of how involved this was for me.”
Craft-based vocations like tattoo art rarely get the kind of poetic framing Khan has given in the documentary. Was it part of his mission to elevate the form, to legitimise it in a country that often still sees it as subculture? “Tattoos happened to be the focus here, but it could have been anything else that represented Mumbai’s countercultural movement, such as metal music or subversive fashion,” Khan says. “Eric happened to be the perfect person to stand for all of us, and his vocation was tattooing. As an avid tattoo collector, I am more than grateful that I got to talk about tattooing, but this film was intended to really be about what created the people of this movement more than the medium specifically. Once we decided this was the medium, we attempted to honour it as best we could.”
As the conversation winds down, we discuss the brutal landscape of documentary filmmaking in India. India has seen a surge of documentaries that are making noise on the global stage —All That Breathes, Writing With Fire, Against the Tide. For a documentary filmmaker, what’s the hardest part — raising money, finding an audience, or simply convincing people that real stories deserve screen space? Khan exhales. “The hardest part is breaking the stigma that documentaries are boring. If we can make more entertaining and truthful documentaries, my hope is that they will one day have the same excitement in pre-release as a star-driven narrative vehicle would, and in turn that would influence narrative content to be more focused on story and less on glamour and glitz.”
