‘The rest is history.’

Posted on December 29, 2013 by admin

“Life’s like a play; it’s not the length but the excellence of acting that matters.”

—Seneca, Roman Philosopher, mid-1st century CE.

For our year end upload we bring you actors from the past few decades. Actors. Not the big-movie stars who have battled constantly for attention, but those who have climbed stealthily into our cultural landscape and are here to stay. Stealthily because unlike our heroes and heroines our films are not tailored to prop them up. But they transcend the stock roles they are given—those of maids, mothers, uncles, villains and at times just a grey amorphous area in a script that is supposed to stand for the ‘common’ man or woman—and bring to these roles and the films something that make them memorable so that, long after, we remember the role, even if not the name of the person who played it. Here are portraits and interviews of five ‘character actors’ who have stood the test of time.

Sulabha Deshpande, 76, has been a founder member of the Marathi theatre groups ‘Rangayan’ (with theatre director Vijaya Mehta and her husband Arvind Deshpande) and ‘Awishkar’. Sulabha and Arvind Deshpande and playwright Vijay Tendulkar were also at the centre of the ‘Chhabildas Movement’ in Marathi experimental theatre during the 1960s and 70s. Her most memorable theatre performance has been that of Benare, the protagonist of Tendulkar’s landmark Marathi play Shantata! Court Chalu Ahe. She essayed the same role in its film adaptation. Deshpande went on to act in several other mainstream and parallel Marathi and Hindi movies, during the seventies and eighties, such as Shyam Benegal‘s Bhumika: The Role (1977) and Kondura (1978), Saeed Akhtar Mirza‘s Albert Pinto Ko Gussa Kyoon Aata Hai (1980) and Govind Nihalani’s Vijeta (1982), and Tezaab (1988), Ghar Ho To Aisa (1990) and Raja Ki Aayegi Baaraat (1997). Her last appearance in a Hindi film has been in English Vinglish (2012). Deshpande is soft spoken and she says her memory isn’t as sharp as it once was. Yet, as we go over the past at her Mahim flat, with the rain falling hard outside, she recounts the most amazing stories.

How did you begin acting?

My father (Vasant Rao Kamerkar) was a recordist with HMV. So, in a big hall at our home, we used to have rehearsals for songs and plays, which he would record. From when I was four years old, which is when I had begun to speak, I would enter that space and perform after the rehearsals. But my first ‘proper’ role was in school, in the seventh standard. There was a play written by a teacher in which I was cast as a small child. After this I did a play in my first year of college, for a festival.

Did you do only Marathi theatre, when you started out, or Hindi theatre as well?

Both. At first I worked in Marathi theatre. My first work in Hindi was Andha Yug, with (theatre director) Satyadev Dubey in 1964. That was for the theatre group Nandikar’s theatre festival in Calcutta. Four days before the play the actress who was playing Gandhari (a character from the Mahabharata, also in this play) left it, so P. L. Deshpande suggested my name to Dubey. That was the first time I met Dubey. He came to my house and said, ‘You have to do it in four days. You have to leave today.’ I said no at first, because my four year old son was ill. At that time Arvindji (Arvind Deshpande), my husband, used to work in experimental theatre too, which there’s no money in. This was reformist theatre, in a way. He said, ‘Go, because Nandikar’s is a very big festival in Calcutta and this team is representing Bombay and that too in Hindi.’ He would take leave from office to take care of our son. So, in four days, I prepared myself for the role of Gandhari. There was tremendous applause at the festival. After this I did two or three more Hindi plays with Dubey.

What was your first professional play— in Marathi or Hindi?

That was in Marathi: Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe. I had done work on two state level plays before this, but they were for amateur competitions. Even they happened quite late, because I was a teacher for 15 years in the Chhabildas Girls’ School, where I had studied as well. Incidentally, this was one of the reasons why our group was later able to get Chhabildas Hall, for 18 years, to rehearse our plays. That’s how our theatre movement came to be called the Chhabildas Theatre Movement.

Coming back, 1967 was when work began on Shantata… (Vijay) Tendulkarji’s play. It was supposed to contest in a government competition (the State Drama Competition, Maharashtra). It was an unusual play for its times, but it won an award for best play and I won one for my role as Benare, the central character. In about four months, appreciation flowed in from all over the country.

Shantata… has a story behind it. After Vijayaji (Vijaya Mehta) left the theatre group Rangayan because of her marriage, Arvindji eventually came to be in charge of it. He did two or three plays and this was the last one. He said to me, ‘There’s no money, in this field, but there is this government competition. We have good actors. Our writer is also good. So if we win a place in the competition, we will get award money and with that we can do more work.’ There were 77 people (in the group) in all, and their finances weren’t in a good state. Vijay (Tendulkar) wasn’t in a good state of mind then either. His elder brother was ill. But everyone insisted that he write and send in something, so he wrote the first act. There wasn’t much to it— no drama.

So in the 21-22 days the show was supposed to take place in, Tendulkar would write all night and Arun Kakde, who stayed next door to Tendulkar, in Vile Parle, would come in the morning, before the milkman arrived, to deliver bits of the script to Arvindji. Arvindji would work on these bits in the evening after his office hours, make notes, prepare them for the next day’s rehearsal. At night he would explain the characters to me. By the end of it I remembered everyone’s lines and knew all the characters. I wasn’t scared of doing the main role.

But what I found really challenging was that Benare, my character, doesn’t say anything throughout the play. She is not heard. She just sits there. In fact, in the final courtroom scene, the judge says: ‘You have 20 seconds. Say whatever you want to say.’ And even then, for twenty seconds, Benare says nothing. Yet Arvindji said that just one look would explain everything about Benare’s history and her life. It’s okay if she doesn’t speak, he said, she can speak with her mind.

Tendulkar, however, didn’t like that she didn’t say anything even at the end. So there was a big fight between them (Tendulkar and Arvind), because 21 days were nearly up and everything had to be ready. And, with two days left for the play to open, he had nearly finished the third act but still hadn’t given in the end. The way things stood then, the play would have had to end after Benare’s 20 seconds of silence. So, when Tendulkarji came to see the rehearsal, everyone shut him in the hall in which we were rehearsing in. Arvindji said, ‘Write the end and only then come out. Till then we’ll do the rehearsal outside.’ After half an hour, or 45 minutes, Tendulkar came out and gave it to him, and left without saying a word. We thought he was angry, but that wasn’t the case. The truth was his elder brother had passed away, and he was grieving. Even then he wrote it. In fact, I also knew the play really well by the date of performance because Tendulkar had explained everything to us as well, right down to the movements…

Shantata! Court Chalu Aahe went on to be translated into 13 languages. We made it in Hindi. And then someone took on the play for 100 shows. Then we did 150 shows. And then Rangayan shut down and a new theatre group called Awishkar was begun by us. I had suggested the name, in fact.

What was the first film you did?

Shantata… in Marathi. That was the first Marathi film. The second film was in Hindi. And that was Shantata… as well. They had taken a loan from NFDC. Dubey was to direct it. In the beginning I refused to do the main role because I felt the heroine had to look good. ‘Who told you that?’ Dubey said. I said, ‘I’ve seen it in so many films. Heroines are chosen this way. And you have taken a loan for this play. Me playing the lead would be okay for an experimental play but not for a film because you’ll have to pay this loan back. I’ll give you some names, they do good work, and they look good too.’ But both the names I gave him said they wouldn’t do it and Dubey was in a fix. So I agreed.

Govind Nihalani was cinematographer on Shantata… and you’ve worked on other films of his later on. With him as well as with Shyam Benegal. How did those roles come about?

Govind Nihalaniji was a part of Arvindji‘s and my circle. We were close friends. We were all at a party, once, at Juhu Hotel. Govindji, me and Amrish Puri were talking so that both of them were looking at me and I was facing the buffet table. Now, when the waiter came he put paraffin into the fire under one of the dishes on the buffet, to heat it, and it exploded into flames. My face and Govind’s back were burnt.

Govind had just arrived in Bombay then and didn’t have anyone in the city. So he stayed at our home for one and a half months, recovering. Shyam Benegal’s Kondura had started filming, at a village near Madras and Govind was a cameraman on it. He left for the site once his back was okay. I was avoiding work still. Though my face was mostly fine, my eyebrows had been burnt and I was uneasy about getting back on stage or screen.

Shyam phoned, asking me to come there. Govind said, ‘Come. You can just enjoy yourself with us.’ Once I reached there Shyam said, ‘Call the makeup man.’ When I asked why, he said: ‘Did I call you here to eat for free? I’ve called you for work.’ I said, ‘You know, you can see my face, how it is… ’ Shyam still insisted on getting my make up done, and immediately after took a picture and showed me. ‘Can you see any difference? No, right? I need Sulabha just as she really is. Come. Let’s start work.’ So that’s how I ended up acting in Kondura. Shyam later said he had really wanted a very natural look anyhow.

You directed a children’s film called Raja Rani Ko Chahiye Pasina.

I used to direct children’s plays. This was one of them that Tendulkarji had written. It was a Marathi educational play that was later translated into Hindi. So V. Shantaram saw the play and said, ‘I want to make a film based on this play. Will you do it?’ But I had never directed a film so I took a month or so first, to figure how to adapt it from theatre to film. It had to be like the play, but it couldn’t be exactly like it. So Tendulkarji and I reworked the script. The story is that the king and the queen don’t have any children. And someone says it’s only when you sweat that you’ll have a child. So they want to sweat and to be able to do so they travel, search for the answer… in the end they learn that without work it’s not possible to sweat…

We went to Shantaram’s office. It had huge doors and there was his famous cage(a golden cage with a parrot in it)outside the office. Shantaram looked at the script and said, ‘However you want to do it, go ahead.’ And on the first day, when we took the first shot, he was watching us from his office on the first floor. It was very sunny and he had this flat hat which he sent down to me. So I wore the hat and began work. Someone took a photo of me in that hat. Someone also said, ‘You are wearing V. Shantaram’s hat. You are making his picture. So now we need to salute you too.’

You have worked with Smita Patil in several movies. What are your memories of her as a co-actor or as a friend?

Smita wasn’t exceptionally beautiful but she was very attractive. She was seedhi saadhi (simple) and didn’t really bother about how to be stylish, how to dress. But she was a fantastic actress. Her parents were social workers and right from childhood she wanted to help whoever she could. Her mother had told me of an incident from when she was a nurse and Smita was four or five years old. Smita had heard about a woman in the hospital in which her mother worked, who had had a third daughter and so no one was coming to see her (because she had given birth to yet another daughter, instead of a son). So Smita’s mother had made tea and Smita kept a portion of it separately. Her mother asked whom she was keeping it for and Smita told her about the woman who had given birth to a third daughter. She was crying about this. So she went to visit the woman with her mother.

In Pet Pyar aur Paap, she was playing a garbage collector. On set there was a hut and the garbage that piled up outside it was very dirty. Smita put her hand in it and I said, ‘Don’t do that. There’s no place to wash your hands. You want to do your work well, fine, but don’t put your hand in dirt.’ She said, ‘Sulabha Tai, do you know where the director is standing? Right in the middle of a puddle, because that’s where the camera is. He’s going to take a shot of me. I shouldn’t be complaining.’

The last film I did with her was Bheegi Palken. After my last scene in the movie with her was done, as I was leaving, I noticed Smita searching for something frantically. She said, ‘I had kept my mangalsutra here and now I can’t find it.’ Her shot was ready and waiting so I gave her my mangalsutra, saying she could return it whenever we met next. But after this she fell ill. I went to see her in the hospital and I remember there was a bottle there (near her bed). I asked her for what it was and she said, ‘Cough medicine.’ I said, ‘But you don’t have cough.’ She said, ‘I don’t have a cough, but I’m not getting any sleep that’s why I’m taking it. It’s good if I can get some sleep.’ I remember saying, ‘It’s not good at all. You’re having a child. Don’t do this.’ I knew there were personal problems she was going through, even though she didn’t tell me herself. She used to drink a lot of the cough syrup, and then sleep. Then her son Prateik was born. He was only 10 days old when she passed away.

After she was gone, I got a phone call from her mother. She said, ‘Smita has left something for you— tied in a cloth. And on that she has written your name.’ I had forgotten about the mangalsutra by then and said, ‘There was nothing of mine with her.’ But she said, ‘Your name is written on it, so it must be something.’ She gave it to me, I opened it, and in the cloth was my mangalsutra.

Your last Hindi film role was in English-Vinglish. How did that come about? Also, your character was different from the typical mother-in-law that we see in the movies. Do you feel women are getting more interesting parts in mainstream Hindi cinema?

There are lots of different roles nowadays for women. Gauri (Shinde, the director) just said: ‘I have faith in you, and there should be one Marathi (actor) in this film (because the central family in the film was a Marathi family). It’s a small role.’ But there’s no such thing as a small role. She never told me what to do. She just told me about the role and the scene. Everyone likes this film, I feel, because everyone relates to it in some way. And true— I’m a different kind of mother-in-law in the movie.

What has been your most challenging film role so far?

I got a call from NFDC about a Kannada film where the director (Vasant Mokashi) wanted me for the main role. That was Gangavva Gangamayi. It won 16 awards. The character I played, the lead, was an old woman. I didn’t know one word of Kannada and I wasn’t comfortable. I said I couldn’t do it in the beginning. After four days the director came to my house. He said, ‘Please do it.’ I said, ‘How can I do it? I don’t even know the language, and you want me to do the main role.’ He said, ‘This story has been written by my father. It’s won an award. My mother said, ‘Give this role of Gangavva, to this Marathi actress that I’ve seen. She should do it.’ I don’t know why my mother said that and what work of yours she’s seen. But I’m doing this for her. How many days will you take to learn to speak the language?’ I told him it would take me two months, but first I would need the script and to find a lady who can speak both Marathi and Kannada.’ So they found a professor who knew Marathi and Kannada very well. The crew wrote my lines in Devanagari and they recorded them for me so I knew how to say them. I, on my part, worked hard at all of this for one and a half months. But I still didn’t have any confidence. I told them during the shoot, ‘Next to the camera, there must be a light cutter (a black sheet on a stand, to cut out excess light while shooting) with my lines and cues written in big letters. I won’t read it, but I need the confidence of knowing that that is there.’ They agreed to this.

I remember there was a big scene, where my character says something very angrily. While talking, I looked from left to right, and the camera was on a trolley. It was moving from a long to a close to an extreme long shot. After I had finished, the cutter had to be moved between shots. But while doing the next shot I realized that there was no cutter there. And so I got nervous and forgot my lines and began to speak in Hindi. And the people who were watching started laughing because they didn’t know that I was Maharashtrian. Whatever they had heard till then was in Kannada— so they thought I knew Kannada. Then the director made everyone get out and did a tight close up.

I had said to the director at first that I’d do it but they’d have to get a good artist to do the dub. So they had arranged for a big Kannada actress to do it. But then I tried to do the dubbing myself. After listening to it for one or two months they said, ‘Sulabhaji’s done very well. Her voice can be used.’

Now, I did another film and there was a Kannada actress working on that. And she said to me, ‘Haven’t you heard, a Maharashtrian actress has won an award for a Kannada film. I haven’t seen the film but the actress who played the role of Gangavva, she’s Maharashtrian. And still I got second place.’ She didn’t know I was the same actress.

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Friends and Lovers

Posted on December 21, 2013 by admin

Here are two excerpts from a book on the life and work of poet and lyricist Sahir Ludhianvi, by Akshay Manwani.

FINDING LOVE IN THE SHADOW OF OEDIPUS

Tumhaarey ahad-e-wafaa ko main ahad kya samjhoon?

Mujhe khud apni mohabbat ka aitbaar nahin

(How do I believe your promises of fidelity?

When my own ability to love remains in doubt)

The great Punjabi poet and writer Amrita Pritam once told Uma Trilok, who authored Amrita-Imroz: A Love Story, of the following conversation involving Sahir and her:

Sahir happened to ask Amrita, ‘Why don’t the two of us go and live in China?’

Amrita, puzzled by Sahir’s sudden suggestion of moving to China, sought an immediate explanation. ‘What will we do living in China?’

‘We shall write poetry,’ replied Sahir, rather vaguely.

Amrita shot back, ‘We can write poetry here without going to China.’

‘Yes we can, but if we go to China we will never come back,’ said Sahir.

It was, as Amrita told Uma, Sahir’s idea of proposing a lifetime together with her.

He was that kind of man.

One of the most intriguing aspects of Sahir’s life was his liaison with Amrita Pritam. Amrita met Sahir sometime around 1944 in Preet Nagar, a village between Lahore and Amritsar. She was at this time married to Pritam Singh, who was an editor, but theirs was not the best of marriages. Husband and wife were known to be on totally different wavelengths from the very beginning.

Amrita, in her mid-twenties at the time, had come to Preet Nagar to attend a mushaira which was being attended by Punjabi and Urdu poets. It was here that she saw and heard Sahir for the first time. She was immediately smitten by him. ‘I do not know whether it was the magic of his words or his silent gaze, but I was captivated by him,’ writes Amrita of the moment.

The mushaira ended only after midnight following which the guests bid goodbye to each other. The next morning they were supposed to go to the neighbouring township of Lopoki, from where a bus had been organized to take them back to Lahore.

However, the following morning they discovered that it had rained the previous night and the road they had to take to reach Lopoki had been rendered slippery and hazardous. Apparently, the sky had turned cloudy during the mushaira itself and it had started drizzling by the time the mushaira had drawn to a close. Amrita saw the hand of fate in all of this as she recalls, ‘Now, when I look back on that night, I can say that destiny had sown the seed of love in my heart which the rain nurtured.’

Desperate to go to Lopoki, the guests made their way ahead cautiously. It was in these circumstances that Amrita experienced her love blossoming for Sahir. She writes:

‘Walking at some distance from Sahir, I noticed that where his shadow was falling on the ground, I was being engulfed by it entirely. Uss waqt nahin jaanti thi ki baad ki zindagi ke kitne hi taptey huey saal mujhey usi ke saaye mein chalte huey kaatney hongey, ya kabhi-kabhi thak kar apne hi aksharon ki chhaya mein baithna hoga. Yeh akshar meri unn nazmo ke thay, jo maine Sahir ki mohabbat mein likhey, lekin unka koi zikr kabhi meri zabaan par nahin aaya (At that time I didn’t know I would spend so many years of my life in his shadow or that at times I would get tired and seek solace in my own words. These poems were written in Sahir’s love, but I never revealed the inspiration behind them publicly).’

Over the course of attending several such mushairas, the acquaintance between the two grew into a mutual affection.

It was by all reckoning a most unusual relationship. The two hardly ever spoke to each other, preferring instead to let silence define their association. ‘There were two obstacles between us – one of silence, which remained forever. And the other was language. I wrote poetry in Punjabi, Sahir in Urdu.’

The silence that defined their relationship finds mention in her poems:

Kayee barson ke baad achaanak ek mulaaqat

Hum dono ke praan ek nazm ki tarah kaanpey

Saamney ek puri raat thi

Par aadhee nazm ek koney mein simti rahi

Aur aadhee nazm ek koney mein baithi rahi

Phir subah savere

Hum kaagaz ke fatey huey tukdon ki tarah miley

Maine apne haath mein uska haath liya

Usne apney baanh mein meri baanh daali

Aur hum dono ek censor ki tarah hansey

Aur kaagaz ko ek thandey mez par rakh kar

Us saari nazm par lakeer pher di

(After many years, a sudden meeting

Both of us experienced a kind of nervousness

A whole night stretched ahead of us

But one half of the poem remained confined in one corner

The other half, in another

Then, the next morning

We met like torn pieces of paper

I took his hand in my hand

And he took my arms in his

And we both laughed liked censors

Having kept the paper on the desk beside us

We scratched out the entire poem written on it)

Even in her autobiography, Raseedi Tikkat (Revenue Stamp), Amrita writes of the eloquent silence that characterized their relationship:

‘When Sahir would come to meet me in Lahore, it was as if an extension of my silence had occupied the adjacent chair and then gone away . . .

He would quietly smoke his cigarettes, putting out each after having finished only half of it. He would then light a new cigarette. After he would leave, the room would be full of his unfinished cigarettes . . .

I would keep these remaining cigarettes carefully in the cupboard after he left. I would only light them while sitting alone by myself. When I would hold one of these cigarettes between my fingers, I would feel as if I was touching his
hands . . .

This is how I took to smoking. Smoking gave me the feeling that he was close to me. He appeared, each time, like a genie in the smoke emanating from the cigarette.’

She also gives Sahir’s side of the story. ‘Sahir also told me, much later in life, “When both of us were in Lahore, I would often come close to your house and stand at the corner where I would sometimes buy a paan, or light a cigarette or hold a glass of soda in my hand. I would stand there for hours together watching that window of your house which opened towards the street.”’

Then, when the country was partitioned, Amrita moved with her husband and eventually settled down in Delhi. Sahir, as we already know, had established himself in Bombay a few years after Partition.

Amrita hit upon a novel idea to bridge the geographical distance between the two. She began to include her experiences with Sahir in her literary endeavours. His character featured prominently in the anthology of poems ‘Ik si Anita’ (A Girl Named Anita), the novel ‘Dilli Diyaa Galiyaan’ (The Bylanes of Delhi) and the collection of short stories ‘Aakhari Khat’ (Final Letter). Her poem ‘Sunehray’ (Messages), which fetched her the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1956, was also written for Sahir.

An interesting anecdote regarding their relationship can be found in the short story ‘Aakhari Khat’ in the eponymous collection. It was in the year 1955 that the weekly Urdu magazine Aayeena was launched from Delhi. When Aayeena requested Amrita to write a story for them, she decided to use the publication as a conduit to get through to Sahir. She wrote of her first meeting with Sahir in the form of a story and called it ‘Aakhari Khat’.

In its short life, Aayeena had already become an acclaimed weekly publication and was well respected amongst Urdu literary figures. This convinced Amrita that her story would reach Sahir and would probably bridge the language divide between them. Yet, many days passed with no response from Sahir.

Then, one day, Amrita ran into him. And he said: ‘When I read “Aakhari Khat”, I was so delighted that I wanted to take the magazine to each of my friends and tell them – look this has been written for me, but I decided to keep quiet. I thought if I told friends like Khwaja Ahmad Abbas and Krishan Chander, they would chide me and threaten to take me to the asylum.’

Amrita was a stunningly beautiful woman. The film writer C.L. Kavish is eloquent in his description of her: ‘Amrita Pritam was a chiselled piece of marble. If a sculptor’s eyes had fallen on her, he would have carved a statue out of her that would have been worshipped as Radha in temples today.’

Sahir Ludhianvi, as Kaifi Azmi describes him, was about six feet tall. He had long, shapely legs, a slim waist, was broad-chested and had pockmarks on his face. He had a prominent nose and beautiful eyes, which seemed lost in deep thought. His hair was long and lustrous and he walked with loose strides, often with a tin of cigarettes in his hand. There is nothing in this description to suggest that Sahir was blessed with less-than-average looks. Yet, as Amrita also observed, Sahir’s biggest complex in life was that he was not good-looking.

She narrated an incident to reinforce her point.

‘One day Sahir offered to tell my daughter a story. He started by saying, “Once, there was a woodcutter who would chop wood all day long in the jungle. One day he noticed a beautiful young princess. He yearned to run away with her . . . But he was only a poor woodcutter. He kept admiring her from a distance, and then, disappointed, returned to chopping wood.”

Sahir then asked my daughter, “Is that not a true story?”

“Yes, even I have seen this happen.” I don’t know why my daughter said this but she did.

Sahir laughed. He looked at me and said, “See, even she knows.” He asked my daughter, “You saw them, didn’t you?”

My daughter nodded her head.

“Who was the woodcutter?” asked Sahir.

Possibly under the influence of some divine power, my daughter mumbled, “You . . .”

Sahir then asked, “And the princess, who was she?”

“Mama!” my daughter said gleefully.

Sahir looked at me and said, “See, children know everything.”‘

But Sahir’s looks weren’t an issue for Amrita. Going by her account, she was deeply in love with Sahir. At various places in her autobiography, she makes fawning references to him. There is mention of Sahir in the very first few pages of her autobiography when Amrita talks about rebelling against her maternal grandmother for the first time (Amrita had lost her mother when she was only eleven years old).

Amrita, only fifteen then, had noticed that her grandmother kept three glasses on a tray in one corner of the kitchen, separate from all the other vessels. These glasses would only be put to use when Amrita’s father’s Muslim friends came to visit and they had to be served tea or lassi. After the guests would leave, these glasses would once again find their way back to the corner.

Amrita eventually challenged her grandmother. Knowing very well that her grandmother could be bigoted but could not afford to have her granddaughter starve, Amrita insisted on having water and milk in those very same glasses. The matter eventually reached Amrita’s father. Amrita succeeded in making her point and all vessels ceased to be segregated thereafter.

Amrita ends this episode with an obvious reference to Sahir. ‘At that moment, neither I nor my grandmother were aware that on growing up, the individual I would love deeply for many years of my life would belong to the same faith for whom those three glasses had been put aside. He was not part of my life then, but I think, at that instant, it was his shadow that graced my childhood . . .’

Later in the book, Amrita remarks that the woman in her always played second fiddle to the writer, but for three exceptions. One such exception pertained to Sahir. He had been running a slight temperature and was breathing with great difficulty. Amrita tended to Sahir with great care and even applied ‘Vicks’ on his neck and chest.

‘I can’t remember for how long, but I felt that I could stand on my feet and rub my fingers and palms gently on his chest for the rest of my life. The “woman” within me did not feel the need for any paper or pen at that time,’ Amrita recalls.

If this tender moment confirms Amrita’s complete devotion to Sahir, her single-minded obsession with Sahir also reveals itself in the autobiography.

Towards the end of 1946, Amrita was pregnant with her son. She had heard that a child resembles the kind of photographs that adorn a pregnant woman’s room or the person she imagines in her mind. Convinced by this theory, Amrita started thinking about Sahir constantly. She hoped that her son would resemble Sahir. When her son, Navraj, was born on 3 July 1947, and Amrita saw his face for the first time, she was convinced that he actually looked like Sahir.

Such obsessive behaviour obviously led to speculation about whether Navraj was indeed Sahir’s son. Amrita even mentioned that when she visited Bombay in 1960, Rajinder Singh Bedi (the Progressive writer) even confronted her on the subject to which Amrita replied, ‘This is the truth of my imagination, not the truth in reality.’

Given such devotion on her part, it is not surprising that when Amrita learnt of Sahir’s involvement with another woman in 1960, she was left extremely distressed.

***

THE CHOPRAS COME CALLING

Then there was the matter of meeting Yash Chopra in his office.

The entrance to his chamber itself fills one with a sense of reverential awe, covered as it is by photographs of Yash’s many blockbusters that are an integral part of the legacy of popular Hindi cinema. Once you get over that and past the door, you find yourself in an office whose size not only mirrors the stature of the person sitting in it, but also makes you wonder about the hue and cry about space in the city. Situated on the fourth floor of YRF Studios, Andheri (West), Mumbai, Yash’s office is probably the size of a king’s durbar with a beautiful garden beyond the glass partitioning on one side adding to the grandeur. It is so huge that when you mixed sugar in the tea that Yash offered so kindly to every visitor, you could hear the distinct echo of the spoon clattering against the inside of your teacup.

Yash sat at one end of the room, with his many trophies and awards placed behind him, a very visible reminder of his achievements in the film industry. Towards the other end of the room was a large flat-screen television, neatly tucked away in a wall unit, with a sofa set placed in front, possibly, for Yash to entertain his guests or watch the rushes of one of his many films under production.

Despite the intimidating surroundings, I found myself engrossed in conversation with Yash for close to ninety minutes. The grand old man, who had served Indian cinema for over five decades, opened up on his long-time friend and associate, Sahir, in his trademark style – a delightful mix of English, Punjabi and Hindi.

‘I was a fan of Sahir’s poetry. I had read all his poetry when I was in college [in Jalandhar],’ Yash began. Accordingly, when he came to Bombay in the early 1950s, Yash wanted to meet Sahir. B.R. Chopra, who had already established himself in the film industry by this time, thought that his younger brother might be excited to see some stars. He asked Yash whom he would like to meet.

‘Sahir,’ said Yash.

‘He was staying in a place called Four Bungalows. I met him. We became, I can’t say friends, but we began on a positive note towards each other,’ said Yash Chopra of his first encounter with Sahir.

The first movie that Sahir worked with B.R. Films was Naya Daur (1957). The film was produced and directed by B.R. Chopra. Yash played a prominent part in securing the role of the songwriter for Sahir in this film. ‘We were very good friends. I had confidence in Sahir’s poetry. When I came into B.R. Films, as an assistant to Mr Chopra, I suggested his name. That was the beginning of Sahir’s journey in B.R. Films.’

Naya Daur released in the same year as Pyaasa. The film had a strong socialistic flavour in keeping with the ideology of the Nehruvian era. It championed the cause of manual labour in the face of modernization and mechanization. It had a predominantly rural setting, with a tangewala, Shankar (Dilip Kumar), playing the central character in the film. Vyjayanthimala starred as the female lead.

Naya Daur’s soundtrack, like the movie, was a runaway hit. Like in Pyaasa, the songs serve a variety of purposes and address a number of themes. ‘Ude jab jab zulfein teri’ (Whenever your locks blow in the wind) ever so beautifully brings out the budding romance between the film’s protagonists while retaining a strong, yet innocuous, flirtatious flavour. There are two remarkable aspects to this song. Firstly, the word ‘zulfein’ is used by Vyjayanthimala’s character to describe Dilip Kumar’s locks. This is surprising as ‘zulf’ has traditionally been used by the hero in Hindi cinema to describe the heroine’s beauty. The other is the use of the word ‘yaar’ in the second stanza of the song:

Us gaaon pe swarg bhi sadke

Ke jahan mera yaar basta

(I forsake heaven too for the village

Where my beloved lives)

The word ‘yaar’, which literally means ‘friend’, has at times been used with a negative connotation – ‘Bahut yaaraana lagta hai’ (There is great chemistry between the two of you) – in Hindi cinema to insinuate an illicit relationship between a man and a woman. Eventually, though, the word did find a place in hit romantic numbers shot on female characters: ‘Poocho na yaar kya hua’ (Ask my dear what the matter is) and ‘Yaar bina chain kahaan re’ (There is no peace in the absence of a soulmate). But for Sahir to have given Vyjayanthimala’s character this word to use for her beloved in the 1950s, even when it was not in direct reference to Dilip Kumar’s character, was both pioneering and brave.

Equally inspiring is the song ‘Yeh desh hai veer jawaano ka’:

Yeh desh hai veer jawaano ka

Albelon ka, mastaano ka

Is desh ka yaaron kya kehna, yeh desh hai duniya ka gehna

Yahaan chaudi chhaatee veeron kee

Yahaan bholi shakley Heeron kee

Yahaan gaate hai Raanjhein masti mein

Machti hain dhoomein basti mein

Pedon pe bahaarein jhuloon ki

Raahon mein kataare phoolon ki

Yahaan hansta hai saawan balon mein

Khilti hain kaliyaan gaalon mein

(This is the land of spirited youth

Of beautiful, carefree inhabitants

What does one say in praise of this nation, this country is the pride of the world

The brave here are strapping lads

The maidens are blessed with innocent faces

Here, love-struck men sing with gay abandon

The neighbourhood comes alive with joy

The trees swing in the glory of spring

The streets are lined with beautiful flowers

Here, the rain shimmers in the maidens’ hair

Their cheeks glowing like buds)

The website upperstall.com captures the true essence of this composition when it says, ‘A certain pride in the still-developing nation is seen as embodied by the song.’

But going beyond that observation, one needs to juxtapose ‘Yeh desh hai veer jawaano ka’ vis-à-vis another great Sahir song which ruled the waves that year: ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par woh kahaan hain’ in Pyaasa. It is noteworthy that both songs address the same subject so to speak, the nation state, and yet are at complete odds with each other. Where the former, with its vibrant character, paints a heartening picture of India, the song in Pyaasa expresses disillusionment with the nation state. Both songs are true to their respective characters. Where Shankar and Krishna of Naya Daur are virile, self-confident boys, Vijay of Pyaasa is a defeatist hero. Where Naya Daur’s protagonists are not afraid to challenge their fate, Vijay is resigned to his.

For Sahir to have penned two such contrasting songs with totally different moods on the same subject was nothing short of remarkable. Then there is ‘Saathi haath badhana’. The song, with its call for unity amongst the proletariat, has since become a rallying cry for Indians when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds:

Saathi haath badhaana, saathi haath badhaana

Ek akela thak jaayega, milkar bojh uthaana

Hum mehnat waalon ne jab bhi mil kar kadam badhaaya

Saagar ne rasta chhoda, parbat ne sees jhukaaya

Faulaadi hain seeney apne, faulaadi hain baahein

Hum chaahein toh paida kar de chattaanon mein raahein

Saathi haath badhaana

(Oh friend, extend your helping hand

One alone will easily tire, let us share each other’s burden instead

Whenever we, the working class, have worked together

The seas have parted way for us, the mountains have bowed their heads

Our chests are made of steel, our arms full of zeal

If we wish we can create our own path even through rocks and stone

Oh friend, extend your helping hand)

Like in Pyaasa, Sahir also slipped in yet another plea for the socialist order through the Johnny Walker ditty ‘Main Bambai ka babu’ (I come from Bombay) in Naya Daur:

Kuch hain daulat waaley, kuch hain taaqat waaley

Asli waaley woh hain jo hain himmat waaley

Sun lo aji sun lo yeh jadoo ka taraana

Aaya hoon main bandhu

Roos aur Cheen mein jaake

Kaam ki baat bata di arrey comedy gaana gaakey

Sun lo aji sun lo yeh jadoo ka taraana

(There are some who are wealthy, there are some who are powerful

But the people with character are those who have courage

Listen, listen carefully, to this magical song

I have come over here, my friend,

Having travelled to Russia and China

My message of great significance comes to you in jest

Listen, listen carefully, to this magical song)

There is the usual song of love and romance, ‘Maang ke saath tumhaara’ (Having asked for your companionship), as also a hymn in praise of the Almighty, ‘Aana hai toh aa raah mein kuch pher nahin hai’ (Come if you wish to come, the path is without obstacles). But what set Naya Daur apart from what Sahir had done in his brief career in the film industry so far was the distinct rustic element to his lyrics in the film. Songs like ‘Ude jab jab zulfein teri’, ‘Yeh desh hai veer jawaano ka’ and ‘Reshmi salwaar kurta jaali ka’ (The maiden dressed in silk salwaar and gossamer kurta) are rich with words like ‘kotwaali’ (police station), ‘phool jhadiyaan’ (fire crackers), ‘saawan’ (month in the Hindu calendar associated with the rains, the monsoon), ‘Raanjhein’ (Romeo-like Punjabi folk character), ‘kawaariyon’ (nubile young maidens) which augment the film’s rural setting. In doing this, Sahir charted new territory successfully.

Javed Akhtar brings out the contrast between Pyaasa and Naya Daur:

‘One is the story of a poet. The other is the story of a tangewala. One story is extremely urban, in the other there is a village. You can see the total difference of metaphor, of language, of vocabulary, of style.

In one he wrote ‘Jaane woh kaise log thay jinke pyaar ko pyaar mila, humne toh jab kaliyaan maangi kaaton ka haar mila’ and in the other he is saying ‘Reshmi salwaar kurta jaali ka, roop saha nahi jaayein nakhre waali ka’. There is an earthiness to the songs in Naya Daur, whereas the poetry in Pyaasa is of cultivated, sophisticated, polished and educated expressions.

Even in the bhajan in Pyaasa, ‘Aaj sajan mohe anj laga lo’, there is a certain sophistication. In Naya Daur, the character is of a villager and the songs are also suitably rustic.’

If 1957 was the year in which Sahir produced his finest work through Pyaasa and Naya Daur, it was also the year that saw him part ways, first with S.D. Burman, and then with O.P. Nayyar. There was Sone Ki Chidiya, which released a year later and in which Nayyar and Sahir worked together, but the songs for that film had been written before Naya Daur released. Nayyar and Sahir went their separate ways immediately after Naya Daur.

To get further insights into Sahir’s relationship with the Chopra family, I met Ravi Chopra, B.R. Chopra’s son and a producer-director in his own right, in April 2010 at the B.R. Films’ office in Mumbai’s Khar (West) neighbourhood. The B.R. Films’ office is a pale shadow of its once glorious past, a phase that lasted for almost fifteen years from the mid-1950s to the late-1960s. Even during the 1980s, when B.R. Films produced and directed a couple of successful commercial potboilers – Insaaf Ka Taraazu (1980), Nikaah (1982) and Tawaif (1985) – and the popular television serial, Mahabharat, the banner was a name to be reckoned with. However, in the last decade, with the passing of B.R. Chopra in 2008, the failure of films like Baabul (2006) and Bhoothnath (2008) at the box office, and the family having to contend with several court cases, B.R. Films hit its lowest ebb. This decline in fortunes is what many believe to be the reason for Ravi Chopra’s ill health since late-2009. In fact, when I met Ravi, he had just returned from hospital, having temporarily recovered from a breathing ailment which had severely constrained his ability to speak. Despite his condition, Ravi was gracious enough to tell me all that he knew about Sahir from what he had heard from his father and what he had noticed of the man on the basis of his own working relationship with him.

Ravi spoke of the severing of ties with O.P. Nayyar: ‘After finishing Naya Daur, O.P. Nayyar said he didn’t want to work with Mr Sahir Ludhianvi any more. Dad told him [Nayyar], “He [Sahir] has not told me that he does not want to work with you. If you say that you do not want to work with him, so be it, but I will work with him.”’ Yash Chopra corroborated Ravi’s version. He said BR was unwilling to turn his back on Sahir Ludhianvi because of Nayyar’s unwillingness to work with him. At the same time, Yash believed that if it was Sahir who had said that he didn’t want to work with Nayyar, BR would have reacted no differently. ‘I think this was a matter of personal egos. Kabhi kabhi koi loose sentence bol dena, artistic people ko hurt bahut karti hai (At times a casual remark can hurt artistic people very badly),’ said the veteran producer-director. Nayyar and Sahir worked together in very few films. Their partnership was nowhere as prodigious as the S.D. Burman–Sahir combine. But their all-too-brief association did result in a timeless classic in Naya Daur, for which Nayyar won his only Filmfare Award for Best Music Director.

Following the triumph of Naya Daur, Sahir entrenched himself firmly under the B.R. Films’ umbrella. Over the next ten years, his partnership with the Chopras resulted in quality cinema enhanced by fine lyrics.

It is important to understand here what B.R. Chopra, very much the patriarch in the Chopra family and the man behind B.R. Films, stood for in terms of his cinematic vision. Before he turned director with Afsaana (1951), BR had established himself as a successful film journalist in the early 1940s. In that role he was severely critical of film producers. From his perspective, they ‘were wasting their time with comedies and mythologicals, dancing and songs, thus avoiding dealing with any serious social issues’. Accordingly, when BR started producing his own films, he saw it as an opportunity to address issues of social reform.

BR’s philosophy found immediate resonance with Sahir. Because of his Progressive leanings, and then through his songs in Pyaasa and Naya Daur, Sahir had already committed himself to using the film medium to air his views on matters of social importance.

Sadhana (1958), the next film under the B.R. Films’ banner, dealt with the subject of an educated young man, Mohan (Sunil Dutt), falling in love, unknowingly, with a courtesan, Champabai (Vyjayanthimala), and his subsequent dilemma in offering her a new life by agreeing to marry her. Sahir set the tone for Champabai’s character early in Sadhana with the song ‘Kaho ji tum kya kya khareedoge?’:

Mohabbat bechti hoon main, sharaafat bechti hoon main

Na ho gairat toh le jao, ki gairat bechti hoon main

Nigahein toh milao, adaayein na dikhao, yahaan na sharmao

Kaho ji tum kya kya khareedoge?

(I am in the business of selling love, I sell propriety as well

If you have no self-respect, you may buy that, too, for I sell my own self-respect as well

Look me in the eye at least, do not be high handed, do not play coy

Tell me what all is it that you have come to buy?)

Closer to the climax of the film, he produced the song that summarized the courtesan’s troubles and articulated BR’s directorial vision:

Aurat ne janam diya mardon ko, mardon ne usay bazaar diya

Jab bhi chaaha masla kuchla, jab bhi chaha dhutkaar diya

Tulti hain kahin dinaaro mein, bikti hain kahin baazaaro mein

Nangi nachwayee jaati hai, ayyaashon ke darbaaron mein

Yeh woh beizzat cheez hai jo bant jaati hai izzatdaaron mein . . .

Jin hothon ne inko pyaar kiya, un hothon ka wyaapaar kiya

Jis kokh mein inka jism dhala, us kokh ka kaarobaar kiya

Jis tann se ugey kopal bankar, us tann ko zaleelo-khwaar kiya . . .

Sansaar ki har ek besharmi, gurbat ki godh mein palti hai

Chaklon heen mein aakar rukti hai, faakon se jo raah nikalti hai

Mardon ki hawas hai jo aksar aurat ko paap mein dhalti hai

(Woman gave birth to man, men confined her to the brothel instead

Whenever he wishes he tramples over her, whenever he wishes he treats her contemptuously

At places she is valued in money, sold in many a brothel

She is paraded naked in the drawing rooms of the depraved

She is that disgraced commodity that is feasted upon by the self-respecting . . .

The very lips that gave men love, those very lips have been bargained

The wombs in which their bodies were nourished, those very wombs have been trafficked

The bodies they were raised from, the same bodies they have now brought disrepute to . . .

Every immoral act in this world, owes its genesis to impoverished circumstances

In brothels they come to an end, those roads that begin from poverty

It is the lust of men which often drives women to a life of sin)

Where ‘Jinhe naaz hai Hind par’ in Pyaasa is a subtle lament on the plight of women, ‘Aurat ne janam diya mardo ko’ is scathing, almost melodramatic, in its tone. This isn’t a bystander’s cynical view of proceedings, like Vijay’s in Pyaasa. Instead, it is a courtesan’s first-hand account of man’s twisted ways. Yash Chopra remarked in reference to this song: ‘Sahir was very, very bitter about certain things. Where even certain dialogue writers could not write so powerfully, his poetry did that magic.’

Excerpted from Sahir Ludhianvi: The People’s Poet, published by Harper Collins. You can buy the book here.

Siddharth Roy Kapur – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

Posted on December 15, 2013 by admin

The Hindi film industry has changed beyond recognition in the last five years and to get a proper sense of this change one has to go behind the scenes and look at how movies are produced now. At the helm of this change is UTV which was acquired by the Walt Disney Company in 2012. Siddharth Roy Kapur is Managing Director (MD) of The Walt Disney Company India’s studio wing Studios – Disney UTV. From January 1, 2014, he will be MD, The Walt Disney Company India. Kapur loves the movies and knows the movies but foremost he is a hardnosed businessman. In this all-you-need-to-know interview he gives us the lowdown on the business of films in Mumbai.

An edited transcript:

WHAT IS A PRODUCER?

I’m going to start with asking you how you define the term ‘producer’? Also how has the Indian definition been different from the West and how is it changing now?

Sure. I think the best way to define the term producer, really, is a creative catalyst. I think it’s someone who doesn’t get in there and do the writing or do the directing themselves but ensures that the creative people have got the wherewithal and all the means to do whatever it is that they need to do.

So I’d say that’s probably the best way to define it, you know, someone who makes things happen from the outside rather than sort of, rolling their sleeves up and doing the creative work themselves, but understands creative, has a point of view, has a commercial hat on and a creative hat on, is able to manage relationships, is able to manage crisis, is able to manage situations that need managing so that the creative people can just focus on getting the movie made. And then give the film the platform it deserves, market it and distribute it in the right manner and really take it forward and give it the scale that it deserves. So I think that would be the best way to define a producer.

And how, traditionally, has the definition been different in the West and in India?

I think the term producer in the West really refers to… In India you have got a combination, like we (Studios – Disney UTV) are, of a studio-cum-producer. I mean we’re a little bit of a unique model in that sense, where we’re a production house as well as a studio. Whereas the way it works in the West is really you’ve got individual producers who do the job of, firstly, raising finances, getting the whole creative team together, putting the whole package together of the film, talking to talent, talking to directors, talking to technicians and then going to a studio and selling it to a studio and then working on the best deal possible. That model does exist in India as well. But we follow a model where we produce our own movies and then we go out and market and distribute them. So, effectively, we are the producer as well as the distributor, or the studio. But when we’re doing co-productions with other talent or probably with another producer then it follows pretty much the same model as it is in the West.

Okay. Name three qualities that you think a producer must have.

Perseverance and tenacity. I think that’s one, sort of, joint quality. I mean, each term is different in its own way but it really talks about the same thing, which is going forth and doing what you need to. Also I’d say definitely a creative bent of mind where you’re able to understand creative people and able to understand creative work. And an understanding of the way the commercials (the commercial elements) would work where filmmaking is concerned. So I think it’s really these three things that might define what would make a successful producer.

WHICH FILM TO PRODUCE

How do you pick a script? And what at stage do you usually pick a script? What are the factors? Is trends one of the factors?

You know I think things like trends etc. come into the picture later once you’ve reacted instinctively to a script. I don’t think you can start off reacting to trends. You really react to the creative work. You react to the story. We actually come in early in the process where… I mean, one could be, of course, someone’s done a final screenplay draft and we’re reading it. The other could be that we really like a story, or we’ve read a newspaper article that we really like, there’s just a one line story idea that we really like and then we work with the writer to develop it into a screenplay. So it really depends.

You know, a lot of people have been talking about the aggregator-to-aggregator model. Is that something you guys are using as well? And how do you approach it?

What exactly is… I mean I haven’t heard that term before.

Basically when you pick a portfolio of films rather than picking up one film. Each one sort of feeds of the others, economically.

Right. Well, you know, we actually call it our slate of movies for the year. So when we’re building a slate for a year we’re pretty genre-agnostic. We make romance, comedy, horror, drama, historicals— any sort of film, as long as it’s entertaining and it moves us creatively. Sometimes we’ll go right, sometimes we’ll go wrong, but hopefully we’ll go more right than wrong. So that’s how we define our slate. We don’t define it by budget or genre or star cast or… you know… But we know that we’ll be making approximately 10 to 12 movies a year. We know roughly that maybe four will fall into what you call your ‘tent-pole films’ which are your big ticket productions. Four might be in the medium zone and four in the small zone but we’re pretty flexible about four becoming five or three or whatever. And that’s really how we do it. And then when we are going out on a business to business basis—if you’re going to broadcasters, you’re going to exhibitors, you’re going out to distribute your movie—I think the strength of your slate, as a combined entity, is really what they react to. And they’re like: ‘Okay, I’m getting all this great content from one studio. So obviously the commercial terms that I’ll negotiate with them will be in accordance with understanding that they bring a certain heft year after year.’

Okay. So you’re saying it’s roughly divided into big, medium, small films but you don’t say ‘Maybe this genre or that genre… ‘ Everything else is wide open?

Well we do and there may be a time when we realise that, you know, we don’t have any romantic films in our slate. But we’re not going to make one because we have to. We’re going to make one only if we come across a great script. But we will actively then try to develop one. And if we really like it, then that would be a priority to do. But it’s really defined by the sort of material that we are able to react to and…

So you’re a lot more open. So, for example, if you had already had a horror film and you were more inclined towards a romantic film but you came across a fantastic horror film you would go ahead and make it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, there used to be a way of talking about films which was ‘pre-Friday films’ and ‘post-Friday films’. I’m talking about way back where this depended on whether you could sell the film before it was released or not. Is that an outdated concept? The second question is, of course, the changing equations between distributors and producers and producers, like you said, turning distributors themselves. Of course, there are advantages. You don’t have to undersell, you get a lot more revenue. Are there any cons to it? Is there something to watch out for as well? What are your thoughts on that?

So, to your first question actually, where you talked about the pre-Friday and post-Friday, I wouldn’t quite say it’s an outdated concept. I’d say that probably still exists. You know, stars have a value and at the end of the day if your film is a film with a star, then you’re more likely than not to be able to pre-sell it. If it’s a film without a star and if it’s a high concept movie that is really being made because of your courage of conviction in actually making it then you’re more likely not going to find someone who backs your vision in the way you are backing it and you’ll be out there on that Friday figuring out whether you made the right call or not, not being able to de-risk. But the benefit of being a studio is, like I said, when you’re going out into the market with your slate and you’re going to broadcasters, they’ll invest in your slate of movies. So you might actually be able to de-risk in that sense. But if you’re an individual producer with a smaller film that doesn’t have a star cast you either might have to undersell because someone is only going to react to saying, ‘This is the genre of the movie, this is the director’s track record, your stars don’t have much of a track record. If you want me to buy a pre-release, this is all I can offer you.’ And then you’re probably better off, if you have the ability, financially, to withstand it, to go ahead and take the risk. You have made the movie, right? So you might as well take the risk all the way through.

To your second question, regarding producers turning distributors, the studio model in India used to be around in the twenties and thirties and forties. And after that it got fragmented once again and you had individual directors and then producers for those directors and then 14 distributors across the country paying you an advance so you could get your film made and then… But it has changed over the last decade or 15 years where you had Yash Raj really developing a studio model. You’ve had us developing a studio model and now we’re The Walt Disney company which is a studio. You’ve got Fox, you’ve got Viacom, you’ve got lots of players out there today who are effectively studios. So a few years ago, the fragmented distribution model was undergoing a change because there weren’t that many movies out there for individual distributors to go out and acquire. Having said that, today I think the water’s reached its own level where you’ve got smaller individual distributors in various territories who go out and acquire movies from studios at a price that the studio is happy to dispose it off at, because they’re able to de-risk at that point of time. So I think that’s something that every studio looks at tactically, on every film, where you’ve got a certain estimate of what you’ll do theatrically and if someone’s willing to offer you more than that pre-release you’d rather sell and repent rather than not sell and repent. That’s just the way that I think the studio would look at it.

EXHIBITOR ISSUES

Okay I’m going to talk to you a bit about exhibitors. I will come to the commercial end of it but this is purely on the creative level. How have the attitudes of the exhibitors changed, if at all, when it comes to films? Because, of course, a lot of studios, a lot of production houses, like your own, are making very different kind of films now. In your experience, the exhibitors here, in tier one, tier two cities— how have their attitudes changed? Have they changed enough? Have they kept up with the way production is happening today?

I think the multiplexes are pretty much on the cutting edge of knowing exactly what is going on. I think when it comes to single screens, of course, you have some people who might be old school and might think in a certain manner and some who have moved with the times and digitized their cinemas and are now looking at much more movies being released in their cinemas because of digitization. Whereas earlier, because physical prints were involved, studios or producers had maybe stopped sending physical prints to certain cinemas because the returns from there didn’t justify the cost of the print. So it’s a mix. But, having said that, today 60 percent of your revenue, whatever type of movie it is, is coming from multiplexes across the country. So the term that had been coined a few years ago, that it’s a ‘multiplex film’ is really irrelevant today because every film is a multiplex film in that sense. More than 50 percent of revenue of even a Rowdy Rathore is coming from multiplexes, which means that even your massiest film in that sense is still getting more than half its revenue from the multiplexes.

See that might be for several reasons, which we’ll come to later. One is digitization, which you mentioned. One is, of course, the screen density which is abysmal. But I’m talking about purely on an attitudinal level, on how they perceive cinema. Is that not changing? Because that can be a block in itself.

Well, it’s changing to a certain extent. But having said that, if you’re asking about whether they are open to looking at a smaller film, having reduced ticket prices through the week, being given a platform release and being allowed to grow and therefore being given terms in subsequent weeks which will be equivalent to the previous week’s terms because it’s the first week in that particular centre… things like that haven’t happened and I think you can’t blame them also, to a certain extent, because they’ve invested a lot of capital in building these massive multiplexes. The returns have got to be justified. They’ve got an installed capacity of ‘X’ number of seats and they’ve got to basically juice as much as they can from those seats. Now if they had to do that they would rather give more screens to a bigger film rather than giving it to a smaller film in its fourth week of release where they’re not that sure what’s going to happen. So, I think it’s a bit of chicken and egg and it’s really baby steps we’ll be taking as we go along making cinema like that towards everyone realising that cinema like that can also be commercial— which I think we’ve seen last year. Last year was really quite a watershed year in that sense. And I think it’s going to take its own time. So as long as everyone’s appreciating everyone’s challenges. I think it’s very important to do that because we can bemoan the fact that it’s not happening but the reason we’re able to distribute our films so widely today is because these people have invested hundreds of crores in building these massive multiplexes.

Now coming to the commercial side of it, INOX, PVR, BIG (Cinemas), they own almost 75 percent of the screen space in India today. Is an exhibitor’s strike like what happened in 2009 likely again and how far have the negotiations that happened in 2009 gone?

No I don’t think a situation like that is likely again. I think everyone today is dealing individually. Every studio is dealing individually with every multiplex operator and striking a deal that makes sense for them. I think it’s going to be dictated by supply and demand at the end of the day. And depending on how badly each one needs a deal, as I said, really water is going to find its own level, and a deal will be dictated by one studio talking to one multiplex chain and sort of doing a deal with them.

So you’re saying that this sort of stand-off, which is them versus us, is not likely.

I think it came to a flashpoint at that point of time and then there’s been a cooling off period after that and naturally when there are commercial terms involved there is going to be some friction, right? But that’s in any deal. I think you ultimately realise that they need to screen movies and you need to get your movies screened. So you will reach an understanding.

You know there has been a lot of talk of exhibitors wanting a base revenue of 30-35 percent. Distributors are not very happy with that, nor are producers. So what you’re saying is that this is not going to be a joint struggle anymore? This is more going to end up playing out on an individual level?

I think everyone is going to be negotiating individually with everyone, which is the way it should be in any free market. Really, the intention is not for any one side to join together and cartelise and start negotiating as a group because that’s just not the way it should work in any market dynamic.

And there are pitfalls in that as well. I mean you may be able to pull off a deal that a smaller producer may not be able to pull off. But if you are setting that standard. I mean there can be…

Except that’s the way a free market needs to work.

Sadly, yes.

There’s got to be competition. Otherwise, if you’re talking about everyone coming together every time, then you are talking about two monopolistic entities negotiating with each other which, I think, is against any rules of free market economy. So I think we’re all very clear. Everyone’s got their own scale and based on that scale if you’re able to reach commercial terms which are better than someone else, that’s just how it is.

Okay. Now a lot of exhibitors have also tried to go into production instead of going up. PVR has tried it. BIG has tried it. PVR hasn’t done as well as BIG has. But are tie-ups and consolidations like this the future or do you feel like there could be a stagnation if there is too much of consolidation of power? Maybe it’s too early to tell but…

You know, we haven’t even scratched the surface of how wide we can go with the number of screens in the country. So I think there has been a period of consolidation within the exhibition space but that’s only going to fuel the next level of growth. It has to. And things have to grow from here. And you’ve got other players. You’ve got Cinepolis which has come in and which is also making strides. You’ve got, as you said, you’ve got BIG, you’ve got PVR, you’ve got INOX. You’ve lots of other smaller multiplex players as well. You’ve got a whole plethora of single screens. So the consolidation has happened, there’s no doubt about it. But it’s happened in order for them now to be able to invest in future growth. So I’m pretty bullish about that happening actually.

REGIONAL FILMS

Okay. You know there is a notion that regional films tend to be more experimental. Do you feel one of the reasons is because the production costs are low or that they run longer windows at the box office— perhaps because they can be released in stages as Hindi films used to be released earlier. Do you think any of these factors contribute or do you feel it’s actually maybe not even true that regional films are more experimental?

You know there might be some truth in it when it comes to the more marginalised regional cinema. If you look at the big commercial regional cinemas like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, they’re doing pretty hardcore commercial cinema and they do have the odd experimental film as we do, but I don’t see that much of a disparity. But I suppose if you’re looking at Bengali cinema, if you’re looking at cinema of that nature which has got a lot of crossover with Hindi cinema… Because you’ve got to look at cultures where Hindi is also a second language. Most Bengalis do also understand Hindi whereas in South India it’s just not where anyone would want to go watch a Hindi movie, because they don’t get the language. They have their own stars, they have their own star system. It’s different. So when that tends to happen, I suppose, the one route that they find they can use for their expression, creatively, is by making something that’s different. Because they are competing with a hardcore commercial Hindi movie which their viewers also want to watch. So if they want to make a Bengali film it’s got to be offering the viewer something different because they can’t offer them Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra and Barfi!, right? And that’s a, sort of experimental but commercial Hindi film. So they might as well look at something so unique to their culture and sensibility that people really go and watch it because it’s something that appeals to their regionalism.

DEALING WITH STARS

I want to talk you a little bit about star prices. First question I’m going to ask you here is, how is the balance holding up of the draw that the stars get at the box office today and the kind of prices they command?

Well the draw is huge. I think there is no doubt about that. Stars are very, very important and stars do draw in audiences at the opening weekend, however the film is. Friday, Saturday, to some extent till Sunday, are dictated by star power, and then the film takes over from Monday. So I think that’s the reason they’re paid the fees that they are. Having said that, as I said, last year for example, you saw a lot of films that were star-less that did spectacular business given their budgets. So I think, right now, you’ve got an environment where both sorts of movies are working. If you look at Hollywood, their top 10 movies are without stars but that’s because they are still making massive, million dollar, blockbuster franchise movies. It’s not because they are making experimental cinema or non-commercial cinema without stars. They’re making blockbusters that don’t need stars anymore. I think we’re also going into a phase where we’ll have to both co-exist. You’ll have your big star-studded vehicles and they’re not going anywhere but you’re also going to have a whole different economy of films that are not star dependant, which is great.

In India what do star fees end up depending on? How does it actually work, to whatever extent you can share with us? Does it depend on their last release? Does it depend on the kind of director or producer they are working with?

I think it’s really supply and demand. So if you’ve got 10 saleable stars in the country and you’ve got many studios and producers and they are wanting to make many movies with them. Then there’s limited supply, there is massive demand, and the prices will be what they are and they’ll be dictated primarily by the stars. And obviously it needs to make economic sense in the overall scheme of things but it will be on the higher side. So that is just the way that the star fees are dictated in that sense.

You know there has been a lot of accusation that UTV initially, when they came into the business, they hiked up star prices because they were signing on so many people and they wanted so many. I want to ask you if it is still making economic sense. It’s not a question of are they overcharging or not, but is it affecting the economy in any way? Of course there are quotes from producers saying that almost 35 percent of a film’s cost ends up being star fees. There are also debates about whether they should pay their own staff more etc.— which means prices being hiked. So what I am asking is is it affecting, is it challenging the economy at this point or is it a comfortable balance?

Well I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable balance because the fact is that there is a certain value that you have to ascribe if you want to make a film with a star today and that just is what it is. Now the question is whether that’s on the back end, a sharing on the back end and maybe a lower payment upfront, or whether it’s an overall fee and there is no sharing in IP or on the back end. So star prices are definitely pretty high. But it’s interesting because it challenges you then to think of some vehicles with stars and some without. And we still have to make commercial cinema and that’s what I think a lot of us have been doing over the last few years. I mean we’ve made ABCD and Kai Po Che just this year. Both movies released in February. They did spectacular business for films without stars. But we’re also making films with stars, we’ve also made Chennai Express. So it just helps you to have a balanced slate that’s not completely star dependent but accepts that we are a star driven film culture. People love their stars on screen. And if you want to make commercial movies, we have to make some of them with stars.

Sure. That’s a given. That’s a given in any… No, I was just wondering if you feel that the way stars are thinking will also need to change. And I also actually want to do add that…

You know, why should it? If someone is willing to pay them a certain fee, I don’t see why they should change the way they are thinking.

Because of the larger picture? You know everybody is part of the …

I think we’re in a capitalist economy that is dictated by self interest. So at the end of the day everybody is part of the system where they are in it because they have certain ambitions for themselves. And I don’t think any of us are in here for social cause, you know, at the end of the day. So I think it’s fine.

Okay. Stars. You spoke about the back end of paying stars. A lot of stars are becoming producers. Either they are tying up at the back end and co producing a film or they’re turning producers in a full fledged way. Two questions here. One is, is the back end model a good substitute for having to pay upfront fees or is it more of a gamble? Two, do you feel stars bring in value to promoting a film? Say, John Abraham is producing a film which he is not starring in. Does he have an edge over other producers in promoting that film. I mean, is that a…

You know, honestly, Vicky Donor was such a great film that I think it would have worked regardless.

Yes. Of course.

But John had faith in the film to put his name on it and get the movie made. So he added a tremendous amount of value in just getting the movie made. But, frankly, in the promotions, whether there was a video with John or not, I think would not have been that relevant because the film worked on its own. Now sure, if you’ve got the ability to have a music video with John in it and he’s promoting it, why would you not do it? He’s a producer of the film. Anything that’s going to sell. But honestly, when it comes to promotions for movies where the star’s not in the film, it can help but maybe not all that much. Except with someone like an Aamir Khan where the fact that he’s producing a movie adds so much value to it and so much dignity to it and actually adds a lot of commercial value to the project as well because there’s a certain brand that he’s built that stands for quality. And you always believe that: ‘Okay, if Aamir’s producing this film, we’ve just got to go on that first day.’ But, you know, other than that I think it’s pretty important for stars to back movies. And like if an Akshay Kumar backed an Oh My God! And it was a great thing that he did because honestly the business of that film would probably have been 15 percent lower of he hadn’t been in it. But it would still have been a massive hit.

And the back end thing where …

So back end. I think it’s a good model if the upfront fees actually do come down. I think if the fee is going to be higher and the back end is also going to be there, then it’s a bit of a self-defeating proposition. But I do believe that if someone’s willing to put their neck on the line and say ‘We want to put some skin in the game as well and we’ll be willing to cut our fee and earn from the profit. And we believe so strongly in the movie that we think that we will actually get much more than our fee because it’s going to be a really profitable movie.’ I mean, it’s something that Aamir does, something that Shah Rukh does.

SCREEN DENSITY

Okay now I’m going to come to the screen density. How acute is the shortage? I mean you know the numbers but numbers don’t really explain the on ground reality. It’s around eight screens to one million people as opposed to 117 in the US.

Yeah it’s around 130 screens per million in the US as opposed to 10 screens, 10-12 screens here in India.

And what I also want to ask you is why is the shortage so acute in a country where cinema is perceived widely to be the biggest thing?

I guess we live in so many Indias, right? And we talk about one India and probably this is not… I mean we shouldn’t be looking at screen density here because when you have got such a large proportion of the population below the poverty line I don’t think you can consider them as a denominator in that equation because they’re struggling to just make ends meet. So I think cinema really wouldn’t come into the picture there for them, right? So if you had to look at it that way our screen density is probably higher than is reported because we can’t look at the entire 1.3 billion population. Having said that, even if you look at say half—that are people who can afford a cinema ticket, a really cheap cinema ticket—it would still be abysmally low. It’s not that 3 Idiots has not been watched by a vast proportion of the population but they’ve watched it on Doordarshan, they’ve watched it on satellite television, they’ve watched a pirated DVD and so on and so forth. So only three crore people have actually watched it in the cinema but a whole lot of people have watched it not in the cinema. A state like UP has a population of 18 crores and they’ve got 150 screens— that’s the sort of disparity in terms of screen availability. So as I said, I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of that. And we have the burgeoning middle class with everyone getting richer and having more disposable income over the next few years. I do think we need to keep pace with the number of screens we are putting out there too. And as I said, I feel the exhibition sector… usually a market consolidates when it’s reached a certain level of maturity. I don’t believe we’ve reached that level of maturity yet to really talk about consolidation. So one or two players have bought each other and that’s fine. But I do hope that that signals the next phase of growth because it has to.

And I also want to get a sense of… we know, like you agreed, that there aren’t enough screens but I also want a sense of how acute is this problem? How fast does this need to give?

Well, you know what’s happened is that the metros have gotten pretty saturated. So there are many, many screens across your top 15 to 20 to maybe even 35 cities, but after that there is a massive, massive gap. And that’s really that tier two, tier three city that needs to be looked at in the next phase.

Which is what everyone is talking about right now.

Exactly.

Do you feel that that’s just about to happen? That’s just around the corner? Is that also something you guys are gearing up for in some way?

You know, I have to say, I don’t see it around the corner. I don’t think you’ve got players looking at that level of capital investment right now. But I’m hoping that they are bullish enough in the next few years to be looking at that as the next phase of growth because one player buying the other and maybe saturating the metros even more is not going to be an answer.

And everyone does seem to understand that?

Absolutely. I think the exhibition sector is acutely aware of it. It’s just that the economics for them need to work out. I think the real estate business has also been going through a bit of a phase right now where it’s been tough for them to make that investment in places in order for it to be justified in terms of the returns that they are going to be seeing from there. So it’s an interesting time. I’m pretty optimistic about it and I think that we are going to grow. But I can’t say I’m seeing something imminent in the next 12 months or so.

THE MULTIPLEXES

Okay. Multiplexes. Undue focus on multiplexes. I want to get a sense of how much or how that has distorted both the market and the content?

When you say undue focus…

As in, we are depending a lot on revenues from the multiplexes. Like you said, it’s not called a ‘multiplex film’ because every film is a multiplex film. This is a fact we all know but what has been the real import of this? How has it distorted the market or the content in any way?

I guess I think it’s been a positive distortion, if you ask me. The sort of cinema that was not getting backing seven or eight years ago has now gotten the backing because I think studios are seeing that, because of the higher ticket prices in multiplexes and because of the sort of people who are visiting multiplexes, I can make movie that’s maybe rarefied in its sensibility and still expect it to give me returns. So I think it’s actually helped cinema to a very large extent. So I don’t believe a film like Dev D or a film like Kahaani or a film like Gangs of Wasseypur would have gotten made if it wasn’t for studios now seeing that actually even if these massive multitudes don’t start thronging the cinemas, as long as in my key metros I’m able to get the multiplexes at a certain capacity, then I know it’ll pay out if I invest in this movie.

This is great and we’ve all been celebrating this, but isn’t there a sort of danger that the kind of movies… that if the economy is depending too much on multiplexes cinema might stop reaching out to other parts of this country?

See I’ll tell you what, if we’re talking about multiplexes in metros then I would agree with you. But multiplexes exist everywhere. A multiplex is basically more than one screen. Now that can be Bhilai or it can be in Bombay. Actually if you’re asking that if the exhibition sector focuses only on the cities, then there’s going to be less growth? Sure. Yes. There will be. But I’m looking at multiplexes going as far and wide as possible and hopefully looking at no frills options as well where you have a scaled down version of what you would get in a Bombay or a Delhi. It’s still a two or three screen multiplex and you’ve got decent seating and good air-conditioning and good projection and all that but it doesn’t have to be state-of-the-art like some of our cinemas are. But as long as they are looking at penetrating the heart of India, I’m fine with multiplexes going as deep as they can.

DIGITIZATION

Okay, digitization. Both in filmmaking and in distribution. How fast are we moving and are we moving fast enough?

In filmmaking, we’re moving pretty fast. I think most people now look at digital as a first option. It’s faster. You don’t need to light that much as you need to do for film. You don’t need to be obsessive about wasting raw stock. It’s just a great medium to shoot in. I mean as long as the director’s comfortable and the DoP (Director of Photography) is comfortable in that medium, then it’s something that everyone is exploring today. When it comes to distribution I’d give it another year and a half before we may not have a physical print which exists anymore. You might still be making it…

Well, that’s great news.

That’s great news.

Because there was a feeling, at least a year or two ago, that the initial cost might be a deterrent. So people may not have been looking at the larger picture when it came to distribution and when it came to filmmaking also, because they felt they had to sort of…

No, I think cinemas are definitely digitizing really, really fast and it’s happening very, very quickly. So I don’t see that as being something that’ll… It’ll be another nine months to a year and a half away and there might be only 20 physical prints of a massive film that we need to release all across the country.

And filmmakers and DoPs, they’re not worried about… you don’t feel like they are still not creatively hung up on film?

Some of them are. Some are. But if you look at, compared to two years ago, the number of people using digital today has gone up significantly.

Okay. And you feel like it’s keeping pace. That’s actually…

It is keeping pace. I think it’s the responsibility of everybody to really educate each other about the medium and about shooting on digital. Obviously now there is a certain charm to shooting on film and everybody’s going to be feeling that way for a while. As with any new technology that comes into the picture you tend to romanticise the earlier one. But I think as we go forward, I do believe digital will be the medium to shoot in.

CO-PRODUCTION

I want to talk a little bit about co-production. It seems to be picking up. I mean, at least, it seems that most films are co-produced at some level or the other. I want to understand how that works, especially for you guys. How does the revenue sharing happen and at what stage do you guys come in? And why is it so attractive? I think you should start with that.

So, I think, starting with the fact that movie-making is about looking for the next great idea or the next great story. And really, every deal then works its way around that proposition. So if someone comes to you with something superb and you really want to make that movie and it’s going to be… the nature of that deal is going to be a co-production because they are the ones who came to you with it. Then if there’s another production house, or their director, who also has a line production unit, then you are open to it because you want to make a great movie and if the economics work out, you are happy for it to be a co-production. On the other hand if you have got movies that you have developed and incubated yourself, then it’s your own production. So we don’t like to stymie our growth by saying we’ll only look at one model because ultimately we’re all in the search for great stories to tell. And if they are coming from a prospective co-producer, why not?

And you haven’t developed any sort of working model or formula for yourself that… you’re just open to whoever is coming in, at whichever stage the film is in?

Well, we prefer to be involved very early because I think the idea really is that we do want to add value to the creative process in a collaborative manner and in the best way possible.

Say like for a film like Udaan. You guys came in pretty late. I believe the film was offered to you guys in the beginning and then you came in…

Absolutely. Well I’m not aware of it being offered to us in the beginning but I know when I saw the rough cut, I hadn’t read the script before that, and when I saw the rough cut I loved it and we said that we did want to back it immediately. So, yes, that was one film we got involved in on the edit. But there are movies like… I mean Dev D was our own production but I’m trying to think of an example of a co-production. So, like a film like Delhi Belly. That’s a film that Aamir showed us the script for. We loved the script and said, ‘Absolutely. We’re on.’ And we were on from the start.

And the revenue-sharing, the profit sharing, is there a set way which it works? Or is it like each…

So each deal is different. Each negotiation is different. So it really depends from deal to deal and depending on the deal that you strike with your co-producer. But we have one general template model and then that sort of undergoes modifications, depending on who you are dealing with.

DATA ON CINEMA

I want to talk to you a little bit about the information available. At least to an outsider, there isn’t good information available on how a film has done. You can’t trust the figures that you are reading. Or how much is being spent on a film. Do you guys have all the information that you need or do you guys have to go out and conduct your own survey?

It’s really unfortunate that we don’t have the equivalent of a Rentrak or an A. C. Nielsen in India and hopefully that’ll get corrected in the next few years. And that’s mainly because we’re still a 40 percent single screen market and data from there tends not to be computerised, it tends to come in bits and bobs from here and there. Some of it tends to be understated sometimes but that really depends on who you are dealing with. And no studio is obliged to share their information. Even if they are a public company you are not obliged to share your movie by movie figures with anyone. So people tend not to do that. So when there is this opaqueness involved…

Sorry, so then there is a case to be made for greater sharing at this stage when the industry is evolving.

I think it needs to come the other way around. I don’t think studios are going to do it voluntarily. But if everything is out there and computerised and all your theatrical business is out there on a server because that’s just the way the business has evolved and everything is there to be seen, that I think is the best way for us to go about it. I don’t think anyone is going to obligatorily share their theatrical information if they are not obliged to. But the moment we get into a Nielsen situation or a Rentrak situation where the figures are just available to everyone, that would be a nirvana situation I think for all of us.

AN OPTIMAL RELEASE

This is related to the information question. Have you guys been able to figure out your optimal release? How many screens should you release a film on and what is your maximum? Do you know your optimal or is that being impacted by…

Well, we think we do. We think…You know, it’s been 60 movies in the last seven or eight years. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve done things right as well and I think we’ve come to a really good understanding having mapped out the entire country and having mapped out the cinemas across the country. Which sort of audiences that frequent which cinemas for which type of movie, what our own numbers have been and now we’ve gotten a pretty decent amount of empirical data on our own films, across genres—big star cast, non-star cast—for us to come to an optimal release strategy which I think we’ve been adopting now for the last few years. On a film like Barfi!, for example, I mean a Ranbir Kapoor film can go to 3000 screens today. We decided to go to a thousand and we decided to build capacities, build a word-of-mouth and then go wider. And I think that was a really smart strategy because we didn’t overspend on prints and at the same time we got into situations where the film was housefull. And there is nothing like watching a housefull movie. When you are not able to get tickets it just adds to the word-of-mouth and it builds the interest and excitement around a movie, and then your movie tends to run much longer because of that positive halo around it. So I think we do that from film to film. And on a film like Rowdy Rathore we just went to 3500 screens because that was the nature of the movie. It was a really mass oriented film and we wanted it to go as far and wide as possible. So, yes, I think we do think of optimal release strategies rather than flooding the market with prints.

And you think you’ve built them irrespective of how much of data is available?

Yes, because we have done a lot of competitive mapping as well. I mean, one is obviously looking at every cinema in the country and looking at its capacity and looking at the business that we’re able to get from our own films obviously, as well as the information that is available out there in the market. So mapping that, mapping what other movies have done in the same genre of the movie that we are releasing and, yes, I think from all our trade sources we have managed to get a fair amount of data to take those calls well.

Okay, and what about when to release a film? What are the factors that go into that? I mean, are there seasons for particular films? And, of course, I also want to talk to you about conversations with other producers and distributors to avoid clashes— how is that working? How is that changing?

Well it’s really crucial. It’s one of those five or six really key factors that really affect the success of the movie. And, obviously, seasonality, cricket matches, school holidays, weather, religious festivals, non-festivals, Shraadh, Eid (Ramzan), all those obviously impact your release strategy across the year. Fact is that there are 52 Fridays in a year and you have 250 Hindi movies that will release every year. So there are going to be clashes; you can’t avoid that. But I guess you just have to pick the right dates for your movies and move on. And with the smaller ones you might have to be quite flexible about hopping from one release date to another depending on which other big movies are announcing. But with your bigger ones you tend to lock them in advance and then just not change them because once you’ve decided that’s the right date for your movie then you stick with it.

And are there conversations across platforms? Do you guys also negotiate with other producers and distributors?

Not really.

Or is it just about timing?

We just… yeah. And then I think everyone, if you take ego out of it, I think, everyone realises which film is a bigger film and then takes their own call about whether to clash with it or not. And I think that’s fair. As I said, it’s a free market.

And with the market changing and becoming a free market, are the egos going down as well? Because this used to be quite a major thing, the egos…

Well we’ve taken ego out of our equations completely. I mean we just take a decision based on whether it makes sense for our movie or not. I mean the movie is the most important thing. The movie has to work. Who cares if you’re moving your release date? No one is going to know, except the five people in the trade who are going to talk about you having gotten scared of this bigger film and moving your date. It really makes no difference to anyone. Everyone is finally going to look at the business of that movie and how well it did. And why would you because of your own ego not move a film if it just deserves a better release date? I mean, I can speak for us. We definitely are not in that situation.

HOW TO MARKET A FILM

I want to come to marketing, which is going to be a big section. Again, first I want to begin with information? Do you guys now have really good information on how marketing works and how much you should spend on marketing? Before we come to specific models, how much should you spend on marketing overall?

We have a really good sense of how much we should rationally be spending on marketing. What tends to happen is as you go into the media noise corridor two months before your release and you are competing pretty aggressively with maybe 15 other movies that are all shouting out at the same time, and not just competing with them but competing with all the other brand messages that are going on around you plus a fragmentation of media that has happened, you tend to have to attribute a little bit more to your marketing budget just based on… Say rationally I know should be spending this but I do need to shout out a little bit louder— that might on paper not make sense because I’m hitting my reach and my frequency parameters on my media plan. But I do need to shout out a little bit more, purely so that I can project my movie bigger.

And do you tend to use a lot of pre-release surveys to see how much information is available…

We do. We track our movies very, very closely. So we’ve got… we have a weekly tracking mechanism where we know how we’re doing on buzz and interest and on desire to see.

So basically what are the surveys? Are they talking to people and trying to figure how much they are aware of the film and how excited they are about the film?

Yeah. Yup. So you’ve got a many city survey that happens weekly where you talk to frequent moviegoers. So you should be someone who watches at least a movie a month in a cinema hall and you’re asked about spontaneously which are the movies you want to watch. So the movies that come to your mind are ones that you are not being goaded into answering about. And then you ask in an aided manner— ‘Have you heard of these films as well?’ and then you see what the responses are on that. And you ask about excitement to watch the film, whether you would go on an opening weekend or you’re going to wait to hear what people have to tell you and so on and so forth. There are five or six parameters that we look at. Each one gives you an indication of how well you are doing. So you might be high on the awareness of the film because you’ve managed to communicate your message to everyone but no one’s really that excited about it. Then you realise that your creative isn’t working. The people have seen it but they are like ‘Yeah, okay. I’m going to take my chances and go later.’ So then you need to build that. Or you might be really high on excitement with the people you have managed to reach but you haven’t managed to reach too many people, in which case you need to be able to take your media plan wider. So those are things that we are tracking everyday actually but we get a weekly report card on how we are doing and how everyone else is doing as well.

What are the big marketing trends right now? Is one of the trends spending lesser on big films with what happened on a film like Ra.One? So much money spent on the publicity. So much publicity that there is large section of people who believe that that is what worked against the film. Is that one of the trends? And, of course, I’ll come to the second trend which is bigger marketing for a smaller budget film— the Vicky Donor, English, Vinglish kind of thing.

Sure. I don’t think there is a trend of spending less on bigger films. I have to be honest. I don’t think anyone’s doing that because I think the simple logic that a studio or producer would use is that: ‘I’ve spent 50 crores making this movie. Now am I going to scrimp on that final two more crores?’ Because in any case, there is a certain basic marketing budget that you need to spend and then it’s about, incrementally, to shout that much louder, it’ll probably take a couple of more crores or three crores to do that. So am I going to scrimp at that last stage or do I just ensure that the entire investment is not contingent on me being miserly about that last mile?

But again, it is about optimisation, not maximisation.

You’re absolutely right about that. I think what tends to happen is that you might believe that you’re optimised in your own environment but you have to realise that you’re dealing with people who are subjected to multiple messages every day. So you might think that you’re optimally reaching them with your message the right number of times but you need to look at the competitive subset that you are in. And the right number of times might not be the right number of times relative to the way someone else is reaching them.

So, I mean I know these are not your productions, that you are not qualified to comment beyond a point, but what could be your learning from something like Ra.One?

I think my learning ultimately would be that the film has to work. You can over hype and it can live up to that hype and there is nothing wrong with that. Or you can over hype a film and it doesn’t live up to that hype and then people are disappointed. But if a film works, then the marketing works. A film doesn’t work, then frankly everything is going to be seen in retrospect as, ‘Oh okay, they over hyped it and it didn’t work.’ But finally, you aren’t talking about a detergent, right? Which, if you do a blind test with someone with two beverages or two detergents, it’s all about the branding that you have created around it and frankly they might not see the difference in when they are using it. But a film is something that they are going to be going out there to experience. So it’s that much more important for them to really feel that your marketing has really lived up to your promise.

So you’re saying this is not so much about strategy as about the brass tacks of a film. Because I know Don 2 followed closely on the heels of that and they really cut down on the publicity of that because they were afraid of what happened with Ra.One. But you’re feeling that that kind of reaction is not really…

You know I can’t comment on what they did because I was not privy to it but I have to say… See each film is an entity on its own and you need to market it. I mean we’re very careful about the softer issues rather than how much we’re spending and the media plan. All that obviously will follow. But what are we trying to position the film as? What is the tonality that we’re using? The medium is the message also. Which medium are we using? Are we using social media more? Are we using TV more? Because, what type of movie is it? Things like that are very important to us and we need to stay true to the film while obviously emphasising all the great things about the movie. But it can’t be something so divorced from the film that there is a mismatch or a dissonance when you are watching it. That I think is the most important thing that we have learnt over the years.

And I want to talk a little bit about, again, one big trend that has been talked about in the market which is taking smaller budget films, spending a lot more, more than the cost of the film almost, on the marketing. How is that working out? Is that something that is working well? Or do you feel that it’s just a balance that has been reached for now and, maybe that also will start shifting? Maybe you won’t need to spend so much on marketing a Vicky Donor once people start to naturally gravitate towards films like this?

You know, honestly, I think you need to back a small film really aggressively, if you’ve made it. Because, ultimately, you’re making it because you believe it can work. And if you’re going to finally then not give it the promotion it deserves because it’s not a big film… you could have made a film for four crores and a film for 40 crores, that doesn’t mean the marketing budget of that film will be one-tenth that one because then you’d just be not serving the film that you’ve made at all. I’d say that there is bare minimum today that you need to do for every film below which you are just not going to be heard at all in the system. And that’s just how it is. And that can be significantly higher than the budget of your film in the first place but you’ve got to factor that in when you are making the film to start with. Which is why you have to be so careful when making a smaller film because you are completely reliant on the quality of the film. You’re not going to be able to pre-sell. You are not going to be able to get that opening weekend easily. So it’s really all about the movie at the end of it. And then you better market it as well as you can in order to ensure that people know about it and come and watch it. So it’s crucial, I think.

Again, opening weekend. Lot of focus. Much higher than it used to be in the last couple of decades. Is that skewing the trade in any way? Number one. Number two, is a Sholay possible in this climate at all?

A film that will run for seven years?

No. A film that would pick up so slowly, almost being on the verge of declared a flop and then go on to become… (one of the biggest grossers of all time).

It’s tough. It’s tough. Because that’s just not the dynamic that exists today. I mean, you have social media today where the verdict is pronounced pretty much on Twitter by Friday evening. You’ve got the number of screens that you are releasing your movie in because you are also combating piracy and you want to ensure that you’re as widely seen as possible so that you don’t succumb to piracy. All of this just dictates that, by that Monday, the verdict is out and everyone’s… all the thought leaders have watched the film. If it’s a smaller film then it’s very important what the critics have to say about it. With a bigger film sometimes it’s irrelevant, sometimes it is. But a Sholay is pretty difficult. I mean a film that’s not… you won’t get shows the next weekend if by Monday you haven’t performed and by Tuesday the exhibitors need to decide on the showcasing for the next week, which is how it works.

We’ve been talking about the free market economy. We’ve been talking about the capitalist economy we live in. But business ethics is one question that still holds. So marketing ethics. You spoke about how you market a film. Is that something you guys are grappling with? How you position a film? Or does it not matter? Is any publicity good publicity? How is that working out? That’s one thing. The other thing is, I know that pretty much tough luck would be the answer but where does this leave space for independent cinema? So even though digitization has come in and all of us can potentially make a film but then you stumble at that, ‘I can’t market my film for 30 crores or 40 crores.’ Then what happens? I mean I just want to get a sense of… I mean you might not be able to action anything. You are a part of the market but what are the business ethics that producers should be, or are, grappling with at this point?

You know, I think good business ethics will also mean good business. Honestly, I don’t believe any publicity is good publicity. It’s just not true. Because you can be in the papers everyday and people can be completely turned off what you are saying because you’re saying it in a very aggressive manner or you’re saying it in a way which puts people off or you’re talking about things so unrelated to the movie that it’s not funny. So I think there needs to be one round of questioning from everyone about… because you have got so many different avenues open to you to get your movie spoken about. I think we all need to just sit and introspect a little bit about what is it that we are saying because we can get whatever we say published or we can get it aired. But is that going to really help one more person say, ‘Oh, because I’ve seen (or read) that, I must go watch the movie on Friday’? I’m not so sure. So I think good business ethics really is about promoting your film for the film it is. And really if there is any way to get the message of the film across or the ethos of the film across in a way that’s going to help you on that weekend that’s good marketing ethics because then you’re really telling people the best part about the movie that you want them to watch. When it comes to independent cinema, I have to say we use this term independent cinema in India but it’s a bit of a misnomer because we’ve taken one term from the West and used it here.

You know what I’m talking about.

Every film’s been… they’ve all been backed by studios. You talk about any film that’s managed to get a release it’s been a studio film. So starting from our movies, from Khosla ka Ghosla to Aamir to a Dev D to A Wednesday to Mumbai Meri Jaan to Udaan to Kai Po Che, you know, any of these movies, they’ve been backed by studios so they’re not really independent. I think if you’re talking about really experimental stuff, stuff that’s so rarefied that it would really be a South Bombay, South Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta experience… I think going to the exhibitors directly might be the best and tying up with an exhibitor and getting them to showcase the film in a way that they talk to their patrons about it. You trailer it there… (in those cinemas). I think one has to look at those ways. If you don’t want to go the studio route, which is perfectly legitimate, you go to an exhibitor directly.

So you’re talking about more local economies…

Because I’m assuming a movie like that might not be able to afford a budget to be on television. You might not be able to spend on television and be able to promote your movie in that medium. Trailering is much cheaper and it gives across the whole… you can do a two and a half minute, a three minute. It really communicates what the movie is about. So ensure that you do a fair amount of trailering. Go to one exhibitor probably, who’s got nationwide presence and do an exclusive date with them where they can give you one show per screen and then if it grows, it grows. It’s not easy and that’s just the environment that we’re in.

Any other things that you feel that everybody across the board needs to introspect about when it comes to business ethics and how they are shaping the market, overall, for the movies?

I think that the way the television industries were told to have their own standards and practices body and it doesn’t undergo certification or censorship. I mean a lot of us believe that there is regressive content on television and blah blah blah. It is not monitored by a government body at all. It’s just there and if you’ve got grievance with it you can contact someone and you can have yourself heard. I really hope that we can move into that for cinema as well. Just because we’re a more high profile medium doesn’t mean that we need to be subjected to certain certifications. I’m sure if everyone is just told to have their own models of standards and practices the way the broadcasters do, then they will get more responsible. If you just impose a responsibility on the person themselves to take that call then I suspect it’ll be a much healthier environment for us to be in. I don’t see that happening any time soon but…

CENSORSHIP

Actually that was going to be a later question but I’m going to ask it now because we’ve brought this up. There has been a lot of talk about moving into a system where movies are certified according to them being suitable for ages above 12, 15, 18… A lot of filmmakers have not responded very well to that at all because they feel like that will cut down on the audience. Does that affect producers at all? Is that something that you’re concerned with?

Not if the guidelines are really cast in stone and are very clear, like probably the BBFC guidelines are in the UK where it’s very specific what is 12, what is 15 and what is 18. If it becomes arbitrary and really something so subjective that any individual body watching it can decide on that, then it will lead to even more chaos. Then I’d rather stick to what we have right now which is U/A, A and U because there at least you’ve got the three broad parameters and now through trial and error I think we generally know which direction we’re heading when we’re making a film. So if we impose a new certification there has got to be very, very clear guidelines. Having said that I think I have to say I think the Censor Board, which likes to be called the Certification Board, because they’re not the Censor Board, has made quite a few strides in the last few years and you have to hand it to them. They are not in an easy situation. They are having to deal with any fringe group coming and protesting, going to the MIB (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) and the MIB clamping down on them because they passed the movie. And at the same time, they’ve got to deal with the irate fraternity which is always questioning things and trying to push the boundaries. So, they’re in a tricky situation purely because they’ve been, the way that they’ve been legislated as a body. Having said that, I do believe that we need to be more progressive, even more progressive than we are right now. And I think we need to accept that if you’re giving someone the right to vote, they should have the right to watch what they want to watch. If they can elect their own government, they should be able to watch a movie and decide whether they wanted to watch it or not. If there is something misogynistic in the film, something that is just beyond the bounds of what is permissible in a society, that’s something that one should be looking at. But, really, I think we’re in a situation now where we should be able to watch a film we want to see considering you can watch whatever you want on the internet and that’s completely free.

THE OVERSEAS MARKET

Okay, in the nineties, there was this whole conversation about the NRI film and the NRI markets to the extent that there seemed to be such a great discovery of that market that it started to dictate content in a lot of ways. Has that balance been restored or is that focus still pretty much there? How much are we depending on overseas markets right now?

You know the overseas market for a small film is pretty much non-existent because you’re talking about the diaspora. You’re talking about the 30 million South Asians overseas and trying to reach out to them. For a big film, it would probably be 10% of your overall revenue, which is significant, but when you compare it to domestic theatrical which is 50-60%, it’s a small part. So I’d say we’re probably you know… it was an interesting new phenomenon in the nineties because it had opened up as a market and therefore it was being spoken about. Now you have reached a steady state of that being the contribution. You’re dealing with rampant piracy, especially overseas where you have got massive bandwidths where people can access movies and sort of download them really fast and you’ve got your movie available on Friday evening on a bit torrent site regardless of what sort of movie you’ve made. So you’re combating massive piracy and the fact that you still have a worldwide release of only 500 screens for 30 million people and they’re going to want to watch a Hindi film because they are as movie obsessed as their brethren here and they’re going to go online and download it. Because you’re not giving them a legitimate way to see it. You also can’t have it available legitimately online on the day and date of the release because that is just not something the exhibitors will accept. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg overseas where we haven’t, again, scratched the surface of that market. But till we enter new markets at least through, maybe through free-to-air television and get our movies shown there and then move on to other platforms and then to theatrical, it’s going to be a slow process. But it’s something.

Are they any new emerging NRI overseas markets? Which ones are the biggest ones right now?

There is… you’ve got the usual suspects. There is the US, there’s UK, there’s Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Gulf. Those are your key markets, that comprises maybe 80-90% of your total revenue. South America we have not ventured into at all. We’ve released a couple of movies in Brazil and Peru but that’s really a one-off and depending on if you’ve found the right film that the distributor wants to distribute. Africa is pretty unexplored other than South Africa and maybe a few other markets.

But that is a huge potential isn’t it?

Massive. Massive potential.

Africa, yeah.

It’s a bit of a function of the economy there also where the whole went into a depression and therefore the exhibition sector suffered, movie prices went down by one-fifth. Europe, again, is important. France, Germany, a lot of the Eastern-European countries. Then down in the Mediterranean you’ve got Turkey, you’ve got interesting markets where you’ve a got a South Asian diaspora. Russia is another market which has been largely unexploited since the fifties and the sixties. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, these are markets where we are releasing our movies much more. China, of course, suffers from regulations about a certain number of movies that can be released. Then the South Asian markets of course, massive South Asian population, we know that but not as widely exploited as it can be. So there’s a lot of work ahead.

Very diverse markets, so you can’t answer it in a holistic way but some key ways in which the marketing differs for overseas market than it does here?

A lot of online. We use online quite extensively because that’s where our people are and we can’t afford mass media for those markets. We use a lot of localised platforms. So local radio stations, local newspapers for the South Asian population, local television stations and we go into catchment areas. So we know there are certain catchment areas where, you know, there are South Asian populations existing— leaflets and flyers and door-to-door marketing.

What about non-NRI overseas market? Where are we on that?

Nowhere, honestly. I don’t think Indian cinema has really crossed over at all. Some of our movies are watched a little more widely than others. We probably have some directors who are known within a certain section of those who watch world cinema but honestly I don’t think we’ve really made too much progress.

But which way does the progress need to happen? Do films need to get up to par? Do we need to be making enough films? Or do you feel like you need to start exploring exhibition possibilities and then create awareness?

It’s a combination of both and I guess we’ve tried it with some movies. It’s debatable whether they were the right movies or the wrong movies. With a film like Peepli Live which we believed was a satire, it has some resonance in terms of being able to reflect what’s going on in India, is tongue-in-cheek, but might be appreciated by a world cinema audience. We did a delayed release in the UK but probably it was too delayed which is why it didn’t work as well as it could have. It worked well but not as well as we would have liked it to. With films like Barfi! we are entering into markets like Japan, like Korea, like Taiwan, like Turkey where the film is going to be watched by an audience broader than just the Indian audience. So there is progress being made but it’s really negligible when you look at the overall revenues of the movie right now. So we’re doing it for our movies but we haven’t had that one massive crossover hit like a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was for Taiwan. We’ve just not had that.

Okay, now that Disney has tied up with UTV, acquired UTV what potential new avenues, what possibilities, are you looking at whether or not you end up exploring them?

It’s a huge, huge, huge opportunity.

Tell me some of the possibilities that are on the table right now.

One is the distribution, just tapping into the global Disney distribution system, which we’re doing very actively right now. And, I mean one doesn’t want to speak too early and we just want the results to show but that’s something that we are looking at very actively, getting our movies distributed as widely as we can using that infrastructure. And two is obviously creating franchises here in India. We haven’t really had Indian franchises yet. We’ve had sequels but a franchise is something that goes beyond a movie and that goes beyond the ancillary rights around a movie. It goes into other spheres altogether. We haven’t had that yet in India and I think we’re ripe for it now. So using the Disney creative learnings across the last 80 years and to begin to tap into that.

Are there also conversations about the kind of films that you are producing? You know we still primarily make movies for our market and the South Asian population. So is there more of a chance of making films that might work across the board? For the lack of a better example, a Slumdog Millionaire, is that possibility very…

You know I think you need to root a movie somewhere. Slumdog Millionaire didn’t work in India and it was obvious why. It didn’t speak about the country as we know it and therefore we rejected it as an audience but obviously it did gangbusters business everywhere else. We’re looking at movies that work for India. We’re very clear about our objective. We want to make Indian movies that work for our people. Now if by their very nature they transcend just a South Asian population and are able to go wider? We’d always have an eye on that, that’s something we will look at. But it’s really important to root a film and know who you are making it for. And if you’re working with filmmakers who have a sensibility, just naturally, where the grammar of their cinema is, and it will travel, that’s great.

SURVEY BASED FILMMAKING

We spoke about surveys earlier. There are a whole lot of other kind of surveys being commissioned. There are surveys being commissioned at the development stage, before a film, to kind of try to figure out what kind of films to make. Then of course during the making of the film. Now that is something that intrigues me. We’ve heard of instances where even with something say like Oh My God! there was a survey and people saying “Oh, we want to see god as god.” (They wanted to see Akshay Kumar, playing Krishna, dressed as Krishna was depicted in mythological and religious portraits. And so he was dressed like this in a climactic scene.) and therefore there are changes made… So where are you guys with that? Is there a conversation about where to draw the line because, like you said, that if you start influencing creatives enough… It’s also important for the creative industry to grow on its own. So what is the tricky balance with that?

I think Steve Jobs said something really interesting once, he said that research is all fine but someone’s not going to be able to tell you what they want till they get it. Because if you want to give them something new, they’re not going to be able to tell you what that something new is. When you give it to them, that’s when they are going to say: ‘Wow! I can’t do without this anymore.’ Right? So I doubt that anything breakthrough or path-breaking creatively is going to come purely out of research, right? Having said that, if you immerse yourself a little bit in just trends and what’s going on, in lingo, just understanding new interesting things happening in society and just keeping your ear open and eyes open to reading more about it, just interacting with people a bit more and that sparks a creative thought, I think that’s the most important research a creative person can do. Right? But the ideation of that insight to the story that really needs to come from there. I think it’s really important.

But I was talking about the surveys that are being commissioned by producers while the film is being…

I can speak for what we do. We’ve tried script research before. It hasn’t quite worked because I think it’s very difficult for an audience to envision a film the way that the director is envisioning it. It’s not their job to do so. Where research comes into play for us really, in the filmmaking process, is at the rough cut stage where we have a director who we’re creatively collaborating with who also buys into it. And we say, “We all have certain views about the film. Let’s just show it to people.” And here I’m not talking about friends from the industry, trade etc. because then everyone is a little tricky about giving their honest opinion. I’m talking about proper structured research where you have 20 people who represent the rough target audience and they just watch the film and they have a chat with a moderator after that. And the director is sitting in another room and just watching it on a close-circuit television and ten things might come out of there. We do it across various cities. Not that we learn what to discard and what to take on because people can have very individual, very subjective opinions on something that is not relevant, but maybe two or three very important themes are coming through about the beginning of the film, about the character and about a certain motivation and about the end. Those are the things on which we then sit and we have really important discussions.

What are the things that you are likely to more do it for? Are you likely to more do it for, say, genre films because that’s fairly new in India?

We’d like to do it for every film that we’re working on but we’re very sensitive about the people that we’re working with. So if we’re working with a director who is completely closed to it we won’t get very far and we don’t like to exercise final cut because that’s just not the way we like to operate. We want to creatively work with people and we do believe it’s a director’s medium ultimately. So if it’s a director who’s open to feedback and is very happy to get test screenings on board, then that’s something that we would do. But maybe it’s a cut we’ve all watched and we really like the way it is and we decide that actually whatever research tells us this is the movie we’ve made, this is the movie we want to go ahead with— then we take that call. So really there’s nothing that’s cast in stone. I do believe it can’t hurt if there is trust on both sides. The director and producer trust each other enough to know that whatever comes out of it we’re going to sit together and we’re really going to have a proper discussion about it and not get swayed so much that we’re going to take…

So you’re saying that basically it’s just another aid. It’s not something that…

It’s not something that’s going to make or break our decision on the film.

REGIONAL FILMS 2

Fair enough. You guys have made, what, five regional films, backed five regional films last year?

That’s right.

Where is that going? Are you guys looking at making more regional films? Is the concentration, focus more on South India? How is that working out? Is that the way for all distributors, producers to go?

See, I think if you want to be a truly pan-Indian studio then you need to be doing more than just Hindi cinema. I think it’s important. Having said that you also need to accept that you don’t know that sensibility at all. You could make a movie in China for all you know and you know it as much as you know a Tamil film. But you have to learn it and learn it in a systematic manner and first accept that you don’t know anything. And then go in there and start making movies that you sort of believe in, that probably are less risky than the other ones because they’re star driven, they’re proper commercial movies. Some will work, some won’t. But I think the first thing is to just seep yourself into that culture. So we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. We’re doing Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam… That’s what we’ve started with and for the next couple of years I think we’ll be focusing on that.

And do you have to shift operations in a big way there? Do you need to have a completely…

We have a set-up there already. So we have our head of the South business and he’s got offices cross Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad…

Okay, you will be looking at other regional films? Marathi?

We might. As I said, those regional cinemas that have an overlap with Hindi are ones that are much less lucrative, in a sense, because they are not really cinemas that have potential to grow that much because the same audience is also watching Hindi movies and is quite happy to watch a Hindi movie. The South is interesting because it’s a different audience altogether. Hindi movies just don’t do much business in the South at all. So it’s a different cinema. It’s a different set of stars, it’s a different system, a different operation altogether.

SATELLITE RIGHTS, MUSIC SALES, MERCHANDIZING, LICENSING AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE REVENUE SOURCES

I want to come to satellite rights. There is a lot of talk about how movies are actually sold. And what movies work. And what movies don’t work. When you look into the figures as an outsider, a lot of things don’t make sense. Agent Vinod selling for a lot more than a Kahaani. Or Barfi! not selling as well. All these notions that a thriller does not do as well or this film does not have a ‘repeat value’ or this film does have a ‘repeat value’. How accurate are these surveys, given the TRPs themselves are actually extremely questionable, at least in India? How evolved is the process of selling satellite rights?

So I guess TRPs are questionable but that’s the only benchmark to go by. So that’s what we go by.

But that’s something that needs to change?

Well, the whole broadcasting industry needs to work on that so that’s not something we’re going to worry about. That’s just what we take as the Holy Grail to determine whether a film’s working or not on TV. That’s what the advertiser looks at, that’s how media is bought and so on. Yes it is true that broadcasters have their own theories about which movies are TV friendly and which ones are not and that might not be proportional at all to how they have done theatrically. But that’s just how it is and that’s the environment that you need to work with. So the buyer has the right to have their own theories about what they want to buy.

But are these theories based on any kind of proper…

I have to say they are based on the logic, whether we believe it or not, that movie viewing on television has to be something that you can snack on. You’ve got to be able to watch five minutes, go off somewhere, do something, be okay with two breaks, come back and pick off where you left it. So they tend to believe that action movies and comedy movies tend to work really well. When it’s a drama, when it’s something you need to be very, very compellingly involved in the story with on an ongoing basis, they tend to believe that that’s not something that lends itself to viewing on TV. Now I’m sure they’ve got a lot of studies that they have done to tell them that because obviously they are all very smart people. This really dictates massive budgets for them. So that I think is a theory that they operate on.

And you feel that that is… do you see a lot of acceptance for that theory in your own experience or… ?

Well you don’t have any choice to accept if that is what the buyer believes. That’s what the buyer is going to be paying good money for. And that might in the future dictate the kind of movies that get green-lit too. Because if 30 percent of your revenue is going to be based on satellite television, you’ve got to believe that you’re making cinema that will finally be bought by a channel.

And how big a factor is it for you when you take on a film?

It’s a factor.

Let’s talk about home video quickly because that’s the only market that is dropping. It’s… what? Fifteen percent or negative something? Is that only because of piracy or do you feel also because VoD (Video on Demand) and Direct to Home are catching on? Are they really catching on?

Actually, I think more than VoD and Direct to Home it’s that… One, is, obviously, piracy, two is the fact that a film is going to be available on satellite television pretty quickly and everyone knows that. It’s going to be 60 days, 65 days, before the movie is on a satellite channel and they can watch it for free. If they haven’t watched it before that on a pirated DVD, or if they haven’t watched it in a theatre. So the whole joy of owning a copy of the film is really irrelevant today I think for most people because they can either download it from somewhere or there’ll be some way of watching where they won’t need to own a physical DVD and it’s just become a bit irrelevant to have a physical copy of a film anymore.

Vishwaroopam was released simultaneously.

Actually it didn’t. He wanted to but it didn’t happen.

It didn’t work out? Is that a way to go? Is that something that could…

I don’t think it’s a way to go because it’s just… you won’t be able to release your movie theatrically because exhibitors won’t accept it. So it’s just…

But if you could, hypothetically, convince the exhibitors is that something that could make market sense?

I do believe there is no harm in doing it because I don’t believe that you are going to cannibalise very much at all on your theatrical business. I think someone who wants to watch a film in a cinema hall is still going to go and watch it. Someone who was anyway going to watch it on television later or on home video will access it on VoD. Having said that the exhibitors have a legitimate reason to say, ‘Guys, if you want showcasing in a cinema don’t have it available on another platform the same day that you are giving it to us because we’re just not going to take that.’ And it’s not something that is done anywhere in the world actually. Windows in India are much shorter than anywhere in the world.

PIRACY

Okay. Piracy. There was an anti-piracy cell. A bunch of you producers got together. Has that seen any traction? Has that been able to do anything? What are some of the steps that can be taken even today? Or do you feel that the market needs to just develop around piracy?

Well, the market is developing around piracy. I don’t think anyone is under any illusion that it’ll be stamped out completely. I believe that legislation is going to be the only way to get to make a difference to that. If you’ve got really stringent collective action against the pirate and the person who is going in and accessing content from the pirate, only then are you really going to be able to move forward.

Legislation and implementation, of course.

Absolutely, absolutely.

The cell that you guys set up, has that been able to take any measures? What can producer do themselves?

You do what you can. You’ve got an online anti-piracy agency when you release your film that ensures that take down notices are sent to any website that is pirating your movie. But given the level of proliferation you do your best but you know that it’s never going to be enough. You’ve got codes on every print that you send out so you know from where a print has been pirated. You know from where your movie has been pirated so you can take action against that cinema. The cinema will invariably tell you that it’s not the case, that if it’s a physical print it could have happened on the way. So you’re never going to be able to tell exactly where it happened. The stakes are so high that even if you put a security guard on every print, you know how much they pay and the lure of the sort of money that they would get if they had to go out and pirate that film would be so high that it’s not really going to be worth your while. So there are lots of reasons why you have to accept that you do need to work around piracy and that’s just how it is.

What are the alternative revenue sources that are hot right now? What are you guys talking about? One of the things that you spoke about earlier, licensing, gaming, merchandising, that is still a nascent market in India. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you was: Is that something that needs to develop more India specifically? I mean so far what we have seen is that we’re trying to import it exactly in the way it exists abroad. So if you have an action or sci-fi film in India, you’re going to have an action figure corresponding to that, or whatever, which we don’t make much of. But we might have a different market. Maybe Gangs of Wasseypur could have merchandising around it which is not the kind of film that you will have merchandising for abroad. So is that something you guys are thinking of in a completely different way now?

Very much. And I think it needs to happen with the right movie. Of course gaming we do on a number of our movies already. There are lots of other platforms like your Netflix and Hulu and YouTube and Samsung and various other platforms that we are on today which were non-existent a few years ago. But yes I think merchandising is definitely something that we need to look at much more.

In a different way. I mean I remember, for example, when Hum Aapke Hain Koun released there wasn’t a girl anywhere who didn’t have that green and white disastrous dress that Madhuri (Dixit) wore.

Or the felt cap of Maine Pyar Kiya.

Which is not what how you would think of merchandising abroad.

That just happened organically. It was just that people really wanted it badly. As an organised effort it could have done much more.

But I’m thinking that is the kind of merchandising that might work here much more than a Superman costume?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

What about in-cinema advertising? One does believe that the revenues in India are lower than the revenues that you earn aboard with in-cinema advertising. Is that something that needs to give?

So that’s revenue that goes to the cinema.

Okay. What about radio and music sales? How is that shaping up?

Well it’s shaping up pretty well. Of course, physical sales are pretty much non-existent today. So you’re really looking at digital. Radio and broadcasting as your key drivers as far as music is concerned. And the physical format, in music, is not really something that we look at at all. But music is the best way to promote a movie in India and so we look at it as a marketing tool…

As well as a revenue tool. What are the one or two alternative revenue sources that producers are most… which would you would bet your money on? Which are the ones that are coming up?

I’d say that if 4G is implemented in India the way that it is anticipated, 4G might be a massive source of revenue for studios because there will be a lot of audio-visual content that will be very easily downloadable and accessible. And if you are able to repurpose your catalogue where you are able to provide byte size content for platforms you might be in a really good position there. That’s one. Two is, I think, if you look at the online models today so from a Netflix to a Hulu to a YouTube. These are all models that I think are growing and evolving as we move along and they are new mediums completely. We’ve already got deals in place with most of them and we will continue to do a lot about that in the future.

THE COPYRIGHT ACT

I want to talk a little bit about the latest amendment to the Copyright Act, which gives a lot of people now a right to royalty. Is that something that you guys are concerned about? Have you had a look at the legislation? Are you rethinking your contracts? There is also ambiguity about how much royalty to be paid. So what are your concerns about that amendment?

So I don’t want to get too much into this because it might be something that is subject to litigation in a while etc. so I really don’t want to dwell on that too much. But yes it’s obviously something that we have looked at very, very closely.

And it is a concern?

It is a concern. Absolutely.

What are the concerns? If you can just tell me what is it that is of concern in the…

I do believe we need to look at India as the market that it is rather than ascribing western models of copyright to it. I think you need to look at music in Hindi cinema as a different entity altogether as compared to music that is not commissioned for a particular piece of work, that just stands on its own completely which is an album that someone’s created and sold as a separate album of that artist as against something that is commissioned by a producer to be written for a film to be shot and to be picturised on actors and actresses and then sold as a part of the movie. So I do believe that we’re in a little bit of a different situation here and I think those nuances need to be something that we all consider very carefully before we come to any final conclusion there.

Okay. And the ambiguity. Is that also something that is or that can be…

There is a fair amount of ambiguity which is what we’re all seeking some clarification on.

I don’t know if you are aware of it at all but screenwriters have been talking about a common minimum contract. Is that something that you guys have spoken about or…

No it’s not something that has been spoken about in any official capacity.

THE STATE AND THE NEED TO LOBBY

Fair enough. I want to talk a little bit about what the state can do overall. Of course there is the taxation. Resources and taxation are two main areas that I wanted to ask your opinion on. In taxation, of course, there is talk of entertainment tax being included in the GST. We don’t know if that’ll happen or not. There are discrepancies in the entertainment tax and service tax paid in each state. What are some of the concerns that you guys have? Where do you feel the state can, keeping their concerns in mind, aid the industry in any way at this point?

I think as cultural ambassadors of India in many ways and in many ways as the most public face of India to the world it’s probably important for the government to look at the sector a little bit differently and to look at how they can motivate this sector and how it can be given the impetus to grow. Because we haven’t really reached the stage where the sort of tax structures that are imposed on the industry right now are sustainable for growth in the long run. So I think it’s very important for the sector to be looked at and, frankly, also for us to represent ourselves in the right manner to them as well because I don’t think there has been a very concerted way in the past where we have represented our issues the way that Nasscom does for the IT industry, for example. So that I think is very important. The entire structure of taxation for the entertainment industry needs to be looked at. The other thing of course is piracy and I think legislation is the key role that the government can play in ensuring that piracy is dealt with in a very severe manner where the deterrent is so high that it becomes difficult for people who want to indulge in it. So those are the…

And do you feel like there needs to be a little more organisation in the industry to lobby, for the lack of a better word?

There are organisations. The problem is that there are three or four of them and I think it’s important for us to come under one body that represent the issues of the industry in a professional manner.

BETTER SCRIPTS AND AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

What are the changes that you can think of offhand in the creative… that need to happen in the creative industry which will aid the market at this point? Better scripts maybe, better scriptwriters, more film education, anything that you can think of.

You know there is a lot that studios can do and we’ve spoken about that but definitely the creative community needs to look inward a bit. Because I think the quality of writing that one has been exposed to in the last so many years and the stage at which writers are happy to put that out as their work and really ask someone for an opinion… One might be purely because of the training but I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s a certain amount of laziness in putting in that extra effort and getting it to exactly where it needs to get because I think there is such a dearth of concepts and ideas today that something that is even vaguely interesting can get picked up pretty early on but it’s not been developed into the best that it can be. The studios on the other hand have to ensure that writers aren’t feeling so desperate for their next meal that they feel the need to do that and are feeling more secure in order to focus on the writing. So I think just the quality of writing and the depth and intensity of effort put into a screenplay can change quite a bit.

And you did mention that studios also can do more in terms of allocating funds for research on a script or development.

I think many studios today, us included, are happy to do so. The problem is really the dearth of really great writing talent out there and the dearth of really great ideas out there that are represented in a manner that can pique someone’s interest. So I have to say that there is a massive dearth of talent.

What about, for the lack of a better word, approachability? Because honestly there is a lot of talent out there but one tends to believe that… There are fabulous writers out there. Come to think of it Indian literature today is the hottest property anywhere. There are fabulous writers sitting in Delhi but they are not going to come out here to try and write scripts. Because their whole impression is that: ‘I’m going to have to sit struggling in Versova, in a cafe.’ That’s not something they would do because book advances are so great. So is approachability, talent scouting, a wider reach something that you guys are also…

It’s important. I can’t deny that. Approachability is key. We try to be as transparent and as open as we can but obviously we’re not going to be able to meet everyone who has a great idea. But, yes I think it’s important for studios to be as approachable as they can be. And to actually be going out there to seek out people.

The way we used to plagiarise films in the eighties and the nineties is not how… a lot of things are changing. A lot of people are buying rights to remakes if they want to. Is corporatisation one of the major reasons for that clean up that has happened or is there a greater risk of litigation? Also I want to ask you guys, do you have systems in place to screen content for originality?

We do. Having said that, we might make a slip now and then. If we realise it later on in the process, it’s something that we would definitely look at. Because one couldn’t possibly have watched every film that exists in the world and in world cinema to identify if something has been taken from somewhere. So, but it’s something that we look at very, very carefully. It’s not something that we would accept at all. We do have a system in place where our lawyers get to watch a rough cut at some stage to give us feedback on potential issues that might come up later. But there is a lot of frivolous litigation as well, and we just assume there will be. With every film we allocate a certain budget to that because we know that that is something that is going to happen.

FINANCING MODELS

Okay, quickly. The industry status came a while ago. Have the financing models developed as one would have hoped when the industry status was accorded to films? And what is currently the prime source of financing? I mean public listing is one of them. I believe UTV has been delisted now.

It is part of The Walt Disney Company now.

But you guys had gone public earlier. What other organised funding? Venture capitalists…

Well, you have all your studios in the game today so they (films) are all privately funded by studios. You’ve got banks willing to offer, to credible production houses, loans at pretty decent rates of interest. So it’s fine now I think. If you want to raise finance for a film, and you want to do it through legitimate means, there are many legitimate means open to you.

You’re saying there are enough legitimate means that are available?

One is obviously going to the studio. Two is going to a bank and raising funding based on your credentials and based on your pedigree obviously. If you are a credible production house today you can raise funding from banks.

RELEASE AGREEMENTS

We touched upon this a little bit earlier. For example when Anurag (Kashyap) spoke about how even though Gangs of Wasseypur was doing well, the minute Ek Tha Tiger was released Gangs of Wasseypur had to removed from screens. Are there larger agreements that can be worked out with exhibitors so that bigger movies don’t end up swallowing smaller movies?

I don’t think so.

No?

I think that the market is going to dictate that. And I don’t know about this specific example but finally you have to accept the exhibitor is going to be doing the best thing for their business in that week. So if a film is doing well I doubt if it’s going to be taken off screens if there is a big film. It will be accorded a certain number of screens but because there is a big film coming the week after, that is going to come in and take more screens. You just have to be savvy about where you are going to place your movie. If you believe you’re a film that will grow, don’t come one week before Ek Tha Tiger. It’s a tough one. It is going to be tough.

COST-CONTROL

How are you investing in keeping costs low? I know there are producers who are hiring docket management systems to monitor the per-day costs and stuff like that. Is that a huge priority for you guys right now or do you feel that…

It is a big priority that you just have to do it on an ongoing basis. It’s just part of the deal.

What are some of the ways?

Well we just take on a really good line producer and we monitor the entire process really well. We pre-plan, we do our pre-production pretty meticulously. And that’s the best way to do it really, to just plan well in advance.

WHAT IS A STUDIO?

Final question. You started this conversation with speaking about how studios are coming back after decades. What is new studio system? How is it a sort of hybrid between a corporate and the way studios were thought of traditionally? What is this hybrid?

You know I think the way studios were thought of originally was you’ve got a massive studio lot. So there is a physical studio. You’ve got actors on contract, who work only with you, and you can loan out other studios. You’ve got your physical infrastructure to make movies. Today things are a bit more virtual. So today as a studio you don’t need to necessarily own sound stages. You can get most of your post-production work done outside of you. You don’t need to sign on talent that only works with you. You can choose to do long term deals with certain talent— like directing talent, acting talent. You don’t necessarily need to be… I mean you don’t need to have everything on one lot. It can be done in various places and it can still be all coming in to one studio. So I think the model today is really having creative, production, marketing, distribution, syndication- the whole value chain involved in the making of a movie and then the releasing of the movie can happen in your control, and for you to be responsible for all that but not necessarily having to physically control it.

Okay. And do you guys see yourselves as a studio? Would you say…

Absolutely.

The same model? Okay. That’s it.

Superb.

Lovely and Bright with Soft Curls

Posted on December 9, 2013 by admin

Nakul Krishna on the American Dream, Indian values, a touch of lipstick and what we and our movies have made of such ideas.

When I was eight years old, I came home from school every day to an American sitcom called Small Wonder. I have never yet met an American my age who has seen it; I have never yet met a middle-class Indian my age who hasn’t. If you belong to that second category, you’ll probably know what I mean. I for one saw every episode twice, first in English, and later dubbed in Hindi. You probably did too. You might remember its opening music— “She’s a small wonder / Lovely and bright with soft curls… ”

Small Wonder is set in an unnamed American town, in the suburban home of the Lawson family. Ted Lawson is an engineer at United Robotronics, married to Joan, who is, when the show starts, a housewife. In the first episode, he brings home a robot he calls V.I.C.I. It stands for Voice Input Child Identicant, but they call her Vicki, and pass her off, for reasons too complicated to explain, as a member of their family.

Over the show’s four seasons, she is legally adopted after the social services get suspicious, and even gets to go to school. Even for a work of ‘soft’ science fiction (in other words, one with little interest in making the science believable), Small Wonder is full of implausibilities. How does no one notice that Vicki, who speaks in a robotic monotone throughout, is, well, a little strange?

For this but not only this reason, there are television critics who’ve declared it to be the worst ever show on American television. This can’t be strictly true: where American television is concerned, there are always lower depths to plumb. But even if it is, it doesn’t matter. Small Wonder got to me long before my inner critic could think about whether it was any good. And it is perhaps the mark of something in the show, an earnestness, a kind of naïve integrity, that its absurd premise soon comes to seem the most natural thing in the world.

I love bringing up Small Wonder in conversation with Indians of my age and background. It is, along with the opening music of Doordarshan News and that image of Sushmita Sen as Miss Universe with her hands to her mouth, part of that set of collective memories that make for the materials of future nostalgia. But it interests me in a different capacity as well.

I am interested—it is one of the subjects of my academic work—in what goes into the making of our sensibilities. The little things—an image, a story, a turn of phrase—are often the most important. They come to us before we are able to subject them to rational scrutiny. They go into how we perceive the world, into recesses of the mind so deep that it is an impossible task dislodging them afterwards. There are places no argument can reach.

Small Wonder was my first glimpse of (what I did not then know was called) the American Dream. If there is a part of me that still believes in that dream, it is the one schooled on the images of suburban happiness I first encountered in the house of the Lawsons.

The Lawson house is a stereotypical ‘sitcom’ house, full of stereotypical sitcom furniture. But it presented my eight-year-old self with the image of a nuclear family in a home of their own. The children, if not so much dad, helped with the chores and things were discussed at the dinner table. It was an image of family, the American family, not the province of indiscipline and disrespect I had been told it was—an old Indian cliché—but a quite familiar mix of humour and tough love, full of soppiness and teachable moments.

Small Wonder was also a glimpse—though it is not the most obvious way of looking at it—of American capitalism. Ted Lawson, let us remember, works at United Robotronics, and we are on half a dozen or so occasions given episodes whose plotlines centre around its internal shenanigans. A memorable episode has the president of the company, Mr. Jennings, telling (evidently for the umpteenth time) his rags-to-riches story about building his company from nothing. For reasons again too complicated to explain here, Vicki has been pumping laughing gas into the room while this happens. Soon the point of the story is revealed: Mr. Jennings is about to announce the necessity of laying off workers to save the company. His sombre announcement is greeted with bellows of uncontrollable laughter— the writers and actors handle the irony nicely: all is not well in Reagan’s America.

Yet, American capitalism could have no better advertisement. This image of white-collar workers living their idyllic family lives supported by a regime of science and technological innovation is a compelling one, even if there is the further question of whether this was an accurate representation of American capitalism. But I wonder about what these images did to those of my generation watching them as the world was learning how to conduct itself now that the Cold War was over.

There is one episode in which the Cold War figures explicitly. A young schoolboy from the Soviet Union is touring the United States, taking on and intending to defeat American students in a series of one-on-one quizzes— proof, surely, of the superiority of the Soviet educational, and no doubt political, system. Young Vladimir seems a formidable opponent, until it is discovered, halfway through the episode, that he is, in fact, a robot.

The Lawsons, who had baulked at having Vicki compete against a real boy, even a Soviet one, now need have no such qualms. Vicki gets to compete against him, and things are neck and neck, until Ted decides that things have gone too far and gives Vladimir a bit of ‘old-fashioned American reprogramming’; the echo with ‘re-education’ was no doubt deliberate. Vladimir interrupts the quiz to announce that he is defecting and that he loves America, and breaks out into a robotic rendition of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’. Small Wonder is the sort of programme that could well have been made by the cultural wing of the CIA. It probably wasn’t, but the CIA couldn’t have produced a better piece of propaganda if they’d tried.

It is central to my experience of Small Wonder that what it depicted, its science fictional component apart, I took to be a portrayal of what American life was like. Other things people of my generation watched—the Wonder Years will certainly ring some bells and, five or six years later, Friends—were presenting us with appropriately smoothened, comically inflected pictures of somebody else’s way of life, lives people somewhere far away were leading. And the crucial thing is that these were not, as generations of Indians before mine had thought, lives fundamentally without values except those of materialism and technological efficiency, but values of a more straightforwardly moral kind: liberty, individualism, and the pursuit of happiness.

Neither America, nor the West more generally, nor capitalism, come out well in the Indian cinema on which my parents’ generation grew up— I’m thinking of the long lineage of films from Purab aur Pachhim (1970) through Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995), and their descendants: Pardes (1997), Aa Ab Laut Chalen (1999), Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal (2007), Namastey London (2007) to Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana (2012). With their images of Indians abroad either full of nostalgia for the old country, or full of contempt for it until they have a sudden epiphany. Then the boys cut their hair, girls cover their legs, everyone gives up smoking, and all is well with the world again.

It is a common trope in this genre of cinema that the West—that undifferentiated continent—is a place without values. Only the lure of money makes it worth an Indian’s while to be there, such is its unmitigated racism, greed and licentiousness. The old here are refuse, to be emptied into old-age homes, and women, who spend their days smoking in louche nightclubs, are mere objects. And so on— the images are too familiar to need rehearsing. The point is that only India, the old country, has values.

Against this, there were the images on television where the West spoke for itself every day. The images on television were ones of autonomy: the suburban nuclear family not as a cruel rupture from some purer and more organic way of life but an ideal in its own right. And they were images of freedom: living alone in a big city not as a tragedy to be avoided with an early marriage but as an adventure, at least while it lasted. The relationship of children with their families, especially their parents, was presented with a mixture of irony, awkwardness, indulgence and love, a good distance away from the solemn and sentimentalized images of these relationships our cinema had given us. It is, again, a further question whether these were ‘better’ values than the ones our cinema had been defending. Still, it was a help to be shown that these things were values, even if they were not our own.

I mentioned CIA propaganda, in part because such a thing did exist— the Cold War was, as we now know, in part a struggle for the proverbial ‘hearts and minds’ of the non-aligned. I have the vaguest memory of issues of Span—an American attempt to disseminate images of American superiority across the third world along the lines of the Russians’ Soviet Life—on an uncle’s coffee table. But really, it was the Soviets who had, from the fifties through the eighties, invested in the hearts and minds of India’s young. Pankaj Mishra has an affecting memoir of these years in an essay published in the magazine n+1 some years ago:

Mobile bookshops toured the towns offering subscriptions to Soviet magazines and organising book fairs where you could buy two hardback editions of Russian classics for five rupees (at a time when one dollar equalled 18 rupees). … The mobile bookshops came to our town without warning, often appearing in a field where gypsies from Rajasthan set up their black tents. Inside the long truck, books stood in open dusty shelves, monitored by thin young men in glasses. There were many Soviet translations of Russian classics, in addition to the works of Marx, Lenin and Plekhanov. … My earliest purchases were collections of Russian fairy tales, and I now wish I still had, or could recall the titles of, the beautifully illustrated volumes that enlivened much of my childhood.

There is much in Mishra’s memoir that I can recognize, just about, but mine is the last generation to have any memory at all of the sort of thing he is talking about. Cousins born a few years after me know little of the mixed economy and even less of the non-aligned movement. They did not grow up, as I did, however briefly, on Soviet-subsidized books of lavishly illustrated Russian folktales, and the drawing-room politics of the nineties were not disposed to the same reflexive anti-Americanism of previous decades. Instead, in those drawing rooms sat colour televisions, with cable, broadcasting American propaganda that did its job precisely because it was not made to be propaganda.

In the early 1990s, few people had any coherent idea of the kind of brave new world into which Manmohan Singh’s economic policy was dragging us. Still less did we know what kind of society it would create. Our popular culture has responded in its way to the transition, with both television and cinema in the nineties full of scenes of sinister tycoons signing ten-crore-rupee contracts. But I am thinking about the daily life of capitalism, its effects, good and ill, on ordinary human beings: what does it do to family, what does it do to friendship, what does it feel like to live under it? Here, our popular culture has been of less help.

Twenty years later, we are getting the hang of freedom, that ambiguous value— or rather, the peculiar variety of freedom the American Dream represents. It is a powerful idea, powerful enough to command the loyalty of serious and intelligent people. But I am hardly the first person to point out that the dream always had its dark side— violence and exploitation on the one hand, alienation and loneliness on the other. Yet, the idea can have a hold on some of us.

We should be honest enough not to deny the part of us that believes, sometimes despite itself, in that dream, even if we believe this only because the fairy tales we grow up with were not Russian but American. The immigrant’s New York is going to look nothing like Friends, but the fantasy of New York is part of what brings some of its immigrants there. The half-truth that dares not speak its name in our cinema is the possibility that it is not just the desire for money that attracts Indians to the West— it is also the promise of freedom and the responsibility that comes with it, however seldom that promise is realized.

It is tempting, too tempting, to think the impulse a Western one. But India has always had the ingredients of that impulse– the renunciant in the Sanskrit tradition seeks freedom of a sort, as does the ancient Tamil poet who complains that “living / among relations / binds the feet”. Within the terms of such a worldview, the American dream is a paradox: the householder whose feet are still unbound.

There is a winsome moment in Satyajit Ray’s Mahanagar (The Big City, 1963) where Madhabi Mukherjee’s Arati, a housewife unexpectedly successful in her job as door-to-door saleswoman, is offered a lesson in applying lipstick by her (inevitably) Anglo-Indian colleague Edith. Arati protests at first, then blushes, then checks that the door is locked, insists that Edith put “not much, just a little”. Edith reminds her of the “Indian book on sex, you know, the famous one, that said that Indian girls used to paint their lips and eyebrows and fingernails and everything, in the old days. So why shouldn’t you?” Arati looks at herself in the mirror shyly, preens for a moment, then wipes it all off.

Things come to grief for both Edith and Arati soon enough, but the moment stays with you, a brief moment of daring, a little experiment in being free. Not much, just a little.

EVERGREEN

Posted on December 3, 2013 by admin

On Dev Anand’s second death anniversary, Sidharth Bhatia writes about India’s longest lasting star who changed cinema forever.

During my interviews with Dev Anand for the book I was writing, the octogenarian star used to often talk about his friendship with Hollywood stars and his love for western cinema. Kirk Douglas, James Stewart, Shirley MacLaine, he had met them all. He admired Charlie Chaplin. He had discussed the possibility of an English film with David O. Selznick, but the latter died suddenly. What he liked about Hollywood was the glamour. Stars, he often said, should be stars. They should have mystique and style and not be seen to be just like everyone else. “Why should stars advertise soap or cement?” he used to say. That larger than life glamour was reflected in his own films and his own persona.

But I think there was more to it than just notions of stardom or the dazzle of Hollywood. He admired the West for its modernity. For Dev Anand was the quintessential modern man, on screen and off. He was an urban and urbane man, from the debonair manner in which he carried himself to the films he made. His films were always set in the city, in an industrial urban landscape, rejecting implicitly the traditional and the conventional. Indian films in the 1930s and 1940s were pegged mostly around mythological, historic or nationalistic themes, often focusing on and glorifying the village. In their manner, mores and technique, the films of Navketan, Dev Anand’s production house, sought out new ideas and values that could have belonged anywhere, not necessarily in the rooted Indian context. For instance, Navketan’s first film Afsar, released in 1950, is a social satire based on Russian dramatist Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector. The second, Baazi (1951), Guru Dutt’s directorial debut, falls squarely in the genre of early Hollywood noir. The city became Navketan’s milieu.

Making urban-centric films in the 1950s was a brave decision. Newly independent India was a predominantly rural nation. Gandhi had said India lives in its villages, which was taken to mean that that is where the country’s policy emphasis should be. The sub-text was also that the village was an idyllic society and the repository of Indian values while the city was alienating, cruel and, most damningly, a Western construct. Rich and exploitative capitalists lived there, who were out to cheat simple and good-hearted villagers.

Raj Kapoor, along with K. A. Abbas, made Shree 420 on that theme and Bimal Roy’s film Do Bigha Zamin brought this out even more starkly. The trope remained with filmmakers for years, well into the 1970s and beyond.

Dev Anand and his brothers, Chetan and Vijay, were not of that mindset. They saw the city, with all its good and evil, for itself. It was the sole protagonist of the Navketan films, which did not resort to using village life as a foil. Elder brother Chetan Anand and Dev had been to Government College, Lahore, an elitist institution which was steeped in Western mores. Chetan’s wife Uma Anand came from a highly Westernized family of Bengali Christians and her father worked in the college; life centred around tea parties and tennis matches. The ICS (Indian Civil Service) was thought to be the natural home for Chetan and he went off to London to prepare; when he did not make it, he joined The Doon School, one of India’s best residential schools, to teach. Young Dev was in the same Westernized, or more specifically, Anglicised mould.

Navketan always remained off the beaten path and Dev Anand and his brothers must take the credit for this. The earlier Bombay Noir black and white films—Baazi, Taxi Driver (1954) etc.—and the later colour films such as Guide (1965), Jewel Thief (1967) and Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) were equally bold in their conception and execution. Besides being completely city-centric (Taxi Driver was possibly the first film to be shot completely outdoors in Mumbai), the early Navketan films were unique in that Dev Anand played a kind of anti-hero mostly, with shades of grey to his character. For years afterwards, he continued to play such characters—from House No. 44 (1955) in the fifties to Jewel Thief and Johny Mera Naam (1970) in the sixties and after. Even though he often turned out to be the good cop, his character pretended to be a crook. The heroines in their films too were different from their peers. They were not clingy, weepy or traditional as heroines were likely to be in that era. Often, they were ambitious. In the first Navketan hit, Baazi, the heroine is a doctor; in Taxi Driver, she is a hopeful singer who comes to Bombay to try her luck; in Nau Do Gyarah (1957) she is someone who has run away from home to get out of a wedding. This tradition continues right up to Jewel Thief, Hare Rama Hare Krishna and Heera Panna (1973). More remarkably, the “vamps” or even heroines were not embarrassed about their sexuality and no one gave preachy lectures about that. In B. R. Chopra’s Gumrah, for example, the rich housewife who yearns for a former lover is suitably chastised by her husband for her waywardness; contrast that with Navketan’s Guide. Here, Rosie the dancer leaves two men—one of them her husband—who disappoint her, and makes her own life. Guide is bold even by today’s standards; adultery is still a subject that makes Indian filmmakers nervous.

Guide is worth examining in some depth, because it is a landmark film not only for Navketan but also in the annals of Indian cinema. There is of course the English Guide and the Hindi one, but the former remains nondescript and unseen and is not worth discussing (I have seen it, but it is little more than a curiosity, a novelty rather than a serious film).

When Dev Anand with his typical enthusiasm decided to make the film, he chose to pull out all stops, getting Pearl Buck involved. He flew to meet R. K. Narayan and impressed him with his energy. Soon the film shoot was up and running but it became clear that the initial plan of shooting it bilingually at the same time would not work; the two directors could not see eye to eye. When Chetan Anand, the director of the Hindi version left to make his own film (Haqeeqat), Dev Anand asked his younger brother Vijay “Goldie” Anand to direct. He flatly refused, pointing out that the subject was not in conformity with Indian attitudes. How could they show an Indian heroine (who needs to be purer than the driven snow) having an affair, whatever the motivation? In the book the hero, Raju guide, is an unscrupulous man who seduces Rosie soon after he meets her. Rosie is an unsatisfied wife whose husband is more interested in statues than her. Even so, why would she stray? After Dev Anand prevailed on Goldie, the latter shut himself in a room for a few weeks to write a new script with a completely new angle to the story. This version had a few plot twists— a scene that justified the adultery and the desertion by the wife and then, subsequently, a new ending which was more cathartic and satisfying.

There was redemption and closure, which are very important in Hindi cinema. Guide is not without its flaws, but remains a great film. Its story, its scale and even the routine song and dance are handled with great sophistication. Watch the song Tere Mere Sapne, which is shot at dawn in just three shots. Or the superb Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Tamanna Hai, which fully expresses the newfound freedom of the heroine. The film works even today.

Navketan did not only make great entertainers and classics and many of its latter films were poorly conceived and made. Dev Anand became a parody of himself eventually and his latter films were unsuccessful because he had lost touch with a younger audience and didn’t seem to get that. In films like Love at Times Square (2003) or Mr. Prime Minister (2005) or Chargesheet (2011) he appeared as he would in his youth, in colourful mufflers, suede waistcoats and denim jackets. He was trying hard through these films to reinvent the cinema of Navketan but, sadly, failed to reinvent himself. His films became by him and about him; he had become the institution.

He had, however, had a great run as a star and, until the end, remained one. In Navketan films (and in other Dev Anand films too), the individual faces the challenges of life in a non-complaining way and with a smile. Almost all early films he made had him singing a happy-go-lucky song about facing life in a cheerful manner: Hum Hain Rahi Pyar Ke (Nau do Gyarah); Chahe koi khush ho chaahe gaaliyan hazaar de / Mastram ban ke zindagi ke din guzaar de, (Taxi Driver) and, of course, Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya (Hum Dono), which was written for him by his friend Sahir Ludhianvi, and became his personal anthem.

My intention in writing my book was not only to celebrate the wonderful films they made but also give Navketan—and all those who worked in it—its due. The directors, actors and technicians, the musicians and lyricists, were among the best in the industry. Technicians, such as V. Ratra, who was cinematographer for most of the well-known Navketan films (from Afsar and Baazi, to Hum Dono, right up to Jewel Thief and Chhupa Rustam, in 1973). Their works delight us even today. Also, who can forget all those songs, beginning with Tadbeer Se Bigdi Hui Taqdeer Bana Le in Baazi (written by Sahir Ludhianvi, set to music by the legendary S. D. Burman), to Main zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya (again a Sahir lyric, composed by Jaidev) to Dum Maaro Dum in Hare Rama Hare Krishna (written by Anand Bakshi and composed by S. D. Burman’s son R. D. Burman)?

I was pleasantly surprised to see the phenomenal media coverage of Dev Anand’s death, two years ago, on this date. That an 88 year old actor, long forgotten by everybody and whose name means nothing to the younger generation today got wall to wall coverage for days on television and in the newspapers says something about him. It shows that Dev Anand was the original cool hero who would have been a hit with the youth of any generation, including the current one. Dev Anand engendered the carefree Shammi Kapoor and the current crop of actors too owe a lot to him. Vijay Anand has a huge following among the next generation of Indian directors, like Sriram Raghavan and Sudhir Mishra. Navketan translates into ‘new banner’ and, true enough to its name, it unfurled a banner that was radically new for its time.

The writer’s book on Navketan, ‘Cinema Modern: The Navketan Story’ is available here.

Eye of the Beholder: Atul Dodiya

Posted on November 29, 2013 by admin

54 year old artist Atul Dodiya was, in 1977, in a fix as to whether he should pursue art or films because “they were both intense passions”. He chose art. The boy who was “brought up on old Guru Dutt movies” studied at the Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai, and the École Des Beaux Arts, Paris. He went on to win the Sanskriti Award, the Sotheby’s Prize for Contemporary Indian Art and the Raza Award. Among his acclaimed work has been his series on Mahatma Gandhi and one titled Bombay: Labyrinth / Laboratory. But his love of cinema persisted and continues to do so. A sort of self-portrait called ‘The Bombay Buccaneer’, an oil, acrylic and wood on canvas that marked a step away from his earlier photo-realistic approach in 1994, is actually a take on the poster of the Hindi film Baazigar. ‘Gabbar on Gamboge’ is a portrait of actor Amjad Khan’s character from Sholay. In ‘The Trans-Siberian Express for Kajal’ he painted the last shot—of a son perched on a father’s shoulders—from Satyajit Ray’s Apur Sansar (released the year Dodiya was born). ‘Sunday Morning, Marine Drive’ comprised, among other images, an angry young Amitabh Bachchan. Saptapadi is a series featuring actresses from regional and Hindi films, in a sort of commentary on marriage. Portrait of a Dealer features, alongside characters from Bollywood, Heath Ledger as The Dark Knight’s Joker, Daryl Hannah as Elle Driver from Kill Bill and Anthony Hopkin’s chilling Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

In keeping with this penchant for referencing and retaining cinematic images, Dodiya’s latest tribute to cinema (a part of the multi-disciplinary project Cinema City— that addresses the relationship between Mumbai and its film industry) has been on Bollywood antagonists, where he juxtaposes iconic old Hindi film villains against signboards for railway stations on the city’s Central Line, which he used to travel on when he went to art school. Ghatkopar, where Dodiya grew up and where his studio is still, has been assigned Pran, his own favourite villain. There is an anomaly in the series. Bindu, the only female antagonist in the series, is juxtaposed against ‘Atul’, a station that is actually not on the Central Line, but somewhere near Gujarat.

Back in Ghatkopar, he lets us into his studio, close to the chawl where he grew up, and settles down amidst scores of stunning collected and created works of art, to talk about his work and cinema’s imprint on it.

An edited transcript:

So before you went to the Sir J. J. School of Art, there was a moment you were considering studying Cinema. Now, you clearly love the movies, ample proof everywhere. You have also called it the ‘complete medium’, quite often. What tilted the scale in favour of studying Art over studying Cinema at that point?

Well, I was very good at drawing and painting and it was very easy to take a paper and start drawing on your small desk. So, I think one of the reasons was that painting was accessible. And I immediately realized… I was looking at lots of movies, and soon I realized that it’s teamwork, you work with many people. And there are instruments, and there are technologies, and there’s chemistry which is involved. And those things— I was a little scared of that. And then I was also aware that it’s an expensive medium, so even to take a simple photograph, you need a camera and, in those days, of course, film was there. So you have to get film, and get it developed and all that. So, in that sense, the painting was the most sort of ‘at hand’ thing. That I can just buy a small notebook and start drawing with a pencil, it was that easy. And I was good at painting also, of course. That’s why I am a painter.

Even possibly, at 11 or 12, you started to think of taking up painting as a career. You grew up in Bombay, in Ghatkopar… It’s interesting to me to try and understand where you were growing up. Was this an option back then? Did too many kids think of becoming a painter, or becoming a writer, or was it a very unconventional choice? Did it come from someone in your family?

No, actually, it was unconventional. It wasn’t easy, even for me. Though my parents were very supportive, but my elder sister insisted that I should go do Architecture, and she insisted that I should take in my 11 standard, instead of History, Geography, and Civics— Maths, Physics, and Chemistry. And I failed twice in my SSC (Secondary School Certificate) due to that. Of course, during those two years, I did a lot of painting, and my father gave me a first class pass, you know, a railway train pass, to go from Ghatkopar to VT (Victoria Terminus, now Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus) so I could have a look at the exhibitions at the Jehangir Art Gallery. The fear was that there is no future in this. There is no one star. At the most you can be a drawing teacher or have the job of a professor in some art school, but otherwise, what about the future, surviving, all those things? So, even the neighbours or relatives would encourage that point, that— ‘Don’t allow him to do painting.’ But then I was so good and I was winning these competitions, awards, and prizes and they realized that there’s so much passion and love I have for painting. So, it was decided that I should be allowed. And, of course, when I failed twice in SSC it was decided that I’m a gone case, and that I should simply do what I really love. And then I joined Sir J.J. School of Art, and then, there, I was like a king— enjoying painting so much. That passion, you know, of those days, till today remains the same. It’s not that now I have achieved, got, everything. It’s not that. That anxiety, that joy, is still there.

That’s terrific. But coming back to art and cinema, other than the obvious what for you are the key similarities and differences between the two mediums. I mean, purely in terms of the expression of each, because obviously, logistically, they are completely different mediums. For example, what does art afford you that cinema would not be able to. And, vice versa. What could perhaps cinema have afforded you as an artist which art cannot?

Yeah, well there are two things. As far as art or painting is concerned, it’s like a one-man-activity in your private space. Andthere’s total freedom. Whatever I want to do. Of course, there are viewers, there are people who look at your work, and your past, and your future and there are a lot of constraints and pressure once you are out there as a professional, but otherwise, basically, essentially, total freedom is there. I don’t have to prove anything to anyone; I just do it for myself. I just do what I really want to do. And no one can dictate to me, guide me. I am not painting for someone so that’s how it starts. And in cinema, first of all, you need a huge amount of finance and someone who puts in that money expects some return and that’s how it starts. But otherwise, for me, cinema is a complete medium, no doubt about it. There are visuals, there are sounds, there’s performance, there’s music, so much to it. And there’s a time span involved in it. So it is something, which is, I think, one of the greatest mediums of the 20^th century. And it engages you immediately. When a viewer goes to the cinema hall or a theatre, watching a movie, within a few minutes, he’s there, forgetting everything. So I think the medium has a profound quality.

You know, from what I understand of your body of work, I would say roughly there are two ways in which cinema has influenced your work. One is, what I would call the indirect influence, which is from watching cinema. You know the craft you have learnt from watching a filmmaker and what he has done with a movie and then translated it in to your own medium. But then that is invisible, indirect. And then there’s a direct influence, where you have referenced cinematic tropes or cinematic images in your artworks. So I want to start talking about the latter first. And my first question would be that, in a world populated with Bollywood images, which have been rehashed as kitschy cool—it has become a trend over the last decade or so—how do you stay inspired to reference Hindi cinema?

Yeah, I mean, see from early days, from when I was born and brought up, here in Ghatkopar actually, the movies were always here. You know, one of my first experiences of… if I have to say which are the first paintings that I saw… One kind would be at home— the earlier images of gods, goddesses, my mother being a very religious person. So they were all those calendars which used to come during Diwali, and they were framed, and they were all up there on the wall. And the second thing was, while going to town, I would see the huge hoardings, the painted ones. Nowadays, we have digitally created hoardings and posters of films. But in those days, there were a few studios where the hoardings or posters were hand painted. So that was my first exposure to art, I would say, or painted images. And I was, you know, quite astonished, quite sort of stunned to see those large, huge hoardings where the heroine is painted in very soft turquoise or emerald colours, and villains, often, with a palette knife, which has a texture. I still remember there was a film called Kuchche Dhaage. It was about the dacoits, with Kabir Bedi and Vinod Khanna—they were the dacoits—and the large heads were painted with a palette knife, with extreme orange and violet thrown on both the sides with green and red. So, you know, I still remember those things. And, would love to see all that. So, that’s how it started.

And I remember, like when, I was in my sixth standard, when I really, passionately began looking at art, drawing, and painting, I think Aradhana came, of Rajesh Khanna, and my God! It was, and it’s sad that last year he passed away, but it was phenomenal. I remember watching his movies, Rajesh Khanna’s films like Aradhana, Do Raaste, Anand and Amar Prem. I have five sisters, and four are elder to me, and they were all fans of Rajesh Khanna, like everyone else. And, to impress my sisters’ friends, all those girls, who used to come home, I would keep on drawing portraits of Rajesh Khanna, one after the other. From whatever magazines used to come at home, or the newspaper ads, so these things were there. And I think much later, when I started… ‘quotations’ and ‘reference’ was always a part of my work. I see all kinds of art and I get engaged with all those, from the early masters to Chinese calligraphy to contemporary art— whatever. And somehow, when I start doing my own work, I immediately, I am reminded of something, and if I am remembering some other artist’s image, I incorporate it. I allow it to be included in my painting. So that was happening—lots of it actually happened, mostly after ’91 or ’92, when I was a French government scholar in Paris and when I returned from Paris—and at one point, I thought: ‘Well, there’s a whole world out there, which I was probably interested in but ignoring in my own eye, which was the popular culture— the calendar art, the element of kitsch in popular art, which is so much a part of our life.’ Particularly if you are living in a suburb like Ghatkopar you are constantly bombarded with these kinds of images, during the festivals, like Diwali or the Ganesh festival. Images that I was not allowing in. And I remember one of the first paintings that I did then, which was called ‘The Bombay Buccaneer’, and it was about myself, holding the gun like in a James Bond pose, and the painting was inspired by a film called Baazigar, with Shah Rukh Khan and two actresses being depicted in his glasses. It was a newspaper ad that I kind of saw, and I did my own version of that depicting my two favourite painters in my glasses and after that I thought, ‘This I should allow’, more and more, and I was enjoying it actually. You know, when I paint a film star and then people recognize it, it’s already an established image, which I am kind of incorporating into my work. But, along with that, I would juxtapose things in such a way that it would create a different meaning all together, all the while retaining the personality of those film stars. For example, I wanted to do for a long time, this series of station signs, and when the Project Cinema City happened, I did this thing. And it’s obvious that cinema is there, and the city is also there. I wanted to create the villains of Bollywood, particularly of the sixties and late fifties, seventies. Now we have different kinds of villains but those were very, very stylized people in the way they would be depicted in those films.

I would interrupt you for a second; I want to talk about this series in some detail. I am going to come to it a little later. You know you said this, that you quote a lot in your work, so, you don’t need to necessarily have an answer to this question, but I would put it to you anyway. Why reference directly? See every art, every piece of writing, comes from somewhere— we are building upon the collective consciousness that we have, the artistic, or the mythological, or whateverthat is. So, invisibly, it’s there, in everything we create and everything we do, but why do you choose to make direct cinematic references in your work? Do you feel like it falls upon the artist to understand and interpret the enormous impact, the monumental impact, cinema has on our culture and psyche, or is there any other reason?

No, I think. Not because the cinema has this, as you said, monumental impact on our psyche. Not for that, but I think, some of the images or even… I often go to the actors whom I depict, whom I admire because I like them. And you know, what I do, as far as painting references are concerned—also the images which I do they are already established, already known—they are things which I like. So, what I used to do as a young boy is just copy a portrait of Van Gogh. You know, that’s how I started. My very first oil painting was a self portrait of Vincent Van Gogh which I attempted, so I think. And there was an immense joy, when I achieved the likeness of a Van Gogh painting in my painting, and I think, somewhere I retain that even today, that when I am coating complex paintings of mine, or maybe these cabinets that you see here, there are lots of Piet Mondrian abstract paintings inside. Actually I still have that same innocent approach— that ‘Oh! It’s so good, and I like it, and I did it for myself’. But of course, along with that, a lot of other things come, and then I noticed while doing that that though the established meaning is there, at the same time sometimes it also gets another meaning, when you put other elements together or juxtapose it with something else. So I think, basically, the images which came, particularly from cinema, they came because of the movies which I enjoy and the stills which are so popular, which people are familiar with. And I think one of the reasons is— the viewer matters to me a lot. You see, often artists are very private people, they just do it in the studio, what they want to do, and it gets exhibited. They are not, maybe for the right reason also, very concerned with how the other people would see it. They say it’s open— what one wants to see, let them see. But in my case, I am really concerned about how people see and how people don’t see a painting— particularly when you are living in a country like India, and a city like Bombay, a suburb like Ghatkopar, in a chawl. I have moved into this studio two to three years back, but where I was born and brought up, the same home in my chawl became my studio for more than 20 years. And, so my neighbours, they were my first viewer, they were the audience who would see me. They would have seen me drawing portraits of Rajesh Khanna as well as creating much more complex works with roller shutters and other stuff, so they were also getting educated with me. Because they were watching my paintings and I would love to share. I love to talk about what I am doing, why I am doing it, and in that context I think, I feel that I want to create something which one should be able to understand or which one should be able to relate to at least. So there are elements, whichare familiar and so the viewers are immediately drawn to those things and along with that I add many other things, which they are not familiar with sometimes.And that creates a sort of a conflict and they want to struggle to understand ‘why’. Why, for instance, do I have in one of my paintings, which is called ‘A Poem of Friends’, a Jayshree T. and an Aruna Irani dancing in a corner and otherwise it is full of text. And then there are two film stars dancing, so I think they immediately get drawn to it and then they try to understand what it all means. So I think how to get people engaged in my work has been my prior concern till today.

So, in a sense, you are saying that, for you, a lot of cinematic references come from a need to stay connected with your first viewers. You know, people who you grew up around. And in a sense also to stay connected with your own self. To start where you started and then take everything along as well but the other thing that I feel you express very well through cinematic references, that comes across really well, is your sense of humour. There’s a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek, there’s a little bit of a wry smile. Would you say that cinematic references are one of your primary, you know, sort of vehicles for a little bit of fun that you have?

Yeah, I think you are right. Whenever I have used particularly Bollywood and film stars or villains there’s been a lot of humour and wit, which is not to say that I am making fun of them, but I think there’s certainly humour in it, some element of tongue-in-cheek, those things are there. But then there are also other references I have from other cinema, like films of Satyajit Ray, (Federico) Fellini, or (Jean-Luc) Godard.

I was going to come to that. You are one of the artists that reference both commercial masala cinema as well as serious cinema. How is your approach to each of these references different?

Of course, the Hindi masala films or popular films were very much there. In Bombay it’s everywhere, at home also. And of course, the radio was very much there with Hindi film songs and the songs that we know from the forties, the fifties, the sixties… they were just amazing. The great musicians, the great singers, the great songwriters… the songs which I still hear. When I am painting, constantly, the songs of Mohammed Rafi and Geeta Dutt are constantly on my music system. But that is one thing. But I think when I saw other films, like regional films in India or not just Hollywood films from the United States but French cinema or German films or Italian films, then I felt that ‘Oh! This is also cinema. But this is so different’, and I must tell you a small… what happened to me when I saw my very first Satyajit Ray film on Doordarshan. It was on a Saturday. The movie was Nayak. And when I saw Nayak, the story goes like the film star is going to get an award in Delhi and he chooses to not fly, but to travel by train and the journalist Sharmila Tagore, the beautiful Sharmila Tagore in that film, they start talking and she wants to take an interview at some point. A station comes, the train stops just outside a small village near Calcutta, and he gets down just to stretch his arms and orders a cup of tea. And he takes in that small cup and as he is about to drink a cup of tea he sees that the journalist is sitting near the window and she’s looking at him. So he just asks in a gesture, whether she would like some, and she says, ‘No’, and that shot, you know, that changed my life, I would say.

What about that shot?

That was so natural, that was so real. I thought this is as if I was there. And it was not just a film; it was like life itself. I mean, this is the way people behave, this is the way people talk, this is the way people make gestures, and, I don’t know, it was probably… it was a kind of evening light, the tonality of the film, the expression of the actors, maybe the shot…whatever. I don’t even remember. Probably the subtitle. I don’t speak Bangla or understand it, but that was a huge impact. After that I had heard of Pather Panchali and the Apu Trilogy, but that was the first film (by Ray) that I saw. And I said this is something, a different kind of a film, and then I wanted to see more and more of that kind of film.

Coming back to your own work, can you tell us by examples how differently you would reference something from serious cinema that stayed with you? Like, if we take something from Charulata and something from popular cinema that you havegrown up listening to and watching, something as a part of all of our collective memories. If by example you could say how differently the references come to your work and what you do with your references, which is different in both the cases?

I think I will have to select the specific paintings. For example, in 1997, or ’95, I think, Sholay was celebrating its 25 years. I did a painting called ‘Gabbar on Gamboge’, which had a chrome yellow background— yellow gamboge. Amjad Khan as Gabbar Singh from Sholay. The story around him, narrated with violent imagery and the skulls, and bones, and other things around. But it was like a strong painting in terms of colour and sound. Like, if the painting is there, no one can miss it. Its brightness and the image was obvious. There I wanted to do this in a certain way. But before I did that painting, just the previous painting was called ‘The Trans Siberian Express for Kajal’, which was the last shot of Apu Trilogy or Apur Sansar, when the father ultimately goes to the boy and he takes him on his shoulders. And Soumitra Chatterjee is on a frontal face and some of the written text comes on screen. And that painting had to do with… the film was made in ’59, and I was born in ’59 and I painted it at the end of the century. And along with that there was another complex world; in fact, Joseph Beuys’ drawing books is here. And the artist Joseph Beuys, the major installation called the ‘The End of the Twentieth Century’, with large granite pieces lying in a gallery studio. I had put all of that in the background and I was just wondering how time has changed, even in art, the artwork was happening in a very different way. I mean, people were familiar with oil in canvas, and sculptures in bronze or marble, but lots of things changed in the last 25 to 30 years, so I was thinking about it and how I myself have changed in all these years. And, probably, the boy who’s there in that film, acting as Kajal, he must be around my age. Of course, a little elder. So I wanted to think about the time— the changing time, and how life gets changed and how in the film that man’s wife suddenly dies during the childbirth and how his life changes. We know the whole story about that particular film, Apur Sansar. So it was a very brown, sepia-tone picture, with imagery from Satyajit Ray’s cinema and the images from Joseph Beuys— the German artist’s works. Each came from absolutely separate kinds of areas. So, that was a different kind of film, but ‘Gabbar on Gamboge’… I enjoyed Sholay a lot. I saw it first day, first show, I remember, ’75, I think. And I saw it at Basant theatre in Chembur. It was a long film and I remember in the interval, people were talking about how Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra, they are fantastic, and Sanjeev Kumar, of course, he is a great actor, but the villain, why, they should have gone for some well known name. And I had gone for the film with my cousin and I was telling him, I think, someone called Amjad Khan— he’s the high point of this movie, he’s going to be a fantastic actor in future, and that’s what happened. So, I remember that. So, I think probably with a popular film like Sholay, and of course we know how popular that film was…

So I think, it was in ’97 when India was celebrating 50 years of its independence and many events were happening. So when I painted ‘Trans Siberian Express for Kajal’ I was asked in Bombay for a show and I said I am going to depict one artist, whom I admire and for that I went to Satyajit Ray’s film. And ‘Gabbar on Gamboge’ was shown in an exhibition in Delhi in the National Gallery of Modern Art, and it was about choosing something from popular cinema. And then I thought of doing something from Sholay and that’s how I did it. And, in the process, I took a challenge. You see one can keep doing serious art and references which are much more serious, either from the art world or from serious cinema. But you know, here, for the first time, my palette was changed completely. I came up with bright colours and garish imagery in my painting, which happened for the first time. Of course, people loved the painting very much. In fact, it’s in a museum in Japan in their collection— the Fukuoka Art Museum. But I think, I feel that I don’t want to be bound or limit myself to one type of work. I keep on changing always. I feel that every time either with my work on watercolour, or work on laminate, or work on shutters or oils, I attempt things differently and I thought, ‘This popular cinema has a lot where I can experiment and explore things in a different way.’ And a very different kind of a genre would come out of this if I try. A different kind of narrative would come about in my painting, and I should do that, because I also like that. It is not necessary that I would sit through the films every time I was watching them at home but, and I must tell you that I really am quite familiar, particularly with the actresses, villains, comedians, heroines, and these were the kinds of things that were quite common in the seventies or eighties. The hero, the heroine, the villain, the character actors, the father, and the mother, and the extras who support them in a different way, like the servants or people who would come and give a cup of tea and things like that. I mean, I know everyone, including the, you know… I can make out by listening to the flute that this is S.D. Burman and not Salil Chowdhury, or I can say this is Sajjad Hussain and not Ghulam Mohammed. I am that good in understanding, the music particularly. So, Madan Mohan and Jaidev, all these people. Actually, there’s a lot of love for films, I must say.

Well, that in itself is a very good reason to keep it alive. But, I also have to ask you, most of the references are from older films. Is that because of nostalgia or because the newer Indian cinema has just not been able to sustain your interest in that way?

Yeah, I must tell you that. I would not say nostalgia because when I was watching those films, even at that time, there were some films that I liked and some films, which I didn’t like. But frankly, say, after 1980 onwards, or maybe in last 20 years, the Hindi films which emerged, I never liked those films really. Very few people, very few, literally like… I want to watch Talaash, say, Aamir Khan’s films. Even the early Aamir Khan films I have not seen, but I think after Lagaan, five or seven films that came in this decade they were all, I thought there is someone who’s thinking or wants to take films to a different level. So, I think there are very few, whose films I enjoy. Because first of all music has very much been a part of films all these years. And the contemporary film musicians, their music, and the songs— I very rarely like. It’s… yeah, I don’t know, but I tell you one thing that recently, when I saw, which film did I see of his… Anurag Kashyap’s? When I saw his film, Gangs of Wasseypur, the recent one, but the first one… I think, no, I saw it on DVD I think… Black Friday. When I saw that film, initially I said: ‘Okay, the bomb blasts and all those things… ’ But when I saw the way the film moved, the way it travels, and there’s also travelling happening in the film, and I thought this is something interesting. And then I saw Dev. D, and then I saw Gulaal. I said: ‘This is someone who interests me.’ I like the subject matter, the solid performances, the great camera work, and the very unusual take on music— the songs composed are totally different, not the way normal Hindi films would have it, so I think there I felt that there is something. And then of course, I saw both the Gangs of Wasseypurs, and I like his films. He’s good.

I wanted you to tell me a little more about your Charulata images. Again, one of your Ray references, how did that come about?

You know, I actually was doing a series called ‘Saptapadi: Scenes from Marriage’ regardless. There were 24 paintings on laminates and I was doing the readymade laminates, like mica, which already had a pattern on it and I had earlier done works on that medium. Initially, of course, Saptapadi was also a film in Bengali, with Uttam Kumar and Suchitra Sen. And Scenes From A Marriage, it’s also a film by (Ingmar) Bergman, a very serious film. And I thought I wanted to sort of work on this subject of marriage: man, woman, the husband-wife relationship. And I thought, what would happen, what kind of imagery would come about? And soon I realized that if I take this in a Bergmanian way then it’s going to be very boring and I wouldn’t be able to engage my viewer. And even I would not be able to handle the subject probably or maybe it would become too personal. And if it would become too personal then maybe I would find it difficult to engage my viewer and soon I realized, ‘Okay, create a fiction, create a narrative,’ which is not necessarily a truth, but go to a wide range of images from calendar art to popular films etc. And in that case, I had, of course, three films, with Madhabi Mukherjee, which Satyajit Ray made – Mahanagar, Kapurush, and Charulata. All these films had the wife very much there, the central figure, and a relationship with the husband, or ex-boyfriend. So I thought it would be great to have three paintings called Arati, Karuna, and Charu, these three characters from Ray films. Also, since I like all these films so much. So I basically wanted to do a portrait of Madhabi Mukherjee also. And when I painted ‘Charu’, I thought why not have three other actresses from European cinema, which was anidea that came in the process. And I painted Brigitte Bardot from Godard’s film, Contempt, Jeanne Moreau from La Notte (The Night) by (Michelangelo) Antonioni, and of course, Liv Ullmann from Scenes From A Marriage. And having them together in one picture plane, these four actresses from the four greatest films, according to me, and scenes from those films together in one picture plane would be fantastic to just look at. Beautiful actresses, great actresses, and great films, and I just enjoyed doing that painting. In fact, I kept it for myself. That work is with me in my collection.

Did you ever get a chance to meet Ray?

No, never. I was too young and of course in ’91 and ’92 when I was away in Paris for my scholarship, I think it was the month of May or April (April 23, 1992), he died. And I remember the front page news of every newspaper, ‘The Master is no more’, on TV channels, his interviews, and other films were on. And I noticed, in fact, you know my biggest regret is his movies most of which I now watch on DVDs are rarely shown. Sometimes in a film club screening, but, you know, never screened here. His last film Agantuk was released in Paris then, but it was never released in Bombay. Of course in Calcutta people can see Ray films sometimes but not in Bombay. So that was a big regret.

Would you have liked to meet him and show him some of your work, which references his movies?

When I had my first solo show in ’89, there was a small, tiny catalogue, which I had sent in, to his Calcutta address, but that’s it. Never met him.

But, in any case, like you said, your quotation comes more from love, more than coming from, you know, picking up bits of craft, directly following a path that someone has followed. It comes more from expressing your love for what you do, which also should bring me to the series you did for the ‘Cinema City’, project in 2012 for NGMA. The first thing that of course struck me was you painted the villains and station signage together, and that this is the Central Line that goes from Ghatkopar to Victoria Terminus and it’s interesting how you… if somebody knows Bombay they would know that the Western line is a more ‘heroic’ line and this is the line that gets beaten. So, again, a sense of humour is very visible but how did you allocate the villains to the stations?

Yeah, well, actually long back when I was in the final year at J.J. School of Arts, was when the painting about the Ghatkopar stations signs called ‘Homage to Ghatkopar’ came about, and you would see the actual scale of the canvas and there are two types of signs— one, where the station ends, a long rectangular sort of a thing, and in between you have this metro sign, which is… So, what I did was I went back to the small scale and so when you see this, one of the questions is whether is it a painting or is it a station sign? Because it covers the whole thing. It doesn’t show the tracks or trees or other people or platform, nothing. Just that. You are so close to the whole painting that it’s exactly the station sign, you know, which you see. So, that is one of the questions: Whether is it a painting or is it a painting sign. That’s one thing which I love, that kind of a pictorial puzzle to put in front of my viewer. Second thing, when we were discussing the ‘Cinema City’, it was obvious that it’s a city because the station signs are there, and that too Bombay, and that too the Central Railway line, because Ghatkopar, where I live, that comes on the Central Line and from Ghatkopar to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, or CST, there are 13 stations, and I added the 14^th one— my name. If you go near Vapi, in Gujarat, there’s a station called, a small town called Atul, where I put Bindu.

But, how did you choose which villains go where? Clearly you have reserved Pran for Ghatkopar, which is artist’s liberty so I guessed you picked the best for Ghatkopar.

Pran is my favourite villain and I have always remained that way. So, I was always clear that I would like to have Pran on Ghatkopar.

And, Gabbar would have to be on CST.

Yeah, exactly, I thought Amjad Khan, you know, but there is no reason. Like a lot of people were asking me whether some of the actors at some point lived in these specific suburbs, and I said, no, except for K.N. Singh, who lived in Matunga. Actually, I had another image there previously and I read somewhere and I said, ‘Oh! If he was living in Matunga, then I have not yet finished the painting so let me have Singh in Matunga.’ So, I just added him, because I like him also, very much.

Amrish Puri, of course, lived in Juhu. But he’s shown at Sion, so, there was no reason why he was at Sion? The rest of the selections you just made randomly?

Yeah, and also because the local name of Sion is also ‘Shiv’. And I think when I chose this image of Amrish Puri from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, from there he looks like some kind of a… he looks like some kind of a priest, who’s probably not a good man. So I thought, ‘Let me have one at Sion, Amrish Puri’, but otherwise, basically it was just going to be 14 villains, so which 14 people should be there. And the people who I enjoyed very much, that was important, you know. And that’s kind of how I selected people like Shatrughan Sinha, Jeevan, Shakti Kapoor…

That’s a very immaculate choice. But the youngest villain that you have is Gulshan Grover. Would you say that the era of villains is over now?

Yeah, the kind of villains… like yesterday I was watching your interview with Amitabh Bachchan, and I said let me see the website and he said, how earlier it was like either the dacoit or Thakur was the villain. Then, the times changed, and the politicians came, and then the underworld don kind of villains came, with Ajit and many others. So with the story and the heroic aspect— of a hero and his glory, the narrative was such that it was the demand. But I think now probably, I can’t comment much because I haven’t seen many contemporary films, but, I think, now it has changed, and probably what was interesting about these villains was that it was very stylized, the way they would talk, the way they would dress, or the way they would… like if you watch K.N. Singh, the way he would put one eyebrow up, the way his eyes would move and all, it was very special, I think.

But I think while basically trying to put the villains from cinema on station signs, the most important aspect is also the surface of the painting, which is kind of a very cracked surface and as if things are falling apart. Then blood drips and there’s those things. And I know what we have gone through, the whole country actually, but Bombay during and after the (Babri) mosque was demolished, the serial bomb blasts, the rise of underworld, terrorism, and 26/11 and all these things, I also think it’s an elegy, I feel. This series is an elegy to the city. Yeah, I mean, not that these people are bad and the city is bad, but the element of evil, which makes one nervous, scared, and there’s fear and I think I wanted to say that as well, with a…it falls in the popular style, with popular culture, with station signs, bright colours and popular actors from popular films, but there is also an underneath feeling of the pathos, sadness, fear, doubts, and loss of faith.

You know, you said that your references from cinema was one way to connect with your first, premier audience, your viewer, which was the people you grew up around. You have come along a long way, like you have said; all your paintings have been shown all over the world. How does referencing work when you have such a diverse viewership of art? Does it become restrictive, because obviously, not everyone is going to get every reference? I mean, there will be a certain viewer of yours, who would not have seen Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage, and maybe a lot of your Japanese viewers would not have watched Sholay? So, experientially what has your experience been? Does it become restrictive or does it become a very interesting exercise in layering or a sort of exercise in interpretation, between the art and the viewer? What is your observation?

You are quite right actually. Because often I have quite specific references in my work, which are not necessarily… Often people would recognize those sort of things. But along with that, there are also some other things, which I also add or include in my painting, like one of my paintings ‘Gangavatra: After Raja Ravi Varma’, on the descent of Ganga. Now, out of the earlier graph of Ravi Varma I painted that and on the river which comes from the sky, there’s a female figure which Ravi Varma painted. On top of it I had superimposed ‘Nude Descending A Staircase’, by an avant-garde early 20^th century artist, Marcel Duchamp. Now what happened when I did that painting, my mother, when she saw it, she is familiar with this image, and she’s familiar with the myth of Ganga, and so she recognized everything but she could not understand the very abstract, dark kind of a form which is superimposed over the image of Ganga, and so she was quite baffled. So, what happens is when I am showing this image through slide presentations or through the actual painting, when it travels abroad, people are there in Europe and they recognize and are familiar with Duchamp, Marcel Duchamp, this well-known iconic image of earlier 20^th century art, but they are not familiar at all with the myth of Ganga. And now I am aware of both. So then, they are also puzzled there, like my mother. So, I think, in the process, I engage them for a longer time. They try to understand what it means, because partly they have got it— it’s only a part that they are not getting. So, I think, I like to puzzle, put my viewer in a position so that they have to struggle hard to understand, and in the process I have realized they remain with the painting for a longer time. And actually, physically also sometimes, but mentally also, psychologically as well.

There’s this chance of not reaching to a large audience. But I think of how large an audience you can reach and how much one should attempt. So, ultimately, I just do it. The first thing is, whether I am enjoying this or not while doing it.

I am going to come back to Ray for a second: do you feel like his education in Art—you know he went to Shantiniketan, was (Rabindranath) Tagore’s student—that showed through his films? Could you see it as tangible?

I think he also has said that. After doing Economics or something, it was his mother who insisted, he wasn’t keen to go to Shantiniketan, but she made a big fuss and he was forced to go to Shantiniketan to become a painter. Of course, he never continued painting, but he became a graphic artist and went into advertising. But two years of what he studied under Nandalal Bose and, of course, as a young boy, he did meet Rabindranath Tagore, and I think that had… Binod Behari Mukherjee was there, and of course there’s a beautiful documentary called The Inner Eye on Binod babu (made by Ray), but I think certainly— Shantiniketan. Because he got acquainted with the western classical music there, with a German teacher who was there, who would be listening and he would kind of put notes and that’s how he learnt notations there. And I think the basic philosophy of life, like in one of the interviews he says that Nandalal Bose said that when you draw a tree don’t draw the branches and leaves first and come down, tree grows like this—not from the sky—so put your strokes also in that manner. I think this is quite a key point in Ray’s approach to all his movies, and general philosophy of his life, that howI mean… it’s difficult for me to say, but he has an extremely sensitive approach to relationships, towards human beings, the life in the village or in the city. How much to show, how much not to show, that control, that immense control over the expression, that’s something that’s definitely Shantiniketan, and apart from that the great visual sense this man had in terms of tonality, in terms of form, in terms of texture, you see. I mean Pather Panchali is sheer unbelievable, the old lady and the shadows and the young boy, all that I think. The amazing thing also is the drawing and painting which he studied there. While we know of Ray mainly as an illustrator, but those drawing qualities… I tell you, it is the best drawing any Indian artist would probably draw. I mean, of course, there are painters and there are masters who had great drawings in their oeuvre but the sketches and drawings of Ray are not in the way of normal illustrators, which you find in applied art, in Bombay or in any other art school. It’s not that, that illustrative quality is not there. It’s pure painterly qualities, which are there, which I admire. They are great, they are fantastic. Even the doodles and the tiniest thing about the costumes, which he created for his scripts, which we see, they are masterful absolutely. It’s unbelievable. I mean, so many aspects together in one man, it’s just sheer genius.

Other than Ray, who might be a couple of filmmakers who have influenced you indirectly? When I say indirectly, I mean with their craft. What they do with their medium, inspiring your work with your own medium?

I remember when I was studying in Sir J.J. School of Art, we were members of a film society and we would go to see all kind of films. And the first time I saw a film by Jean-Luc Godard, the French filmmaker, and there I noticed that often there’s a soldier there in Remora print on the walls, or even Pierrot le Fou, or the Picasso reproductions on the wall. All that I saw because I could relate, ‘Oh Picasso prints or remora image in the background and something else is happening in the front.’ And the complexity of making the film itself, the way the shots were taken, the way the narrative was told. Often I would not follow it. And much later, Godard’s films, which are much more complex, which are difficult to understand sometimes, I think, but I think too layered, having various layers, working simultaneously, and seeing what happens, that kind of thing in my work has certainly come from Godard. Meaning: the language of the painting. That itself is a subject matter for me, or a painting in itself, or what if that is my subject matter. If Bollywood is not my subject matter; if the city of Bombay is not my subject matter, but the act of painting, what if that becomes my subject matter? What will happen? What kind of painting? And of course, I could hear American artist, Jasper Johns,who also has this thing… he was heavily influenced from philosophy of (Ludwig ) Wittgenstein, German philosopher, and he would select, he would want to say Red, but you say Red and you mean Blue, then what happens? I mean, I want to say something. Like that’s what happens with the languages, like I want to say something and I am using this language and I have a limitation with the language, now I am trying to explain and convey these things, but am I saying what I am really feeling? What I am saying is one thing, and what I am feeling is another thing, so there’s a gap in between. So that gap he would sometime attempt to focus on, and somewhere I feel in Godard that the language of cinema—shooting, actor, the city, content—he suddenly becomes detached. And he would show you a slightly dislocated kind of thing. And in Gujarati, we have this, though quite old and not that well known, poet called Labhshankar Thakar. Now Labhshankar had a series of poems about the creative process itself, the poem is about writing poetry, and then what happens… So, I think, I was quite influenced, in that sense, more than Ray. Of course, as I said, there’s no direct influence of Satyajit Ray on my work but it think it is Godard.

If I quickly asked you to name a couple of films for each category. A film, which you remember for the portrayal of a character? A film or a couple of films that you remember for the way in which they portrayed a particular character? What comes to mind first?

I mean, there are so many films actually. Few days back I saw a film called Million Dollar Baby, a film by Clint Eastwood. And it was a fantastic film, and the actress, the way she performed, Hilary Swank, I think it was great. I also enjoyed the Dirty Harry series, so that’s also another thing. But it think, I mean, all Satyajit Ray’s films have lots of great characters like Chhabi Biswas in Jalsaghar, then Sharmila Tagore in Aranyer Din Ratri, and the young Jean-Pierre Léaud in Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. And many, many films are there.

Okay, what about building a mood? A film you remember in the way it built a mood? Or, a couple of films?

Oh! Bergman comes to my mind. A film called The Silence, it has a real mood in it, you know, with characters and actors— amazing. And all Bergman films had a really profound, I wouldn’t say grief, but a poignant melancholy and they were extremely sensitive. So, Bergman I like. I also enjoy (Andrei) Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky’s films have that kind of a thing. Mood, the way water drips or milk flows. Stalker, The Mirror, and, of course, Andrei Rublev. Also Ivan’s Childhood. So these films I remember. Then much later, I saw, if you say, The Three Colors (a trilogy) by (Krzysztof) Kieślowski, those films I liked.

What about a film you remember for stylization?

I had not seen it for a long time, but when I saw, not recently but some years back, (Quentin) Tarantino’s film Pulp Fiction. It’s obviously a very stylized film, so that comes to my mind; it’s an obvious choice. I think Anurag Kashyap has certain style, and manner, although there’s natural acting, but I think he has a certain style, that’s a good thing. And, I also like very much Mrinal Sen’s Bhuvan Shome, you know, and it is a fantastic film with K. K. Mahajan’s great photography and it was quite a stylized film. In the way it’s shot, in the way it’s cut, in the way the narration has been told, it is good.

You know, you have touched upon this a little earlier when you were talking about how you were very interested in your viewer, unlike, a lot of artists perhaps. But, has cinema in any way influenced who you engage with? And, how you engage with people? Can you think of any instances?

In my own context?

Yes.

No, I think, what I feel is that it’s strange that when I see world art. Particularly, the art of paintings, and there are a lots of minimalists. There was this period in sixties, seventies in America, where paintings were just flat colours or very little sort of gesture and action, so I like those work as well. But what I noticed in the west, particularly in visual arts, they are more… they hold, and they don’t go for ‘loud’ or to say much. It’s very minimal. Minimal is the word, which I find, even if they do video work, even if they do sometimes sculptures or installations, it’s the minimal which is like our very own Anish Kapoor, Indian born, living in London, doing work from there, large scale things, huge sculptures, amazing artist, no doubt, but I would still feel that there’s a certain aspect of minimal, which they follow, that’s Western. But in India, I feel I can’t do that. I feel I will have to tell you everything, you know? When I was in the old chawl—and I still go, my studio is still there—everyone would ask, who had come? Why he was here? This would come on television or is this a special film? Tell us, and everyone wants to know everything. And we are kind of intimidated, and people would come and talk to you all the time. So, I think, in a country like India, a city like Bombay, how can you be minimal? So, I think in cinema I find, a lot of things have been told. And particularly in Hindi films you have emotions shown through songs, through weeping and crying, through festivals and all kinds of things. You know, things are suddenly… either they are in Matheran or in Switzerland; you don’t get to know those jumps which are there, which I think is fantastic, which I like. And, I think that comes, so when I started doing these cabinets I thought I’d keep it a little small, but then gradually, I had to have a lot of things. I must have a lot of things in my work, so I think probably that has to do with my interest in cinema because there’s a story, there’s a music, there’s actors, emotions, all these things, and I put them together. But some of my friends often tell me that why don’t you make a film? Now, probably okay, in those days, you opted for pure painting, no doubt, but often, just yesterday I got this mail from a friend called Lynda Benglis, one of the top artists from America. I had sent her some pictures of my installations, and she said, ‘Oh! I see lots of stories there. It’s a film, it’s just like a film.’

You know, the line in Hindi cinema between the commercial cinema and the Art cinema is very, very distinct. We have two separate worlds. I want your opinion on how that’s reflecting currently on the art world in India? Given how important commerce has become now, is the line between the work that is dictated by commercial concern and the work that purely comes out of the creative vision of an artist becoming more and more distinct? In other words are market forces beginning to dictate creative content very forcefully in the art world?Like it is in cinema? Or, do you think it is still not too distinct a line between art, which has overt commercial concerns?

No, I think… see as far as fine art, visual art is concerned, there are people who start with serious art, and once they get settled, known, their work starts selling. I think then they keep on churning the same stuff, and that’s the biggest problem. You know, then that becomes more commercial, so that is one, it’s a serious thing. So, one has to be constantly alert, why one is doing it, for whom one is doing it, and if a painting becomes a stepping stone for me to achieve name, fame, success or money then I think there’s a big mistake. So I am extremely alert about this, so this should not happen. That’s one thing, and lot of people are aware of this, of course, but then there are temptations and that happens. But I think as far as cinema is concerned I feel that basically it’s an expensive medium. And if you do something very serious then probably it would be difficult to reach people, and that’s the way probably it is, and that’s why no one wants to invest in that because a lot of money has to go for making a film and then there are two separate parts. That’s why we have very few people, there are many, many young filmmakers, there are many friends of mine, who would like to do films in a serious way but for a long time, I have not heard of them, I have not seen their films while the usual churning of commercial type of cinema is there. But people say that there’s no art film and commercial film. It’s only a good film or a bad film. I don’t believe in that. I would say, there’s an art film and then there’s commercial film or popular film. Within art film, there are good films and bad films; within commercial films there are good films and bad films. So that happens you know, and I think in that case, some people’s films run, some we like, some we don’t like, that happens but I think it’s just… I personally feel that often people from the Hindi film world say that their audience is lower middle class, poor people, but India is a big country and to forget three hours of pain and worry, we make these films with songs and… I think this is underestimating people and their… I mean all kinds of people see films. I am an educated, sensitive artist. I also watch films. So am I not supposed to see the films? Only someone who’s doing a small business on the street? Is the film only made for them?

Also, even that is underestimating. I mean, we grew up with the folk culture, and if you look back to 100 years ago, the man on the street, the so called ‘proverbial poor man’, was listening to a rich folk tradition and their music and the stories and, you know, so it was not exactly…

So, I feel that just to give this excuse that: ‘We make films for common people. And common people are like this’, that is something… well, probably true everywhere in the world. And people like those kinds of films probably, but I don’t know somehow, it’s a very… at one side there are so many popular films, which I really like and enjoy and at the same time I hate this Hindi cinema. I hate it. It’s actually that kind of feeling.

Irani Chai, Cinema Afghani

Posted on November 19, 2013 by admin

Voices from Afar is a series of interviews with filmmakers and film professionals, critics and experts from various countries around the world. The idea is to, through these voices, better our understanding of films and filmmaking communities which may seem alien at first glance, but whose joys and struggles, on closer examination, may have a deep resonance with our own.

Siddiq Barmak, 51, is an Afghan filmmaker, screenwriter and producer. He left Afghanistan during the Taliban regime to live in exile, in Pakistan, from 1996 to 2002. He returned to make his first feature film, Osama, which follows the life of a pre-adolescent girl living in Afghanistan, who disguises herself as a boy in order to be able to support her family. It was the first film to be shot completely in Afghanistan since the Taliban banned filmmaking in the country. Barmak received a special mention for Osama in the Camera d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003 and won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film in 2004. His second film, Opium War, a black comedy, won the Golden Marc’Aurelio Critics’ Award for Best Film at the Rome Film Festival in 2008. Barmak is also the director of the Afghan Children Education Movement (ACEM), founded by Mohsen Makhmalbaf. He is a mentor to many emerging Afghan filmmakers.

When we finally meet Barmak, in between Mumbai Film Festival screenings, it is at Kyani & Co., an Iranian joint in South Bombay. He sips on some Irani chai, listening to our questions intently. He then proceeds to speak about films he remembers from his childhood, political turmoil in Afghanistan, the hopes he has for Afghan cinema, and more.

What kind of films did you watch while growing up? What were the films that inspired you to become a filmmaker?

Actually, we grew up on Indian films. We watched everything. We watched a lot of commercial films from the 1960s, but I must say that I really admire Shyam Benegal saab a lot— his earlier films Ankur and Nishant. These kinds of films had a big influence on me at the time, when I was young. Of course, when I went to Moscow for a higher education in cinema, I realized that there was a new wave of cinema from Italy, France, and Russia. But in my childhood, and when I was a teenager, Shyam Benegal saab was my favourite.

Did Iranian cinema have an influence on you? Your film Osama was partially funded by Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf…

Yes.

And many parallels have been drawn between your style of filmmaking and the style of the Iranian new wave…

Iran has a lot of great masters like (Abbas) Kiarostami, Makhmalbaf, Jafar Panahi, and even (Asghar) Farhadi’s last two films… I love them. But I must say I get influenced by different filmmakers from around the world. As for why we are so close to Iranian cinema— we have the same culture, the same tradition, the same literature, the same language. That’s why you feel it looks like an Iranian film. When you are speaking in one language, when you’re reading poetry in one language, such as Hafez-e-Shirazi, for instance, or Saadi, or Shahnameh (an epic Persian poem) by Ferdowsi— you can find this Shahnameh being celebrated in a very remote village in Panjshir, in North East Afghanistan, as well as in Shiraz, which is in south Iran.

Panjshir is where you were born?

I was born in Panjshir.

We’ve read that Osama is partially inspired by a true story. Can you elaborate on that?

It was a true story. Actually, I was searching… I wanted to make a short film together with my friends in exile. I was living in the Northern part of Pakistan, during the Taliban regime. So I was searching for a kind of subject or story. And I saw this short story that was published in an Afghan newspaper in Peshawar. There are many Afghan refugees in Peshawar, and they have their own publications that they read. This newspaper was called Sahar, and there was a true story about a little girl who wanted to go to school, but it was forbidden for her by the Taliban. Then she decided to get dressed like a boy and go to school. But unfortunately she was found out, everybody knew about her, and the police forces—the religious police forces of the Taliban—came in and punished her. I was really shocked by this, and I started thinking about it, and started writing a script. Then I saw that this story is not a short film. It needs to be a big feature film. But it was impossible to make the film at the time. When the Taliban collapsed, in 2001, I found an opportunity to make this film. But I changed a lot of things, of course, in the story.

That’s what we wanted to ask you about. The initial title of Osama was Rainbow. Also, originally, the film was not supposed to end on a sad note, but you went ahead and cut a lot of scenes which you felt would have seemed too hopeful. Why did you do that?

Because that would be a big lie. Because nothing has changed, because we still have a lot of problems. Also, now there’s a concern about the return of the Taliban, for instance. So my concern was to make people aware about the future as well.

Even after the collapse of the Taliban, what were the biggest challenges that Afghan cinema faced?

Not just the Taliban, it is generally seen that Afghanistan is a traditional country, a very religious country. And there’s a very dangerous interpretation of religion, such as one that translates into keeping women inside a kind of ‘jail’, in their houses, where it is impossible to get out. I think it’s a very bad phenomenon in our society. And not only females— both males and females are still in mythological jails.

What are the biggest challenges Afghan filmmakers face today?

You know, it’s a very long list of big challenges, but I’ll try to tell it in short. In the whole history of the world, and especially in our country, there are big tensions that exist between power, religion, culture, art and cinema. If they don’t get together or find some kind of reconciliation, we’ll never have a good future for art and culture in our country. When power meets religion and both ignore culture, it’s a big challenge to writers, poets, filmmakers, painters… Now for instance, there is a big unity between very radical religious figures and very corrupt politicians. And they are afraid of cinema, they are afraid of culture, they are afraid of poetry. At the same time, they can’t stop artistes. So they simply don’t provide support and create a lot of barriers against art, culture, poetry, and writing. Our only privilege after 2001 is that we have freedom of speech in our society. We can say everything. But we don’t have the money to make films and to tell the stories we want to.

In the last seven to eight years there’s been a surge of new filmmakers in Afghanistan. How do you think their cinema and the subjects they are tapping into are different from those highlighted by earlier Afghan filmmakers?

They are from the young generation, so they view things with a fresh set of eyes. They have more strength, more energy, and they have the courage to tell different stories. They are telling stories that were forbidden for years. For example, these short (Afghan) films that were shown here (at the Mumbai Film Festival)… there’s a big ‘package’ of these kind of films, and I must say that these films are very brave. One of the documentaries is about a girl who becomes a prostitute in our society, and she says she’s telling her story in front of the camera because “you must find me in your sister, in your mother, in your house”. Nobody had the courage to show such stories in previous times but now the new generation is doing it. We have to tell these stories to our society.

You set up the Afghan Children’s Education Movement. Are you playing an active role in training the young generation of Afghan filmmakers and actors as well?

Yes I am. I am teaching at Kabul University, and I’m also helping organize some private, not long-term but short-term workshops to teach them. If there’s any possibility to help in a financial way as well, I do so.

How does the political upheaval in Afghanistan have a consequence on kind of the cinema Afghanistan is producing?

The consequence has been very bad. As I told you, our government is handled by crap people— including the Opposition. They are afraid of cinema, of the power of cinema. They are really scared because cinema is a medium that can tell the truth, and the people will then know what’s going on in this country.

You have written a screenplay, directed three films and also produced and co-produced three films. What do you find more creatively satisfying— writing scripts, directing films or producing movies?

I really enjoy all of these, but most of all being a director. Besides that, I’m enjoying making films in any capacity, whether in the position of a director, writer, or producer. I really enjoy watching films— especially when I watch my own films as part of the audience. I just enjoy films.

Also Read: “A European journalistic point of view” Hamed Alizadeh on an alternative cinema emerging in Afghanistan and what is needed to nurture it.

“A European journalistic point of view.”

Posted on November 19, 2013 by admin

33 year old Hamed Alizadeh, an Afghan documentary filmmaker, left his country after the Taliban took over and spent his formative years growing up in exile, in Iran. He returned to Afghanistan after the Taliban were ousted and enrolled in Kabul University’s Department of Theatre and Cinema in 2006, working simultaneously as a journalist for a weekly magazine. After graduating, he began making documentaries, which reflected Afghanistan’s social and cultural issues. His documentaries, Check Point, Afsanah, Memory Box and A Time Called Oldness, have been screened in film festivals around the world and broadcasted on Afghan as well as European TV channels. Also, Alizadeh currently heads the Afghanistan Documentary Filmmakers Organization, a first of its kind in the country, which fosters documentary filmmaking. In addition to this, he is the technical manager of the Afghanistan Human Rights Film Festival and teaches documentary filmmaking to students of cinema at the Kabul University.

During this interview, Alizadeh speaks slowly, as if deliberately weighing the meaning of each sentence. This helps, because we are in a noisy lobby of South Mumbai’s Metro theatre, which is packed with chattering, ebullient film enthusiasts. So, at times, Alizadeh asks for a question to be repeated to ensure he has understood it.

How did you come to be a filmmaker?

I started making films seven years ago. I started off as a journalist and worked with a magazine. Then I began making fiction films and then switched to making documentaries, and now I solely focus on documentary films.

What are some of the biggest challenges young Afghan filmmakers face?

Initially, we had a lot of technical problems while making films. But now we’re better in that respect. The biggest challenge right now is procuring money for making films, and broadcasting them on TV in Afghanistan and other countries. We also need local money for making films, especially for making feature films. The Government doesn’t support the filmmakers— neither monetarily nor in any other form.

What were the technical problems filmmakers faced initially and how did they get resolved?

Earlier, we didn’t have film schools in the country, and hence the crew often faced problems in technical departments such as sound, editing and cinematography. Afghan filmmakers had to go to countries such as Russia or India to learn filmmaking. Things further worsened when the Taliban took over Afghanistan. Everything stopped. It was a troubled time for making films. But, five years ago, Kabul University initiated a Department of Cinema— it’s a part of the Fine Arts faculty. But, there as well, almost all faculty members are young and it’s very new for them too. They face problems getting study material to teach from and there’s also a scarcity of teachers, so that also becomes a challenge. But, I recently heard that the University of Pune tried to help the Kabul University’s cinema department. So I hope this sort of help continues.

After the Taliban came to power in 1996, films were banned in the country. Even after the ban has been lifted, there’s hardly been any funding from the Government. How are films in Afghanistan financed?

Some filmmakers are supported by embassies, NGOs or international foundations. There are a few independent filmmakers who raise money themselves for their films. On the other hand, there are Pashtun films made on a very tight budget, where only actors and actresses are paid, and those films are sold straight to the DVD market for merely $ 1000 or $ 2000 per film. But, having said that, those films are very badly made. They look very immature and dated. Especially the fight sequences are shot in a way that makes those films look more than 70 years old. Also the new generation of filmmakers does not like to make such films. They want to make professional films, films which look modern, films which look international.

What are the kinds of international foundations that support films in Afghanistan?

The United Nations pays money for making films about human rights, women’s rights and agriculture, among other things. And some other foundations, such as the Human Rights Foundation, commission and fund films on human rights and on the country’s elections. Some European channels also make films in Afghanistan but they always have a ‘European journalistic’ point of view about Afghanistan— something that’s not real. But now even all of the European people know that looking at things through this point of view will not show you the truth. It’s wrong. You must make the film from an Afghan point of view not from a European journalistic point of view.

Could you elaborate a little on this foreign or European journalistic point of view?

There are many foreign journalists in Afghanistan and a lot of films have been made on the country. They capture different parts of Afghanistan, despite facing many security problems, and despite it being very expensive to make films here. But the filmmakers are unable to familiarize themselves with locals of the country. This is why they have a foreign journalistic gaze. When you are making a film you have to keep things real, you have to keep the characters real, but Western filmmakers can’t do that since it’s a very different culture from the one they come from themselves. So these filmmakers can’t really understand the common people of the country. Many people in Afghanistan are not happy about how their country has been portrayed in films abroad. Because, many a times, Western filmmakers have made propaganda films on Afghanistan. Be it about its society or culture…

But the young generation of Afghan filmmakers is making films and changing this point of view that’s been spread about Afghanistan’s culture and society through Western films. So, when these young Afghan filmmakers put forward their point of view through their films, the Western audience begins to understand.

Also I’d like to add that it’s easier for Western filmmakers to make films on a particular culture because they have money for broadcasting and making documentary films. They also have a huge audience that watches documentaries. But in Asia, in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran, there are not a lot of people who watch documentaries. So sometimes even if an Afghan filmmaker wants to make films, especially documentaries, he will often be forced to adopt a European point of view because that’s where the money and the audience come from.

In the last 10 years, there have been a new lot of Afghan filmmakers. What are some crucial differences, to your mind, between them and the older filmmakers?

Before the Taliban many filmmakers, who studied filmmaking in Russia, were making films on 35mm. But the new generation of filmmakers is making films on digital and they’ve studied in Pakistan and Iran mostly. Some of them have studied in Europe. Also, the older filmmakers commanded a sizeable audience. When I was a kid films used to run for two months in theatres. Most importantly, before the Taliban rule, feature films would get made because the Government would fund those films. But now the filmmakers are mostly making short films because of a lack of funds. We don’t have money to make a feature film. Also, making a feature film needs experience in storytelling. And younger Afghan filmmakers lack the experience to tell such a story.

Afghanistan is still trying to find its place as a nation, trying to achieve some sort of stability. What kind of a role can cinema play in such times?

Cinema can play many roles. But I don’t know why the Government doesn’t want to support films in the country. 80% of the people in the country are uneducated— they can’t write or read. But if you want to inspire people or teach them you can make films, because they don’t need to read and write to understand films. Filmmaking is also very important because, just as in the past we had theatres, musicals, music and poetry for the poor people— now the place of these arts has to be taken by cinema, especially because everything is accessible on TV, DVD and also on the mobile, so watching films has become easy.

Also, cinema can be a mirror to citizens, for themselves and their country. Keeping this in mind, what kinds of stories really resonate with the Afghan filmmakers?

Seven to eight years ago, most Afghan films were about victims, wars and human rights. But, one can see a gradual change in the kind of films coming out from the country. Now, the younger generation of filmmakers wants to make films about love, society and culture.

What are your aspirations for Afghan cinema?

Afghan filmmakers must find a way to make independent films. And the new government must support the filmmakers in the country by funding films. Many filmmakers must also try to find international producers and co-producers. Afghan films should have a market, be it broadcasting on TV, or the cinema, or something else.

Also Read: Irani Chai, Cinema Afghani Golden Globe winner Siddiq Barmak on his film Osama, and on the challenges facing Afghan cinema today.

Farah Khan – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

Posted on November 9, 2013 by admin

Farah Khan was born into a film family. Her father lost everything, making movies that did not do well. They were poor and isolated overnight and the family fell apart. But Farah held on to her dark sense of humour, her affection for irony and survived. Starting off as a choreographer in small budget films, she went on to turn film choreography on its head.

After that very successful stint, she took up direction at a time when women directors were still a rarity in the Hindi film industry. But she refused to let her gender define her. Her films were not niche treatises on women’s issues but hugely mounted commercial blockbusters. That is not to say that she would toe the formulaic line— that is just not Farah. Instead she took the formula and contemporized it, like she did her choreography. Presented it with a twist of tongue-in-cheek humour, as she does her life in this interview.

An edited transcript:

You made your acting debut in 2012. But you have being doing cameos for a while.

As myself.

As yourself, but you have been doing cameos for a while. As it turns out—correct me if I am wrong—your first two cameos were in the early eighties.

In the early eighties. I was a dancer in the early eighties. Not early, but I would say late eighties.

So by the dint of the fact…

’85-’86.

…the fact that you are a celebrity now they have become cameos in retrospect.

They are not really cameos. I was a back-up dancer. I did dancing as a background dancer in a certain film.

There are two particular films that stand out.

Yes, tell me…

One was in 1981 by M. S. Sathyu. Were you part of that film Kahan Kahan Se Guzar Gaya?

Kahan Kahan Se Guzar Gaya. I was a choreographer for that song.

You were a choreographer for that song?

Yes, I was a choreographer of that song.

That was before…

I must say you have done your research rather well because even I have forgotten about this movie. It was a title song called ‘Kali mai diya silai’, and because it was such a low budget film. And M. S. Sathyu lived in my building, the building that I lived in.

This is before Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar.

This was much before. Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar was in ’92.

So this was your first film as a choreographer?

This was the first song I did. I don’t think I was credited. And I was paid some 500 bucks or 300 bucks for it, and because it was so low budget we had to dance in it too. Choreograph and dance, because there was no money for dancers.

And at the other end of the spectrum there was (3D) Saamri.

You know though Sajid and me put mud on our faces. We tried to cover ourselves up. For Saamri, we had a dance group which used to do breakdancing at that time and that was, I think, around ’85-’86.

’85, ’85…

So we had a dance group that used to do breakdancing. And I was the only girl in there. And because Javed Jaffrey was like the ‘it’ dancer at that time so he said that my father (Jagdeep) is doing Saamri and he’s doing a Michael Thriller dance in it, so why don’t you all come and dance and be in it.

And Bappi Lahiri was singing the song?

Yeah Bappi Lahiri was singing, and we shot it in a graveyard at Chandni Studio. Sajid and me at that time said, “Listen it’s too tacky, what shall we do?” maybe thinking that in the future we may become stars or something. So we had taken mud and put it on our faces, so nobody would recognize us.

You know that song is on YouTube right?

Ah, but are they saying that I am in the song?

No they’re not saying.

But now they will after watching your show.

Yeah so you’re not recognizable at all.

Yeah. Because also I was some 40 kilos I think, at that time. I was thin. Coming out of a crypt.

You were very young…

So I was a back up dancer. I’ve also danced in Jalwa behind Archana Puran Singh. ‘Feeling Hot Hot Hot’, that is the song.

Okay that must have been real fun, that I envy you for. I would have really loved to dance…

The only reason I did that song was because they were flying us to Goa. And I had never sat in a plane. And I have never been to Goa. So I was like “Arre wah! Double bonanza, chalo!”.

This was when?

This must have been in ’85-’86.

Okay. But tell me, do you have any memory of M. S. Sathyu and the Ramsay Brothers, the two cameos, the two things that came up when I was researching you? Did you have any observations? Like do you remember observing these directors at all at that point in time? It must have been really, like really, different films.

I mean with Mr. Sathyu, because I know him, he lived in my building; it was in some little small school ka auditorium mein. I remember it was like really ‘chota (small)’. You know we had like one day to finish the song or something. I would have to say, with the Ramsay Brothers, they were very, very nice. We got our payments on time. We were well looked after. They were very organized. We finished our entire shoot in two nights. They were very different from what you would imagine them to be, extremely professional. They were the only people… usually we did this and we would be running behind people for our money for ages, you know. But here we were paid at the end of the night so they were really… we had a good experience, other than the fact that we had to wash out that mud for one hour.

Okay. So it was a spoof of Thriller, that song?

Yes… I don’t think, haan yeah, it was a spoof I guess. Yeah Jagdeep was dancing to it.

Yeah very obviously Thriller.

Yeah, very obviously Thriller.

Yeah with the MJ music and coat.

Yeah and with the jacket, yeah.

And Thriller, like you’ve said, has been one of the biggest reasons why you became a dancer.

Yeah, absolutely.

So tell me about your early Michael Jackson fixation. How old were you when you first saw Thriller?

I was quite old when I saw Thriller, must have been like 17-18.

That was not quite old.

That was quite old. I mean people start dancing when they are younger and all. I started dancing when I was almost 18.

Okay.

So I think the ‘80s I still… I don’t know, maybe its nostalgia, I still believe it was the best time for music and you know, at least American music.

Yeah, pop.

We were all into Cyndi Lauper, Madonna and Michael Jackson, so I had absolutely no training in dance and I saw Thriller in my neighbour’s house, because we had a video. It was just like one of those moments when you’re like, “What the hell is this and I have to do it”.

What were you doing at that point of time?

I was in college and really, like, doing nothing.

You were in St. Xavier’s ?

I was in Xavier’s.

Why did you take Sociology?

Because it was the easiest subject. You can go on writing crap.

It was the easiest subject?

Yes, what is sociology? You can get by just reading it. And we hardly attended class. I actually took Sociology as a major later but I did my B.A. through correspondence— because they kicked me out of college for non-attendance, because I was only in the canteen. And, by the way, the Malhar dance competition was started by me and my friends.

Really?

Yeah, that Western dance competition, that they still have… right?

Yeah.

That wasn’t there when we were there. And we said “How can you not have one?” You should have one, so Father (the priest who ran the college) was like “Okay you do it in the canteen the first year, because the hall is booked solid for all other activities.” So we put up four tables on the canteen floor and we did Thriller. And there was nobody in the hall, because everyone came, and the whole quadrangle was full watching us do Michael Jackson on the tables, and then from next year they made it legitimate. They made it a proper competition.

Okay so tell me how you taught yourself dancing.

By watching videos. And also really at that point we used to keep going for these afternoon jam sessions you know.

What were these afternoon jam sessions?

Because in colleges like N. M. and Mithibhai they used to have afternoon socials. They were called ‘socials’.

So they were like dance parties?

Yeah, they were dance parties in the afternoon. Because at night, parents may not allow you out. So they were dance parties in the afternoon.

So there were lights and everything?

Yes, it was like a disco. And they used to book like one banquet hall somewhere, like that, or a nightclub in the afternoon. So literally when you go there, you find people who dance, you know? And then you meet them. And then we met lot of people who were great dancers at that point. And they are like literally mini stars around college and all. And then we met up with them. And then we formed a dance group. There were four boys and me. And then we used to dance. We used to watch videos to invent steps. And we used to practice on the terrace of my building or on Juhu beach.

And did you start dancing professionally around then?

Yeah as professional as you could get at that time… yeah, like new year’s night we used to be having five shows. So the highlight was we used to book a car and then travel.

That’s quite big.

Yeah, five shows we used to get.

What kind and where did you get shows?

Dances at like… a retreat at Madh Island. You know— the new year’s entertainment, do the half an hour performance…

Okay, I have found a very strange entry on the internet about… you always look so skeptical about what might be on the internet. Don’t you Google yourself?

Not at all

No, this is strange because it is just one of those things… There is an entry that you had a dance partner called Hemu Sinha.

Yeah, Hemu.

There is an entry that you guys won something called the ‘Friendship Award’ in the duo category in 1987 for being nice to participants.

In 1986. This was like the Miss Congeniality award, it was actually the World Dance Championship in the UK and we went from India and we won the Indian Championship. And you know, my next movie, Happy New Year, is all about a World Dance Championship.

Oh my God!

So yeah, it’s really funny because it’s come a full circle.

Okay, oddly this was not there, it just said that you won some…

It was a World Dance Championship in the UK. There were 32 countries and Hemu and me had won the Indian Championship and we went there and of course, when we saw the other countries we were like, listen… but me, being me, had taken like packets of bindis and bangles and things like that to just like show that we were from India. I think that was the only reason we won. Hemu did nothing. Hemu did nothing… so we won the Friendship Trophy over there. Like everyone voted for us as the most friendly…

People.

Friendly country

And how old were you then?

It was in ’86,I must have been 20. But at that point I think I knew what I wanted to be because when I had read there, there was this big folder there, they had all the people from each country saying: My ambition… and when I found my folder I had written my ambition was to be a film director.

A film director?

A film director. So maybe at that time I knew that, okay, like…

You had already… from not knowing what you wanted to do in life, you went straight to….

Choreography was not an option…

Why was it not an option?

All choreographers used to be 50-60 years old. They used to be old dancers who became famous…

Come on Farah, you’ve been a film director. There was not a single film woman director in mainstream, abhi bhi nahi hai… (even today there are hardly any) ok maybe one or two maybe.

Abhi bhi hai… kaafi hai (there are many today). But I’m saying at that point I was in Xavier’s, where people used to look down on Bollywood movies.

Okay so your first exposure to films would have been through your dad?

Yeah my first exposure was through my dad.

Did you watch his films?

Some of them which came out when I was small… the earlier ones I haven’t watched. I think they are lost, sadly. I’ve collected all the posters of all, most of, his movies.

But what about…

But the negatives of the earlier ones cannot be found anywhere

None of them?

One or two which I have, one or two…

So what was the first film of his that you remember seeing?

It was a movie called Watan Se Door which was a copy of The Great Escape which is about these Indian soldiers caught by the Chinese and they are in the war camp and… so it was just The Great Escape basically and how they escaped from there and…

So you watched it on… ?

We used to watch it on every birthday at home, the bed sheet would be put and the projector would be called for and all the building people would come to watch.

Any other films of his you can remember?

Yeah lots. Do Matwale, Chaalbaaz, he used to make all these fun movies, I now realize that they were all a copy of some English movie or the other, but they used to be great fun…

Do you remember any film characters from the film industry at that time that you might have met through your dad?

Yeah a lot of them, like Dara Singh was a very close friend of my dad’s.

And were you a fan?

No he was Dara uncle, Sajid and me used to be taken to the wrestling matches at the NSCI and all, fab (fabulous they were, very exciting, all those wrestlers would come from abroad and Dara uncle would defeat all of them. Now to think of it, it must have been rigged but… so yeah a lot of people like Mumtaz, who also got a break through my dad. And of course my aunts were also in the movies, Daisy Irani and Honey Irani, so yeah…

So you obviously didn’t have the snob thing of not associating with Bollywood or not associating with Hindi masala movies despite the fact that…

No I mean, for us, Sajid and me, till we reached college up to a point, in Xavier’s maybe, where you don’t openly say that, “I love Bollywood”, but up to that point, I was an encyclopaedia of Hindi ‘70s movies and Sajid was an encyclopaedia of the dirty ‘80s movies that came out during his teenage years. But we were hardcore film buffs. Like, what was there to do? We didn’t have a TV at home, we didn’t have anything. So movies were it, like going for a movie was a big deal…

Where did you live then?

We lived in Juhu, in a really small society called Nehru Nagar Society. All the people that lived there were either B-grade directors or… But in a way, it was very nice because we all made some small movie here or there

Okay you know you’ve spoken about it a lot, but you have mentioned how your dad’s colleagues stopped coming home after he went through a bad patch in the movies. You’ve spoken about how your family went from riches to rags, how your family split up because of it. Clearly you saw the worst side of this film industry. You know…

Yeah like when you put it in a movie, one would say how ‘filmy’, like this would ever happen, but it was like that literally. I saw my gramophone being sold and being taken away… So it was like something which, if you saw it in a movie, it would really seem a bit over the top.

And yet you were not hesitant to join the film industry?

I don’t think we were equipped for anything else. You know Pragya the thing is, I was very good at my studies. But the thing is the love for cinema comes from your childhood. You know it’s like if you love dancing. So luckily for me I found a passion other than that, which was dance, which was…

Which was an integral part of films.

Which luckily for me turned out well because I was into Jackson, and was into Western dance. I had no clue about Indian dancing. So that, I think, that kind of helped me get a foothold into films. If I had just come and said, “I want to make a movie”, who would have given it to me?

But there was no hesitation also Farah, ki yaar, there’s something you just start associating, which is like…

But see I was not thinking that I’m going to be… I was thinking I’m just happy being on a set and you know, literally, because we had nothing. You know, my dream used to be, I used to tell Sajid, I used to say, “Listen, I’ll become a top choreographer, then I’ll charge 10,000 rupees for a song. I’ll do 4 four songs a month and we’ll have 40,000 a month and like, we’re sorted man.” So you know our dreams were so small and we were so happy with so little that anything that came was bigger than what we had hoped for. That’s why I don’t take it seriously and also don’t attach myself to the material side of it because our dreams… I would have been happy with 40,000 a month. And I then feel that God’s really been kind…

Okay tell me Farah. So clearly you were not that angry or bitter about it despite having gone through very hard times.

I was never a bitter or angry person. Sajid was for a long time…

So how did you, like what helped you, now when you look back?

Now I am telling you when I look back, the dance really helped me because there was a channel to do something. The house situation was so bad that after Xavier’s (college) would get over, say by 3:30-4 (pm), I would just hang around till around 7 in the evening, because I didn’t want to come back home. Because it was a little depressing. So I would just hang around there with my friends, who were the hostel boys. They would take me to eat something. But when the dance came in, it really gave us something to do, you know. All your energies are then focused and anyone who dances cannot be a sad person, you know dancers are usually happy and…

You’re surrounded by that energy…

Yes, you’re surrounded by that energy. And at that time the dance scene in Bombay was really like how you see it in Step Up. They would go to a disco and there would be one group there and you would want to do your little showing off over there, so I think that really kept me away from all sorts of things. I mean, I could have easily gotten into drugs or having stupid boyfriends.

Yeah because I would imagine it’s tougher for a girl to deal with alienation from her father. Also because you were away from your father for the first time.

No, then we went back to live with our dad. We were away from our mom.

Yeah

So it was very…

And this was just before your dad passed away?

Yeah, so it was very confusing and also it was not like we just settled in with our mom in our house there. And then we had to go back and stay with my dad, which Sajid was very excited about, because all his friends were in that building and my mother and her friends used to keep a watch on him. Here he was free, nobody was asking him where he’s going and when he’s coming. He had become a wild child. We used to think that Sajid would go to a juvenile delinquent home, so for him to do that, I think was a bigger achievement than mine.

So other than dance was there any other reason you dealt with it better than your brother did?

Yeah I was older, I am five years older than him. Also when you look back and analyze it any which way I was sent to a very normal school, St. Theresa’s Convent, which was an all girls’ school and there were people from a lower income background than me. And Sajid went to Maneckji Cooper High School where all the elite kids went, so he was probably the poorest child there. So that also gives you a complex.

What was the hardest to deal with? I remembered you joked somewhere about being poor cousins with Zoya and Farhan, did you actually feel like a poor cousin?

You know, to their credit, they never made us feel like poor cousins.

No they don’t have to make you feel like…

No but we were the poor cousins. I was wearing hand-me-downs, but Honey aunty and Daisy aunty really supported my mom, they took us in and we stayed in their house for so long. But you do feel that. But my mom still has a more of a… she still feels… I sometimes tell her we aren’t the poor cousins anymore… but she still feels that complex and that gratitude and…

I guess she has had to live with it longer than you guys…

Yeah Zoya was my best friend, she used to follow me everywhere and she was much younger. So she would look up to me when I used to go for dance shows and she used to come for every dance show and hang around backstage. And Farhan and Sajid were very close…

So clearly a sense of humour is something you’ve really relied on…

That’s our trait, our family trait, my dad, my mom and all my aunts. Everything finally ends up… however tragic it may be one month later, they would make a joke of it and find it funny— whether it was my grandmother’s funeral or whatever.

Is there anything you find hard to laugh about?

Yeah there are a lot of things I can’t laugh about. I don’t want to talk about them because I start crying, like when my dad passed away. It was really not something I would want to talk about.

You’ve observed the film industry from the seventies, through your father and up till now, of course. Do you think it’s still the kind of place where your colleagues would, or at least some of your colleagues would desert you if your film doesn’t do well? If not, is it because people have changed with the economic realities of the film industry?

No I think that kind of acceptance was there. Though, if you were riding high, ‘Chadte suraj ko salaam… ,’ that’s been going on since time immemorial.

But that’s going on even now.

Of course.

And you’re saying that extreme… like one doesn’t now hear about cases….

Now is worse I think.

Really? Because one doesn’t hear of cases like your dad or Raj Kapoor.

Because now you’re not putting in your personal money.

So you’re saying the economic realities have changed.

Yeah it’s a corporate thing. Raj Kapoor would mortgage the entire R. K. Studios. So, because of that passion for cinema, my dad put in all of his own money. So, like, once it’s gone, you’re like bankrupt. That doesn’t happen anymore to a great extent because it’s all corporate.

Yeah and then at that time there were no other channels and the underworld or the corporates, like you said. None of that was there…

It is very difficult for you to become bankrupt over a movie nowadays because it’s all so channelized and corporatized, and a very few… who puts in their own money now? Only Shah Rukh Khan I think.

You know you spoke about passion for cinema, I was reading some interview of yours, in which you were talking about how the earlier generations, up to your generation, the generation of superstar Khans— everyone had some sort of passion or feeling which also perhaps led to scandals and fights which fuelled the media. When you see the new generation, how pragmatic and clinical they are about everything, do you feel it’s boring or…

It’s boring. Like I said if they ask me there are not going to be any great friendships or any great enmity anymore. I think they were asking about all the fights and I think the fights were there because there was great friendship and love at some point, great emotion for all of us who came together. But now I don’t think there’ll be any great enmities or any great fights because nobody really cares a damn. They’re not even friends with each other and I think in that sense it is a bit boring and clinical, like, “You’ll do your job and I’ll do my job and… ”

And we’ll all be polite with each other.

I think the last time you saw a great show of love and affection was that song in Om Shanti Om. Everyone just came, why would they come? It’s a Shah Rukh Khan movie and I’m the director. Some came for me, a lot of them came for him. Few didn’t come, it’s fine. I mean when we were on the set and I think that was the last time the heroes were bonding together and there was a genuine affection and they all hung around. It was a party. They all hung around after their shot was over. Salman and Saif hung around, they went to their van, they had a kind of a party over there and they came back when Dharamji was giving his shot. They waited for the shot and then jumped in without being asked. Who does that anymore?

That might have been the last…

Yeah the last great filmi party.

I just was gonna ask you... You’ve talked about the film industry changing. You’ve also seen Bombay change in the 70s…

They don’t even call it bloody Bombay anymore.

I still call it Bombay.

Yeah even I call it Bombay.

Do you miss anything about this city that has changed?

It’s just become so intolerant. I remember when I was shooting for Oh Darling! Yeh Hai India! I think it must have been in ’93 or ’94 maybe. And we used to shoot all night and we used to pack up at 3:30-4 from Marine Drive and I would take a cab alone and I would never doubt that I would reach home safely. And you know… my daughters, I get so worried now and even if they are going by school bus, I’m going to have a car following to make sure. It’s just so sad, it’s just regressing and I used to wear little minis and go out and dance and never got my ass pinched or you know, just…

It used to be a great city for women, even 10 years ago it used to be a great city for women.

I mean, shutting down places at 10.30… and I really think it’s not because we’re showing, like they say “item songs bandh karo (stop the item songs)”. No, I feel it’s because our sexuality is being repressed that all these things are happening. I don’t think so many rapes happen in Amsterdam, where it’s out in the open. So I’m saying its being repressed and that is why these incidents are happening more and more. It’s because we’re always talking in hushed whispers and our censors, I feel, have become rubbish. What are they asking us to cut?

Yeah, there’s no consistency.

And when I see U/A movies I’m shocked. I can take my children to see, one bhalla is being poked in the stomach, men are being cut by saws and axes and it’s a U/A film. So there’s something clearly very wrong, so I think we should take the name ‘vastu wise’ we should go back to Bombay, where things were hunky dory, till we became Mumbai.

You recently spoke about 1993, how when the riots were going on, you had neighbours who protected your family against lynch mobs. Was that the only time in Bombay that you felt singled out, for being a minority?

I never thought of myself as a minority Pragya, I still don’t. Because maybe we’re also very liberal, we come from a different background. But at that point it was very scary, because people would literally go and remove our name plates from the building and we were the only Muslims in the entire society, and, till then, never once were we made to feel… We had a very Punjabi sense of humour and…

Also your mother was Parsi.

Yeah my mother was Parsi, my father was Muslim. We were never forced to do the namaaz. My mother was very anti-religion. Like, she’s made me sign in her will that if she dies and, God forbid, we do any religious ceremony, her ghost will come to haunt us. Like: “Don’t you dare do anything.” So we were that liberal.

Was it an incident you just put aside or did that change something?

I think I started doing my rozas, I became more Muslim than I was earlier. I read the Quran to find out about my religion much more. Of course now I’ve gone back to being spiritual rather than religious.

You could have spun a positive outtake from a…

No, because I think it just made people want to know more and why and it just unites them a little more.

But after that you haven’t felt that? A lot of people talked about how the character of the city changed after ‘93.

I feel like there is no character anymore. I’m telling you in my movie we have a song where we have to talk about India and why it’s… and there’s really nothing inspiring us right now to… it’s so sad! It’s like, “Why do I feel proud of my country?” It’ll will take me ten minutes to think and find something, that I am proud of about my city or country. It’s really sad.

Yeah the only thing that remains are the people, our sense of humour, our unabashedness…

No I think our people are also becoming very blasé and…

Well hopefully by the time it fully materializes, we’ll be dead.

Yeah but our kids will be there, no?

You have kids, you’ll have to worry about that…

You will also have kids one day so…

I’ll worry then.

You have broken a lot of rules, in the sense that you were not a trained Indian Classical dancer. Being a female choreographer— was that a hindrance in the beginning?

Maybe in people’s minds, yes. In the beginning they would not give me Hindi… big ‘Indian’ songs to do. They would say: Love songs kara lo. She can only do Western, or she can only do love songs. Because I had done ‘Pehla Nasha’ then. I really love Indian Classical. If you tell me to come and watch Indian Classical, I love it. I just think it’s the most beautiful dance form. I was so sad because I really did not have the money to ever learn it or the time to take off for two years.

Exactly, you need a lot of time.

You need time and I was always earning, so I would really want my daughters to learn Odissi or Kathak. I just think it makes you so beautiful and so elegant and graceful, and….

And very happy.

So I got assistants who were trained in that and even when I have to a mujra, I would take a class for a month. I would call the teacher to come and teach me at least the basics. I think it helped also in a sense that you are not bound by rules of the form that you have learnt. Because I did not know the rules, I was inventing and doing what I want. Otherwise sometimes you are so trained that you feel ‘yeh kaise, yeh kar nahi sakte (how do I do this, I can’t)’. It also limits you in that sense, you want to be in that box. But sometimes I feel that when Saroj Khan choreographs, her inherent training is an asset to the way she makes the girls do that. I would have loved to do that but I didn’t, so I made the best of what I knew.

Looking back, how do you feel you have contributed to the way choreography has changed over the last two decades?

Last 20 years. See I think, well…

Starting with Pehla Nasha, which was also not very the kind of song that was…

I may sound very immodest. I think before I came on, it was very, very ‘uncool’. Bollywood dancing and film dancing was ‘uncool’. I think I brought about a change, where it was cool to like… whether it was Kuch Kuch Hota Hai or Dil Se or Virasat, even in the village songs there was an inherent aesthetic value to it. I think the younger generation reacted to that. It was not that hardcore crass and filmy. Also the look of the song, the background dancers, I would credit myself. In Jo Jeeta… I went out of my way. I fought with the unions, because I said they are college students in the film, so I would get college students who will dance behind. Not 45 year old fat men and women dressed in frilly frocks. So you know the whole look, and now getting these background dancers who are slim and athletic looking and fit looking. I think that credit has to go to me because prior to Jo Jeeta…, the dancers at the back were really, I mean… And all dancing to Khud Ko Kya Samajhti Hai… all balding fat men dancing. It wasn’t their fault because it was the Cine Dancer’s Association that would not take new members for years on end.

Okay, if I had to ask you to name any 6 songs with which you felt you turned a corner, which ones would you pick?

I think definitely Pehla Nasha to begin with. I think I really turned the corner with Dhol Bajne Laga because people woke up and said, ‘She can do an Indian dance’. I think also Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane from Dilwale (Dulhania Le Jayenge), because before that, I had not got a big song to choreograph in a very big film. I mean 1942: A Love Story was okay, but they were still love songs. This was like a full dance number. I think Dil Se, Chaiyya Chaiyya was huge and though the movie tanked, it was my international calling card. I got Bombay Dreams because of it, I got a Chinese movie, I got Monsoon Wedding. It has all happened because of Chaiyya Chaiyya. Only six songs, you’re saying?

Or you can name more…

I think the way songs were being done, I think in Main Hoon Na, the qawwali and that whole kitsch element has come through because of Main Hoon Na. You know that ‘70s aesthetic kitsch, whether it was the pink lighting or the green. Now you just see it so often that you have even forgotten the origins of it. But it all came from the qawwali from Main Hoon Na. The way it has been shot with the swans and the lotus, all those elements which we had not seen, which we used to see in the fifties Hindi movies. And then I guess I would say that and Sheila (Ki Jawani) and Munni (Badnaam Hui).

Why Sheila and Munni?

They just became bigger than I thought they would be. When I was shooting them, I thought they would do well. But they just became cult songs.

Like you said, after this whole phase, Bollywood dancing became a genre abroad. There are Bollywood dance classes abroad, New York and London, like proper dancing classes. If you had to describe the genre to somebody completely unacquainted, what would you say?

It’s a mix of… I don’t know how to describe it because there are no rules. You can just take what you want, I can take a Gene Kelly number and mix it with Bharat Natyam and… it’s anything goes is what I would say. It’s anything goes. There are no rules and, of course, there’s a lot of energy, I would say, in a Bollywood number. The inherent thing is that, it is pulsating and energetic and a lot of the hip area is predominantly used. If you see an American dance— you will use the arms or the feet. But I think our mid-region is used a lot in Bollywood dancing.

Okay, so Farah I wanted to ask you… there has been a whole rash of item numbers in the last couple of years, which has restricted choreography to a large extent. It became like this one similar kind of choreography. And it was in fact a return to what was going on with choreography before you entered the scene, in a lot of ways, which was those crass numbers. Now there’s this whole trend of song-less movies. What do you see as the future of choreography in Indian cinema?

I don’t think it’s going away too quickly. If you’re making a thriller, I don’t see why you should have songs in it, if it’s going to hinder. I saw Talaash and I called Reema and said, “I wish there were one or two songs less”, because in this movie they were not required. But if you’re having a Dabangg 2 or a Happy New Year… and I tell my stories through music, so I also inherently believe, that what makes a Bollywood movie stand out internationally, are its songs and dances, and the fact that, we are the only film industry to kind of have that in every film. Otherwise you are making a French film or a Polish film.

Also we have a great time with them.

And we don’t have pop music or jazz music. We have Bollywood music. We used to have Indian classical music, but we know what’s happening with that.

But anyway it’s not a substitute for Bollywood music.

Exactly, and abroad there’s ‘country’ and there’s ‘country classical’. In the Grammys there are 10 different genres, what do we have here? Bollywood music, so it’s literally that all the songs that I know from my childhood are Hindi movie songs. So I don’t see anything bad in that, but if everyone now wants to do that one thing and an item number, then I feel ‘Main kya karoongi item song mein yaar (What will I do in an item song)’. Let me take a break.

Ask Bhushan. He wants one love song, one sad song, one dance song and my Dard-e-Disco came out because of that. Bhushan Kumar of T-Serieshas told us that, “Two songs sell very much in India. One is a dance number and one is a ‘dard wala’ song or a sad song. Sad songs and dance songs both do very well. “Aap dono daalo.” So that’s how I got the phrase Dard-e-Disco, so it’s a mix of a sad song, but in a disco number.

I cannot believe that Bhushan Kumar had something to do with Dard-e-Disco.

Yeah he is very clear about what he is selling.

I would have never imagined the genesis of Dard-e-Disco being this.

They are telling me that Pyar Pyar Pyar Hookah Bar is a hit. Then God bless us all for the future of music.

Okay fine, point acknowledged. You mentioned Saroj Khan earlier, you assisted her right?

Not at all, I did not assist any choreographer. This is a big myth that goes around because I am a Khan. Not at all.

But it has been written in a lot of places.

Not at all, she used to hate me with a passion and still does, I think.

But why?

Because I was a newcomer, who was coming up and she was the reigning queen.

Well, coming to your movies.Again like we were saying earlier, you practically started a certain kind of genre of filmmaking which I feel, from what I know of you, reflects your relationship with masala Hindi films, part laughing at it, part loving it. Tell me about the genesis of this genre, what was going on in your head when Main Hoon Na was coming together?

I have to tell you something that my husband told me. Main Hoon Na for me was a movie made up of all the movies I loved while I was growing up. I was not frankly a Yash Chopra fan; Kabhi Kabhi was not my favorite movie. Parvarish or Naseeb would be, or a Nasser Hussain movie would be. So I was not for these little love stories, these cranky movies. I was liking all these movies where you were having fun. It came about writing a movie like that… I would never be able to write a Kuch Kuch Hota Hai.

Yeah but Farah it’s also the reinvention.

Yeah, but now everyone has brought in the ‘70s… everything was a love story…

With a twist of irony, that’s what I am saying. That we relate to it, that a much younger generation also relates to it.

Om Shanti Om kind of, absolutely put the seal on it, took all the movies that I love… and they are so funny now.

But you do something with them. Can you imagine how horrific it would be, if someone seriously tried to make…

A lot of people tried to…

Yeah a lot of people tried, but that did not work right?

No when you shoot it, you have to shoot it in a way such that it does not look like a bad ’70s movie. It still has to look big and grand, but Shirish told me something very funny— “You just make your movie seriously, people will think it’s a spoof.” I said, “How mean is that!” He said: “Yeah you seriously put your drama and people will be laughing and still think it’s a spoof.”

Come on Farah, that’s not true at all, your own sense of humor shows through in your films.

I think there is love for the movies, it’s not mocking them or it’s something that’s inherent. I am laughing and enjoying and the audience is laughing with me, not at my movies. Happy New Year, the script we have written, I have really taken trouble. Because after Tees Maar Khan I have learnt my lesson, I have spent a year, but it is bigger and little over the top. But it’s also time to modernize a little bit, keep the humour and credibility of the story that I want to say, but to make them believe it.

Can you imagine making a film that is not of this genre? Maybe a….

I could make a superb thriller, I would make a fab thriller and I would make a good drama.If you have seen Main Hoon Na or Om Shanti Om, I think the drama portions, even if it’s the climax, where the ghost comes down, or the scenes between Arjun and Shah Rukh— those are my forte. I wait for those drama portions in the movie to come. I think I thoroughly enjoy it. Even in Main Hoon Na, the conflict between Sunil and Shah Rukh… I think the movies also go a notch higher, because they are not just another comedy— which is what happened with Tees Maar Khan. It was just a comedy. I think it’s the drama, the conflict, the motive, the revenge, all that I put in, that gives it that gravity, makes it a bit more than just another comedy.

Yeah, anything that grips you emotionally…

I think I will be able to do that. I may not want to make a sappy love story. I have no interest in watching them or in making them, I can’t even think about it. But if you give me a gritty thriller or a suspense, I think I will do a very good job at it.

You know you mentioned Tees Maar Khan. Why do you feel it didn’t do well?

It didn’t do well for many reasons. (A) It was just, like I said… it was a script which I found very funny…

Did you try to do something different with Tees Maar Khan?

Not really

Which you didn’t do in the first two movies?

No, the difference was it wasn’t something I had written. I thought the script was very funny. If someone else would have made it, let me tell you, it’s a very funny script and it would have done much better. But coming from me, it was a letdown because there was a lot of…

Well this is just a point that came to my head at that point of time. I don’t know how you feel about it. Did it have anything to do with the kind of audience Akshay Kumar commands and the kind of audience Shah Rukh Khan commands, and the expectations that changed with it?

Of course. Coming from me I cannot put the blame, because I chose the actor. But because it was my film I had given two huge blockbusters and felt ‘ki bahut chota hai’, whether it was in production value or whether it was the star cast or whether it was just in what we were saying. It just felt short. I made sure Happy New Year was 10 times (the scope and size)… It’s (Tees Maar Khan) like going to a restaurant, it’s like you’re going to have a French meal and you’re getting junk food… Even though the junk food is good, it would have worked better in a junk food stall.

You know you have always scoffed at these sort of very coy representations of women, the pretty sex object or the eye candy eyelash-batting girl or the weepy sensitive woman. And even so, I remember you saying that, amongst other things, you’re a better multitasker because you’re a woman. In your experience, what do you think makes women the stronger sex and what, if anything, makes them the weaker sex?

Yeah I don’t think that they are the weaker sex. The weaker sex tag has been put by men obviously. Because if one man had to go through, forget a pregnancy, but had to go through one menstrual cycle, you know what would happen to the world. They would be going mental and stabbing people on the road.

Which they are doing anyway.

Forget about bearing a child and passing a child, when I look at not just myself but a normal working lady who goes to work, cuts her vegetables in the train, goes home, has to cook the dinner because the man is obviously too tired from doing work, then takes the children’s homework, maybe washes the dishes, goes to sleep, gets up in the morning and goes to earn money also. Including my maids, who are running their own houses while their husbands are doing nothing. So it’s just… so the ’weaker sex’, obviously, is a tag which has been put by a man. Because that’s what they want to believe and that’s where they want to keep the women in this country.

Farah, I am going to make a complaint now. Why do none of your heroines reflect your steely character. You’re an amazing woman.

You know I feel my women are all— whether it’s Sushmita, or Amrita Rao, or Deepika, they are all… no one is a victim, none of them are victims. Including Katrina in Tees Maar Khan.

Except for Deepika in her first janam.

Come on, she was being killed by somebody. She was having an extramarital affair with a married man and how many people asked me to change that and said the heroine is looking very tarty. I said, “No she’s a top heroine who’s obviously in love with this person”. I think I should make a movie about a woman police inspector.

A woman like you. She may not be a police inspector, she could be doing nothing. But a woman like you…

I don’t like women who do nothing, that’s my problem

That doesn’t matter. I’m saying the profession doesn’t matter. I’m saying that the character matters, I just feel they don’t have the kind of…

Maybe. Chalo, the next one. I will take you seriously, but I always feel that none of them are victims. In my movies I like to see them a little beautiful and graceful, something that I don’t reflect in my…

That’s not contradictory to being… I am talking about the kind of strength…

Who will make a movie about me?

You will make a movie on you.

No, I can’t.

Not on you, I am saying…

Yeah like that, okay I will keep that in mind.

More like you. The heroine should be more like you. Then you might also be able to change the way heroines are in our industry. I am just saying Farah, the way you have crossed the bridge… Either our heroines are the ‘saree pehenke, khoon ka tilak lagake, makeup utaar ke’ Chandima, or it’s the other end of the spectrum.

Correct

So since you have bridged the gap everywhere I was saying….

Ok so, do one in between. Okay, so in my Happy New Year I will do that.

Okay thank you for speaking out and talking about cosmetic surgery. You have to tell me why it is such a taboo. Today, cosmetic surgery is an advanced salon treatment in the world.

I completely agree and I keep saying that it’s like there was a taboo for IVF and nobody admits to it and says, “We have our child naturally at 43”. I mean come on, get out. You can’t fool everyone. It was like, when my mother was younger, they didn’t have machines or gyms to help you tone up. Now there is. Would you look down on them and say we used to go for a walk on the beach?

But then why is it such a taboo? It’s like going to the salon now.

I agree, but I think the girls are just doing it too early in life, that’s the thing. They are all just doing it in their 20s and just when hitting their 30s. It’s too early to do it. I of course did it because I had given birth to three children. I had to, there was no other way for me. I tried every other way and if my way can help other people… 100 people must have taken my doctor’s number from me. I can’t go everyday and lie and say, “Wow I’ve become so thin and, yeah, I’m dieting you know.” And I suddenly realized all the people telling me this down the years: “I have just zipped my mouth. I don’t eat.” And they’ve just zipped the mouth… and the bulb went up: “Oh you also did it!”

Would you have done it, if you were not a part of this industry, which has so much of emphasis on looks?

I clearly didn’t do it because of this emphasis. I’ve done 30 shows where I am looking fat. I’ll tell you what, I got a little reality check when I saw Shirin Farad Ki Toh Nikal Padi. I was like, “Oh shit! Is that me?” You know sometimes you need that, because you’re so used to seeing yourself everyday and you don’t really bother and I saw it and I was like, “Look, I can’t be seen looking like this for the rest of my life”. So I was thinking about it and I had my three kids…

And that’s what I said in one of my articles also. Prawn allergies go to the lips and the boobs also, straight. I mean which is that allergy where your boobs also become bigger and your lips also become bigger? Superb! So I just think the girls are doing it too early.

You know your personal life and your marriage has been under a lot of scrutiny in the past couple of years. I imagine, I mean I don’t know, but I imagine this is slightly new for you…

I don’t know if it’s scrutiny, but people are just judgmental and they… you know…

Yeah so much has been written about your personal life or it being analyzed or whatever. ‘This’ is going on with your marriage or ‘What’s not going on.?’ Do you always find it easy to deal with it, does it never get to you?

Yeah it irritates me at times because clearly nobody knows what they are talking about…

Your best friends don’t know what’s going on in your life…

Yeah exactly. And sometimes, I see very happy couples who are cuddling in public and my marriage works for me. Let me say it’s an unusual marriage, my husband is eight years younger than me. We have three kids, and it works for us. It’s not a conventional marriage and for him it’s harder to deal with, because I was already very successful when he married me. So it requires a different kind of approach.

Which is great.

Yeah but after a point it does get irritating and now I make it a point to call people and say, “Stop,” because there’s a time now when I need to take a call and say “stop writing shit”. Because it undermines my husband more than anything else. My kids are still younger but when they grow up it will… So right now I’m on a spree of calling people and saying just “stop it”, because my kids will be five soon.

Is it working?

Once you do it long enough it will work, because otherwise everyone thinks it’s a free for all, ‘kuch bhi likho, they are not going to say anything’. Out of 10 people, two people will stop at least. And people are so judgmental here. They all make up their minds, including us. We also make up our minds and say…

How has your idea of romance changed or evolved since when you were young?

Like Shirish said, “pyaar mein haar uski hoti hai jo shaadi kar leta hai (the one who loses in love is the one who gets married)”. So if you have a great love story, don’t get married. I love my house because I have three beautiful kids and it’s all about them. And yesterday we went to their annual function and we sat there as mama and dada and they saw us sitting there and they were so excited. That is how. We were roaming with our three kids at the fun fair or took them to Disneyland. It’s not like we go on candlelight dinners alone. And even if we do, what will we do? We’ll go there and still talk about the children only

Okay if I ask you to think back to when you were 25, what did you fear then?

Maybe, I feared that would never become anything.

Do you fear anything now?

Nothing?

Well when you have kids, you worry about them.

Well other than kids. Because when you have kids you have to worry about them, there’s no other option.

When Joker bombed, we were fine. At least, it’s like, out of the way, get on. I don’t fear that because I’ve seen it and I know that people who don’t have a family and don’t have kids and make that the most important thing— that Friday (of the movie release) is the most important thing about their lives. I feel sad. It’s very sad because this cannot be my life. It’s my passion and I want to make it for the love of the movie. But this… ‘How much has it collected? Has it crossed so much? How has it done better than the other movie?’ Those days are gone. I’ve maybe evolved a little more, so I think that and I always feel if you fear something, it will manifest. I believe in that ‘secret’, that what you imagine is what will happen to your life. So right now I was thinking, if someone asks me what I want, like ‘make a wish’, I think I’m pretty much happy. I’m in a good space. I’m going to make a movie as and when it happens. Earlier I used to be—Shah Rukh also tells me—I used to be so impatient and so ‘wanting to make it now’ and “Why are you working with that one?” and “Why has mine not started?” and that also is not there. Okay it’s gone two months ahead? Very good. I’ll use that time to take my kids for a holiday. So I think I don’t really fear. I mean you worry for your children even when they go to school, I mean every mother does that.

No I was asking about a personal fear, not about kids. That’s always going to be there

Other than cockroaches, not really. I think I was lucky that I got married late, when I was 40. But, at least, I decided to have a family also, because it’s what keeps you grounded Pragya. I’m saying this because of experience— I’m going to be 48 now. It is, what if you don’t have that now, if you don’t have your personal happiness, a professional happiness will give you a high for some time. But when that high is not there, that is what will keep you stable. So my thing is to go have your kids and spend time with them. You don’t have to have a man, but have kids if you can.

Drama Queen

Posted on October 29, 2013 by admin

There are stories about Ekta Kapoor and there is the story of Ekta Kapoor. Here, in a chapter from her book Death in Mumbai, Meenal Baghel profiles India’s most well-known TV producer like never before.

‘The young, especially those from small towns and middle class families, like Neeraj, join because they want quick money, they want expression—their names and faces on TV.’

—Ekta Kapoor

Ekta Kapoor walked into the meeting late, and within ten seconds, like a tearaway bully on the beach, she dismantled all the castles the others had been building. ‘I want Crash,’ she said, referring to Paul Haggis’s multiple-Oscar winning film.

The meeting had been convened to discuss her newest project, a movie ‘inspired’ by Neeraj Grover’s killing. Ten films, Ekta informed everyone, had already been announced on the subject. Since Neeraj was a Balaji product and Maria had come to Mumbai aspiring to work with Ekta, it only made logical sense that they should stake ownership. ‘If there has to be a film on the TV industry then why shouldn’t we be the ones making the story?’

Except, at this point, there was no story.

The executives of Balaji’s fledgling film division, and the actor Rohit Roy, who had been signed on to direct his first full-length feature film, were in a massive conference room, brainstorming. ‘I have the opening sequence all ready in my head—it begins with a woman’s audition tape running… ’ Rohit said to the young assistant who had joined the company two days ago; the assistant looked suitably impressed. Someone suggested a Madhur Bhandarkar-style voyeuristic drama, while another executive came up with the idea of an ‘intense love story’. The consensus was veering in that direction when Crash landed.

‘It blew my mind,’ Ekta said. ‘Let’s also have the plot set over one night featuring several characters and their stories… Your budget,’ she said, turning towards Rohit, who was beginning to lose some of his good cheer, ‘would be Rs. two to three crore.’

I met Ekta, India’s most successful television producer—and an astute mind—to get an insider’s perspective on the world that Neeraj and Maria aspired to. At which she suggested I sit in on her meetings to see how she works and creates.

In the US, a single episode of a television show like Sex and the City or The Wire costs more than the budget she was offering Rohit for his film. But television in India works on simple volume—the more episodes you produce the more money you make. ‘It’s not amazing talent that makes me special,’ Ekta explained without any hint of self-deprecation, ‘but the sheer volume of work I have done.’ In its fourteen years, her company has produced over seventy shows, which have defined Indian television. Her approach to movies is similar. ‘I’d like to produce quickies made on a tight budget.’

The quick turnover demands a constant feed of actors, technicians, and scriptwriters, making Balaji Telefilms one of the largest employers in Bollywood. ‘Every day about a hundred people come to us looking for jobs. I know, because I have to deal with them.’ Like Muammar Gaddafi’s battalion of women bodyguards, a brisk bevy of bejewelled, tilak-sporting women that included a writer, a head of production, and an assistant, insulate Ekta from the pressures of her own celebrity status. Tanushree Dasgupta, who has been with her for nine years, is at their head.

When Ekta, famously and publicly devout, goes jogging every Tuesday from Mahim to Siddhivinayak Temple at Prabhadevi, she is often waylaid by people on the road wanting roles for themselves, their children; she hands them Tanushree’s number. Others get in touch with acquaintances working at Balaji Telefilms while trying for a break, as Maria Susairaj did. Maria befriended Balaji employee Jyoti Jhanavi on Orkut, who in turn introduced her to Neeraj, who was in charge of auditions there. Most recently, Ekta’s Facebook account had been overrun with pictures of young men baring their six-packs. ‘They think that’s their show-reel,’ she said, quite tickled.

Last year, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring scriptwriter from Naini, Uttar Pradesh, Akshay Shivam Shukla, having exhausted all avenues of meeting the Boss Lady, came up with a most ingenuous plan. On August 4, the day of Shravan Puja, he infiltrated the Balaji Telefilms office disguised as a priest.

Unfortunately for him, the staff soon realized that instead of mantras, Panditji was mumbling mumbo-jumbo. Shukla was pulled aside, questioned, and thrown out. In protest, he spent the night outside Balaji House, and when morning came he tried to immolate himself with a litre and a half of kerosene. The watchmen, desperate to douse the flames, pushed him into the open sewer that runs alongside the building. Cops were called in, a case was registered, and Shukla—finally deterred from his mission to meet Ekta—was admitted to Cooper Hospital.

‘Eighty per cent of people in TV today have gone through Balaji,’ she told me, with pride. ‘The young, especially those from small towns and middle class families, like Neeraj, join because they want quick money, they want a platform to express themselves, to see their names and faces on TV. In their hometowns, TV is the primary source of entertainment, and to have their families see their name and face on TV is a big power trip.’

Her own creative head, Vikas Gupta, was a loose-limbed, floppy-haired twenty-one-year-old from Uttarakhand who leapfrogged up the hierarchy one evening when he saw Ekta struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with one of her episodes. ‘My mother would not buy the logic of the lead character,’ he told her casually.

‘On instinct,’ she said snapping her fingers, ‘I decided to make him Balaji’s creative head. It’s a big job, and I’ve made him sign a tough contract, but he understands the audience consists of women like his mother. Also, I liked his attitude.’

That was also what had first brought Neeraj to her attention. As she waited for her private lift to take her up to her fifth floor office, one of the aspirants hanging around on the ground floor saw Ekta and flicked an impertinent salute. ‘It was a really arrogant gesture, but I liked it,’ she said, letting me into the secret of how she creates stars. ‘There are only two things we look for in our lead actors: the man should have attitude, and the woman should look innocent. Between you and me,’ she said with a wink, ‘virginal.’ This has led to some peculiar casting problems—‘It’s become difficult to find young urban women who meet this criterion.’ Ekta bypassed this problem by casting schoolgirls. Her youngest heroine has been a sixteen-year-old.

As television boomed into a Rs 27,000 crore industry in just over ten years, Oshiwara transformed from the dump Ekta first came to in 2000 into one of Mumbai’s most fashionable neighbourhoods. Young television stars and technicians, who spent upwards of twelve hours a day in near-squalid studios at Goregaon, Saki Naka, and Malad, going weeks without a break, invested heavily in plush homes here. The skyline is dotted with Singapore-style condominiums with hard-to-pronounce French-sounding names. (The illusion of a First World lifestyle is reinforced with easy access to fancy cold cuts, cheese and wines, the latest Almodovar DVD, and 24/7 air-conditioned houses. This lasts only until one steps outside, and is rudely brought down to potholed earth.) Real estate expansion has been matched by a thriving nightlife, forcing even frou-frou South Mumbai restaurateurs like Rahul Akerkar, the owner of Indigo, to open branches here.

The idea and attitude of Oshiwara now pushes beyond the reclaimed marsh. It is in the vanity of little-known designers housed in glass-plated buildings announcing their genius tersely, like Giorgio Armani, or Jimmy Choo, and without a smidgen of irony: Rahul Agasti, Turakhia Dhaval, Roopa Vora, Babita Malkani.

It is implicit in the flashy EMI-driven lifestyle prevalent here. But most of all it lies, said Jaideep Sahni, in the ‘severe ambition’ that crackles in the air. His is the classic story of the outsider who made it big in Mumbai. The forty-one-year-old from Delhi is the most sought after scriptwriter in the film industry. ‘Just sit at the Yari Road Barista for half an hour and you will know what it’s about. The atmosphere is electric,’ he said referring to another coffee shop not far from where Neeraj and his friends hung out each evening. ‘Those men and women who look like Conan or Barbie behave as if they are out not for a cup of coffee, but for a screen test. Everything is about getting face time with the right people,’ said the writer of hit films like Company, Bunty Aur Babli, Khosla Ka Ghosla, and Chak De.

Jaideep himself is often accosted at film premieres, where a glass wall cuts the Bollywood hierarchy off from the hoi polloi. Such is the premium on these opening nights that cinema chains like PVR have introduced the idea of ‘paid premiere’ tickets. ‘A well-dressed stranger will persistently catch your eye and since it would be rude to not respond, and one may be unsure of having met them, you go across. That’s all they need. After small talk about how they admire your work, or similar fawning attentiveness, they’ll follow you back into the enclosure, past the usher, as if that’s their natural destination.’ He laughed half-admiringly. ‘Once in, the person will drop you to go mingle with other directors and producers. Mission accomplished.’

‘Every nation has a defining characteristic. If it is confidence for the American, for the Australian it’s his appetite for fun. In India, what defines us is striving,’ Rajesh Kamat told me. A Mumbai boy, Rajesh was the CEO of Viacom 18, the company that owns the entertainment channel Colors, at the age of thirty-seven. He has left that job since we last spoke. Colors had raced to the top of the Television Rating Point (TRP) chart within a year of its launch, forcing others, including Ekta, to modify their formula. ‘It’s our striving for a better life, a better lifestyle. There is, even in these tough times, a disproportionate amount of money to be made in TV, which is why it’s so seductive for the young.’

Having worked previously with Endemol, a Dutch company that licenses reality show formats—they produced two of the biggest shows on Colors, Fear Factor and Big Boss 2—Rajesh has closely watched this young workforce turn around the country’s television habits—television’s eternal saas–bahu sagas ceding ground to starlet Dolly Bindra getting foul-mouthed on camera.

Over the course of an interview that stretched past midnight, Ekta, who is now routinely counted among India’s wealthiest women, recounted how she started her own career as an eighteen-year-old producer. ‘I was in class twelve when my parents shifted from Bandra to their bungalow in Juhu, which I hated. I’d run away to Bandra every day to hang out at the Otters’ Club with my friends Anupam and Parvin Dabas, who went on to become an actor, and to walk around Joggers’ Park with Aunty Neetu [Singh-Kapoor].’

Additionally, three days of the week were scheduled for partying, which caught the attention of the ever-vigilant Stardust. ‘I was just excited about doing nothing. I didn’t do drugs, I didn’t smoke, I rarely drank, but Stardust ran a piece saying Jeetendra’s daughter was running wild.’ Her father, a man of modest and conservative upbringing—his family ran a small business selling artificial jewellery before he went on to become a big star, was appalled. ‘He couldn’t understand why I needed to be out of the house every second day… Not long after I turned eighteen he came into my room one evening and gave me an ultimatum— either I start working, or get married.’

Ekta grew up watching endless hours of television and devouring tubs of ice cream while her father was busy shooting three shifts a day, and her mother stayed away either travelling with him or at kitty parties. She decided to make television serials. ‘I loved TV, it gave me great joy.’ Her friend Ratna Rajiah wrote a plot outline, which her cousin Gattu (better known as Abhishek Kapoor, the director of the Farhan Akhtar starrer Rock On) would direct. ‘Our pilot was called Jeans ‘n’ Josh and I must confess that the title was the only colourful thing about it; the serial was a grim look at things like peer pressure, AIDS, bisexuality, parental hypocrisy. We wanted to be dark and meaningful,’ she said, letting out an ironic little giggle. ‘It was our equivalent of a Madhur Bhandarkar movie, and both Gattu and I were very proud of it. But when we showed it to Ravina Raj Kohli at Star TV, she took one look at it and dismissed us, saying no channel would commission something so dark, and which dealt with suicide and all. “Give me something happy and family oriented,” she said. We were crushed. I remember getting out of the Star office and shaking my head to Gattu: “What’s the world come to, I say!”’

But she imbibed Ravina Raj Kohli’s instructions well. ‘I am not saying we are ashamed of what we do… We did create Kyunki, Kanyadaan, Kkavyanjali, Kasautii, which have been about the urban middle class, but you are not my audience. You can go home and see Desperate Housewives just like I do.’

Her serials are a volatile mix of traditional Indian motifs, often featuring joint families with all their stereotypes, clashing modern values, and are as formulaic as a Bollywood film. When Peter Chernin, then COO of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp (which owns Star TV in India), came to Ekta’s home for a meal he asked her what was wrong with one of their new launches, and why it wasn’t doing well. ‘Even then I told him that his new channel was trying to be a niche channel, and that could never be profitable in India.’

A few years after this well-meaning advice, Star TV terminated their decade-long exclusive partnership with Ekta, axed three of her daily soaps, and divested their 25.99 per cent share in her company. Balaji Telefilms’ stock went into a tailspin, sparking a shiver of excitement among Bollywood’s obituary writers.

We met again on the day her company lost its arbitration case against Star TV. She had just emerged from a marathon meeting with her creative team, but was still smarting from the judgment. ‘I gave Star the best eight, nine years of my life, I took them at face value, but they f***** me over… ’

‘Then again,’ she lowered her pitch by a notch or two, ‘my Rahu mahadasha has begun, and I’ve been told my secret enemies will start to surface.’

I asked with curiosity: ‘For how long will the mahadasha go on?’

‘Eighteen years, man!’

Early propagators of astrology, the Babylonians and the Mayans would read chicken liver for as many as six thousand warning signs. The greater the fear of uncertainty, and the less assurance there is of certitude, leaves the diviner and the follower to try every possible form of propitiation.

Such was the case with Ekta, who wore a stone on every finger, even two on some. Over the many doors of the seven-storeyed Balaji House, horseshoes, clutches of fresh neon-green chillies and lemon are tied along with coconuts wrapped in an auspicious red, dangling like the breasts of a baboon. On Ekta’s fifth floor domain as well as at her Juhu house the Gayatri mantra, sung in a fast-paced tinny-voice, as if on a worn-out tape, plays round the clock working like a force field against any possible evil eyes.

A former employee clued me in, ‘Whenever you meet her, take a close look at her shoes.’ The woman who could easily afford the latest Manolos and Louboutins only ever wore a pair of worn-out platform slip-ons, straps in tatters, with the clunky rubber heels roughened. ‘She considers them her lucky shoes and won’t trade them for another pair.’

Not long after hearing this, I read an interview with Ekta in Hindustan Times in which, speaking about her shows on Colors, Ekta said her association with the channel would be fruitful, she knew, because when its creative head first called she’d been in a puja, and as soon as their conversation ended a flower dropped from the head of the idol. It was, Ekta said, a divine seal of approval.
~~

I sat in on one of her meetings, hoping to catch some of the action—it was rumoured that in fits of rage she threw slippers (the lucky ones?) at errant employees; but while I was there, she remained regrettably in control.

Of the ten serials that are in production at any given time, Ekta only looks after three—the rest are taken care of by associates—but she decides the look and casting for each of the shows. ‘I remember we shortlisted a girl for our serial Kasturi, but when I came back from out of town and saw the hoardings, I realized her face did not reflect the innocence demanded by the character. Overnight the hoardings were brought down, a fake story about how pressure had made the actress ill was circulated in the media, and a new girl was found.’

Ekta talked from behind a presidential-size desk as Vikas showed her auditions of aspirants—this is what Neeraj Grover used to do at Balaji Telefilms. Also present were seven or eight young women, all under thirty. Ekta stared hard at the computer screen, and pressed the enter key with the speed and concentration of a tabla player beating a riff on the dagga. Though the air conditioner remote was lying next to her, she passed it to one of the girls every few minutes: ‘On karo… ab off karo. Switch it on… ab off… ’

Mothers, sisters—‘kindly faces’, buas and sisters-in-law—‘nice bitchy faces’ were swiftly cast before trouble erupted. ‘Where’s the father? The Marathi actor I asked you guys to locate, the one who looks like an older Ajay Devgn?’ There was a shuffle of confusion, and Vikas pressed ahead trying to show her other options, but she refused to be appeased.

‘WHERE IS THE GUY I WANT?’

The entire group involuntarily moved back a step. Was I about to witness a famous Ekta blowout? Instead, she abruptly switched her tone and turned to me. ‘I got the idea for the film on Neeraj from something you said. General wisdom is that creative directors like him have no clout, they merely audition… but I got thinking, and it struck me that I get to see only what they choose to show me. They actually have the power to make or break someone’s career. If my staff shows me the photograph of an actor just as I am leaving for home, getting into the car, ninety per cent chances are I’ll say okay. That’s the time I am exhausted and not as hawk-eyed… This power and what they choose to do with it is what I want to explore in the film.’

She then got up, and with a gesture intended to be theatrical, pulled me into the corridor. ‘If you’re doing a book on Neeraj Grover, you must speak to Smita Patil,’ she said sotto voce. ‘She’s a spook, man!’

Though Neeraj had quit working for Ekta Kapoor several months earlier, when he went missing Ekta got one of her colleagues to contact a clairvoyant for his whereabouts. It was a far more reliable source of information for her than any detective could offer. ‘I knew Neeraj was dead even before the police announced it. This woman had told us that his girlfriend, along with two other men, had killed him, and she also gave details of where his body could be found.’

Two days later she texted me the mobile number of her clairvoyant, Smita Patil.

The phone beeped, and Narendra Chanchal’s ‘Chalo bulawaa aaya hai, maata ne bulaya hai… ’ rang in my ear. Mid-crescendo, Smita Patil cut him short and answered the phone. She had been a Goregaon girl who got her degree in textile designing from Sophia Polytechnic, and married an assistant geologist in ONGC. For several years she taught art in various schools, all the while nursing political ambitions. In 1999 she was jailed during a political agitation, and was featured in the Bombay Times as ‘Star of the Week’.

A devotee of Durga from her early days, she did the punishing nine-day nirjala vrat every Navratri to invoke the goddess. ‘People started making fun of my bhakti so I prayed hard to Mata Rani, saying she needed to manifest herself and save me from such humiliation. In 2005, Mata Rani housed herself in my body and she has stayed on since, constantly showing herchamatkar.’

Every Tuesday at her home, which is right next to a teeming mall at Bhayander, she holds a durbar where Mata Rani—and here Smita Patil referred to herself in the third person—gives darshan seated on her high chair, doling out individual benedictions after the prayers. From healing invalids to blessing the childless, Mata Rani’s bounty, she says, knows no limit.

‘In May last year one of my bhakts, a girl called Rasika, came in with her boyfriend Kushal who works at Balaji, he wanted to know the whereabouts of his friend Neeraj. I took one look at Neeraj’s picture and said, “The boy is no more, his girlfriend and two men are responsible, and the body can be found near water.” Kushal told me no one would kidnap Neeraj, and that he didn’t think that’s what had happened. So I closed my eyes again and told him that Mata Rani had spoken and that the girlfriend should be taken to the CBI and she would confess.’

‘This Kushal called me one evening some days later and said, “Mata Rani, please switch on the TV. Whatever you said has come true.”’ She has guided several celebrities in addition to Ekta, even telling a powerful Shiv Sena politician that he was going to die soon.

And, did he? It was impossible to resist the question.

‘Within three days of my informing him this, he had an accident and died.’

But it’s not easy being Mata Rani, taking care of bhoot–balaayein,and dialoguing with the spirits. ‘If it’s a shaitani shaktiI have to counter, I suffer tremendously, my feet get crooked, I start yelling and then my body starts to get heavier and heavier. Mata Rani needs to be in a pure environment and you can imagine what that means in a filthy city like Mumbai… It’s difficult to walk on roads, travel by train, I can’t clean my house, wash utensils, normal life is not possible with Mata Rani constantly living in my body. The family life is affected too.’ But her children, one of whom studies aeronautical engineering in Nashik while the other is in class XI, have come to accept the new presence in their mother’s life.

‘My dream is to serve the people and have a temple built in Mata Rani’s name at my residence, for that’s where her shrine stood four hundred years ago, and which was later buried under rubble. Mata Rani needs to be brought out from under the earth and allowed to breathe.’
~~~

Superstitions and clinging to totems sit oddly with the woman I’ve been interviewing. Ekta is bright, humorous, and in possession of a combative streak. I mentioned this to a television insider who has dealt closely with Balaji Telefilms, and who agreed to speak provided I kept his identity concealed. ‘To understand the Ekta phenomenon,’ he said chuckling quietly, ‘you must also know the father and the mother. Brand Ekta is the three of them operating as a unit.’

Shobha Kapoor, a former flight attendant, is the canny dowager whose business deals are as sharp as her diamonds. Her rough cuts are offset by Ekta’s father. Jeetendra was India’s original dancing star who, when thirty was thought of as middle age, famously endorsed a brand of virility capsules called ‘Thirty Plus’. ‘Jeetendra is charm and gentleness personified,’ my informer explained.

The final member of the troika is Ekta, the unpredictable, superstitious diva with a famous temper, who creates amidst chaos. ‘The mother will play hardball with a channel in the morning, but blame Ekta’s working style when executives complain of schedules going awry or tapes coming in late. If the channel ever suggests dropping a Balaji show that may be faring poorly, Jeetendra will take the executives out for a drink by the evening and get emotional and apologetic, saying: “You know just how eccentric Ekta is, all the shows are like her babies, I understand your problem but if you drop one of the shows, she may get upset, that in turn may affect her creativity, and impact the rest of the serials on the channel…”’ The insider laughed, putting aside his masalachai. ‘It’s a brilliant strategy.’

I got the drift of her mercurial style one evening when she called me over to her house. ‘I’ll be relaxed there and we can chat at leisure.’ But the meeting was rescheduled four times before she sent a message saying that she would definitely be home by 11 pm. These days Amitabh Bachchan might woefully blog about waterlogging at his house each time it rains heavily, but until recently, the Juhu Vile-Parle Development Scheme was one of the most elegant addresses in Mumbai. A generation of movie stars—Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Rakesh Roshan, Shatrughan Sinha, and Hema Malini—live in plush fenced-off bungalows there. A few years ago, when Hema Malini decided to reconstruct her home, she looked around for a temporary apartment in the vicinity—but quickly dropped the idea when she discovered she was expected to share the elevator with the other residents of the building.

Her contemporary, and one-time suitor, Jeetendra has a house, which stands out, in the neighbourhood as one of the largest. It also resembles a Jain temple, built as it is in blinding-white marble. But the presiding deity was not in.

Instead, I was ushered in with my Mumbai Mirror colleague Vickey Lalwani into a high-ceilinged room so large that it looked unused. In a far corner, Ekta’s photographs in various poses lined the shelf—she has a sweet face and a lovely smile, but the hauteur in the eyes is unmistakable. A sprawling chandelier hung over a bare dining table; Grecian-style pillars and a forlorn-looking marble nymph added to the mausoleum-like feel. The same tinny-voiced Gayatri mantra was playing here too, though there didn’t seem to be a soul around. As the minutes elapsed, Vickey and I silently stared at Ekta’s black pug desperately humping a velvet sofa cushion.

Suddenly, Jeetendra glided noiselessly into the room, looking dressed for a night out. After solicitous small talk he called out, conjuring a flurry of liveried attendants, as he did Ekta who arrived within seconds. It was past midnight, but she had been out jogging. ‘The three most important things in my day are: exercise, prayer, meetings, in that order of priority.’ She would jog anywhere, any time, which explained her perennial uniform of T-shirts and track pants. Very different from her growing-up years, when she favoured hip clothing.

‘I was 84 kilos when I was eighteen, that’s the heaviest I’ve ever been. That happened because when I’d be at home, I would do nothing but sit in front of the TV or talk to my friends on the phone, and eat tubs of ice cream. That too full cream—there were none of the 96 percent fat-free gelatos in those days.’ She laughed. ‘One of the reasons I partied so hard was to get slim. It was my way of keeping away from junk. I wanted to get into “fashionable” clothes,’ she rolls her eyes and makes the quote sign, ‘dance like crazy, and just hang. By the time I was twenty, I was drinking hot water twenty times a day and my weight had come down to 51 kilos.’

That must have made her happy.

‘I can’t say about that but I do know I looked ill. I remember my friend, the former actress Neelam, was hospitalized with meningitis; when I went to see her at the hospital her mother was berating her for not eating properly, and then she whipped around to stare at me and said, “You’re falling sick next.”’

The partying and the skimpy clothes, Ekta said, were a passing phase. Recently, she tried to stop her friend’s sixteen-year-old daughter from going off with a television actor after a late night party, and was snubbed for her efforts. ‘The young these days are so at ease with their sexuality, and they know what they want in life. They have the drive and the ambition, but I find many of them are so happy with their limited forty-thousand-rupee-a-month lifestyle that they will not work harder to get into the one- lakh-rupee bracket. They need to inculcate the value of hard work.’

Her own strong work ethic and her faith guide her life. Apart from visiting Siddhivinayak Temple every Tuesday, a Shani temple every Saturday, and the Tirupati Balaji temple before launching a show, Ekta said she needed to pray for ‘just seven minutes’ every day.

Ekta puts in sixteen hours a day—her friend, the Bollywood scriptwriter Mushtaq Shaikh, is writing a book on her called Holidays Not Allowed—working through the night, and very often clearing an episode that’s scheduled for telecast later that evening at 4 am. When Balaji Telefilms became a public listed company, the joke in the Star TV office was that the risk factor in the share prospectus should mention ‘Possibility of Ekta getting married’. Neeraj, who often complained to his roommate Haresh Sondarva about the ‘inhuman working conditions at Balaji’, and fretted about the long and irregular hours, nonetheless greatly admired Ekta’s drive and success.

‘I have no family time,’ she admitted. Four years ago she built herself a multi-storey bungalow a few hundred metres away from her parents’ home. ‘I wanted to know what it was like to live by myself.’ She shifted into the house with three household helpers, but didn’t last beyond a few days. ‘It was beautiful, but awfully quiet. . . Here, I know that I have my space but also the knowledge that my parents are floating about somewhere.’

At thirty-six, she is in a ‘happy space: I have satisfying work, friends, my own time, I lead a cocooned life.’ But things at Balaji have been getting worrisome. News came in that their ambitious show Mahabharat on 9X channel (for which Maria had auditioned) would go off the air mid-narrative. The expensive period sets erected cannot be used for any other show, and the money owed to them is unlikely to be paid.

Elsewhere, reality TV shows were flourishing, contributing about 25 percent of the total programming. During a trip to Mysore I met Maria Susairaj’s journalism teacher Shabana Mansoor, who has since quit teaching to pursue research on the ‘Priming Effect of Television on Young Female Adults’. The research was inspired by a train conversation with a young woman who said she would never want to marry a man whose mother was alive. She had been convinced that mothers-in-law were terrible creatures after growing up on a staple of Ekta Kapoor’s trademark ‘K’-serials. ‘But when I went for my fieldwork I found that most young women now watch the soaps mainly for fashion and interior tips, and their real interest lies elsewhere.’ In the villages of Kerala and Karnataka, Shabana was repeatedly asked why she had omitted asking questions about Roadies and Splitsvilla, the two most popular reality shows on television.

Balaji had been unable to cash in on this brash new phenomenon, still stuck with heavy duty drama. But Ekta had a plan to expand her business, which was soon revealed. As a first step she made up with Star TV, producing new shows for them. After parting ways with her mamaji, Shobha Kapoor’s brother and the well-known film distributor Ramesh Sippy, Ekta became firmly in charge of the family’s film business. A new CEO was hired, and five films had already been green lit. Three of these were based on real-life incidents, trying for a touch of realism that Ekta could not bring to her television programmes. The film on Neeraj Grover’s death never got made, though Ekta produced one of the most celebrated movies of 2009, Love, Sex Aur Dhoka, an edgy triptych about sexual betrayal, cinematic aspirations, and parental disapproval—themes that deeply resonated with Neeraj’s killing.
~~~~
But none of the stress from the dwindling bottom line was evident at the party the day after Diwali. It was the annual card fixture the Kapoors hosted to celebrate the festival. Invites had been texted that morning, but it was expected to be a full house. At 1 am the road leading to Ekta’s house was crammed with gleaming Mercedes and Beemers. In that darkened lane, Ekta’s bungalow was lit up like a piece of jewellery. The lift inside the house carried us to the third floor, and into a hall marked by its quietness. On a cluster of large round tables, Jeetendra, Rakesh Roshan, Sunita Menon, Saawan Kumar Tak, and Manish Malhotra were playing cards with serious intent.

Nobody looked up as other guests walked in and went past. The only sound was the clink of ice in the glasses of single malt and the rueful phew! of a substantial loss. In the adjoining hall, dominated by a stunning chandelier that descended from a dome at least fifty feet high, the scene resembled a Las Vegas casino more than a Mumbai house party. Certainly the décor bore out the excesses of Las Vegas. The room I was in favoured the ladies—Rakesh Roshan’s wife Pinky, Karan Johar’s mother Hiroo, Dimple Kapadia (stunning in green), and the actor Akashdeep were dealing with wads of thousand and five hundred rupee notes. Currency was spread out like a tablecloth.

A sudden shriek from the corner of the room had the others rushing over—Dimple had won her first big hand—Rs 50,000. The Juhu film aristocracy was out to play.

I spotted the now-familiar faces of Ekta’s associates Tanushree, Vikas, and some of the other girls—her young team was always invited to her parties—not participating yet, but absorbing the opportunities their new world offered; relishing the idea.

In the centre of the third enclosure, Shobha Kapoor presided over a mammoth table in white make-up, a white sari, and gothic lipstick. She wore rubies and emeralds the size of some exotic animal’s eggs. But there was something troublingly familiar about her. An attendant stood patiently behind her holding a crystal bowl of black grapes that she absent-mindedly picked at every few minutes. At one point she stretched out her hand and frowned when she couldn’t reach him, and suddenly I knew why she looked so familiar—all the vamps in Ekta’s shows, from their clothes down to their intricate bindis—looked remarkably like her mother.

There was no sign yet of Ekta. I was told she liked to make dramatic appearances. Familiar faces from television serials were killing time playing for far lower stakes near the bar. The scalloped ecru curtains had been drawn back, and from across the French windows there was a curious sight. In the adjoining building, standing at the window of their unremarkable two-bedroom flat through which the mussed-up bed and drying towels were visible, Ekta’s neighbours were lined up and looking in, stargazing.

At around 2 am a little buzz went around the party. Belying her reputation, Ekta had slipped shyly into the room, dressed in a zardozi lehenga with a pouch dangling from her wrist. For the television crowd, many of whom were there to mark their presence rather than play the great stakes, the party had just gotten underway.

‘This is my parents’ party, I am just being dutiful here… the bashes I throw are more fun, I assure you!’

‘But surely this was not going to last long,’ I suggested.

‘Oh, I don’t know, the last time round, because there was no place for me here, I went to my own house and when I returned at eleven the next morning these guys were straggling out.’

She then made her way around the room, stopping at the various tables, asking her friends whether they were winning or losing. When someone made a little pout signalling loss, she took out a fat wad of notes from her batua and gave it to them with a benevolent command, ‘Come on, play.’ Another wad was similarly offered at another table. Irrespective of losses, the party must continue.

Excerpted from ‘Death in Mumbai’, by Meenal Baghel, courtesy of Vintage/ Random House India. You can buy the book here.