It’s one of those days and times when feeling floaty equals bliss. There are dreadful deadlines lurking round the corner, a pending piece on love that ironically calls for more sense than soul, and a Sunday that stares into your sorry face. But amid all of it are fond hangovers, that of a solitary morning coffee that killed the monotony of a typical media chat, of sunny surrealism that fills the air, and snippets of a conversation with a man who doesn’t believe in the chaos theory of everyday life.
I happened to speak to director Sudhir Mishra one of these days, and that was perhaps the most meaningful chat I’ve had with a celebrity in the past few months. Before beginning on anything else, I couldn’t help but bring up Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, a masterpiece that still leaves me awed every time it plays in video or audio. “The movie is beyond me now; it has a life of its own. It travels from one person to another, and people find meanings in it that I never meant,” he smiled at the other end of the receiver, I could feel. Back in my college days, I always wondered which character was a portrayal of him — all great movies are autobiographical, you know. He took me by surprise. “If I were to pick one, I’d be Geetha.” Whoa. “I’m neither a fixer nor an extreme radical, just like her. She just believes in taking the journey, without wanting life to change as she wants it to. And, she’s the only one who stays intact in the end.” Hmm. Silence. A very comfortable one, unlike that shared with most pretty public figures with plasticized smiles. “I’m so glad, not a single day goes without someone talking about Hazaaron… to me, it just feels so nice. It was a beautiful film. The flaw lay only in the marketing. If it were to happen today, it’d do very well.” Silence again — a moment of mourning, and the next, of moving on.
I wasn’t in the mood for small talk. What’s up, what next, your take on Slumdog, all that jazz. He read my mind. “There are movies and movies, and most of them, both in Bollywood and Hollywood, are advertisements for a way of life.” But I insisted there are white sheep in the black herd, too, still reeling under Dev D’s charisma. “Yes, of course, there’s Anurag (Kashyap), Shimit Amin, Dibakar Banerjee, Sanjay Khanduri, Farhan and Zoya (Akhtar). They are good people who’ve watched the best movies from around the world, and are influenced by modern cinema but not corrupted by it.”
Thoughts drifted, and so did his words, shifting from muse Chitrangada (Singh) to movies that made him to comparisons between entertainment and enrichment. “UTV is creating an atmosphere for good movies — those that have the ability to change you if you let them enter you.” He cited Gurudutt, Fellini and (Aki) Kaurismäki as ideals. “Their films aren’t pretentious. They take you into worlds, families, hardships and rhythms you’ve never known; they invoke and provoke. If you allow yourself, they are even entertainment.” And, most importantly, “They’ve made me the man that I am.”
I trusted his testimony, but he explained more. “Most people make films that judge people and typecast characters. I try to make movies that don’t judge. Sometimes, life doesn’t permit you to be as good as you want.” Does he feel it in his own? “We all do.”
And then, he readied me for his very own Chanda. “My next movie isn’t another Dev D or anything; it’s only inspired by Devdas and Hamlet in some parts. Chitrangada, who I think has a lot of potential, plays Chandramukhi.” But I was curious of the plot, beyond all hearsay. “It’s about political lineage — about children who come back when their families get in trouble.” And just to set the record straight, “The whole story of Devdas happens only in fifteen minutes.” But I don’t doubt the impact of a quarter. So much came about in this one.
Labels: Blessings, Observing life, Scribing, Wandering words
