With Anil Kapoor’s young nephew Arjun Kapoor doing extremely well after his confident debut in Ishaqzaade (one of the many hits of 2012), and producer Boney Kapoor riding a Porsche wave (wife Sridevi gifted him one and never mind the queue of creditors at the door), does Shekhar Kapur ever think of making a sequel to Mr India?

“I think about it many times,” said the strikingly good looking chartered accountant-turned-actor-turned-director. Shekhar had just flown in from London and he landed so late at a party that even the photographers had gone home.

He maintains homes in the UK and in Mumbai (where he retains his three-decade-old apartment in Beach House) and is a celebrity face in both places. At this party, fortunately held in a five-star hotel, even though the food tables had been cleared, kebabs and rotis were produced for a hungry Shekhar from one of the restaurants.

“I do think about the sequel to Mr India,” he chewed it over, “but the only thing is, whatever I could do with an invisible man — fight, tease, even make love to a woman while he is invisible — I have already done in Mr India. What else can I possibly do with him?”

In the 25-year period after Mr India was released, such stunning technological progress has been made that the director with the stubble made some very interesting observations. “Ninety per cent of the people who have watched and talk about Mr India have never seen it in a theatre!” Because the generations born in the last 25 years have seen the film only on clunky VHS cassettes which later gave way to slimmer DVDs, and let’s not even count the millions of unauthorised downloads.

With his eyes twinkling, Shekhar made another point. “How on earth did we make that film 25 years ago when there was no Internet, no cellphones?” he recalled with both amusement and amazement. “We shot in RK Studios which had two landlines of which only one would work and there would be a line of production guys waiting for their turn to use it. How did we make such a big film in those circumstances?”

He added with a chuckle, “When I told Kaveri, my 12-year-old daughter, that we grew up without television, computers, the Internet or cellphones, she asked me, ‘Papa, did you live in the ancient times?’”

There was another important difference between making Mr India then and now: Anil and Shekhar were keen those days to promote their film through interviews in magazines and the stray newspaper that deigned to touch film stories. Today, Shekhar himself couldn’t be bothered about giving an interview to anybody in the media and there is a valid reason for it.

Although he seems languorous and laidback, the 60-plus filmmaker is sharp and savvy and has moved almost as fast as technology has in the last two decades. As he wryly remarked, “I don’t need to do any interviews because whatever I tweet is anyway picked up by the media and reported immediately.”

With nearly 3,00,000 followers on Twitter, Shekhar is actually less of a filmmaker and more of a businessman with his own IT company in Bengaluru. Social media excites him perhaps more than a film script. Along with partners like A.R. Rahman, he has invested in what he has quizzically named Qyuki, which is exploring home-grown social media options.

Shekhar doesn’t even pick up newspapers or switch on a news channel for staying in touch with the world. Twitter news and Google news do it just fine for him.

During Anna Hazare’s first fast unto death, Shekhar had supported him by being a backroom boy who handled his complete social media campaign to reach out to millions. Wisely, he stayed there and didn’t step out to make a speech or go political, perhaps aware that people living in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

He once started a campaign he called, “Ads I won’t buy” to protest against fairness creams, even a vaginal whitening cream. “Eight million people reacted to it within 24 hrs,” Shekhar reported, stunned at the swiftness and wide sweep of his voice. Every major product manufacturer also reacted with alacrity, threatening to pull out support to his company. “But look at the reach,” he enthused, “you don’t need ads or media planners who spend millions on projecting figures to establish reach.”

A curious mix of a tech-savvy brain and a heart that still ticks for cinema and for India, maybe the maker of path-breakers like Masoom, Mr India, Bandit Queen and Elizabeth (too few on his resume), will make another film after all. The passion is overriding.

Bharathi S. Pradhan is editor, The Film Street Journal