Madhumita directs Abhishek Bachchan in her debut Hindi film, Kaalidhar Laapata, which is a remake of her own acclaimed film in Tamil, K.D. She speaks to t2 on the film on a man who is being consumed by dementia and has been abandoned by his family, searching for a new identity in the company of a spunky orphan. The film dropped recently on Zee5.
Which city are you from?
I’m based out of both Bombay and Chennai. My mother tongue is Tamil. However, I grew up in Indonesia, did my undergrad in Singapore, and then my Masters in film direction from Los Angeles, before I moved back to India to make films in 2008.
And somewhere along the way, you became just Madhumita?
Yes. My dad used to write under the pen name Madhumita. So when I was born, they immediately gave me that name.
It’s interesting that he chose a pen name that did not disclose his gender.
Yes. It’s also not a very south Indian name. I’m sometimes confused as a Bengali. Initially, I was known by my father’s last name, Sundararaman. When I got married, I didn’t change it officially. My husband’s name is Vijay. People started calling me Madhumita Vijay. Eventually I decided I’m going to be just Madhumita. As much as I’m grateful to the men in my life, I think what I do — good, bad, ugly — the credit should come only to me.
Did you write the story of K.D, the Tamil original of Kaalidhar Laapata, yourself?
Yes. I always write the first draft of my films myself, because these are stories that I want to tell. And once I’m happy with that draft, I bring a writer to collaborate with me to tell me what my blind spots are, and then we work on improving it together.
Madhumita, director of 'Kaalidhar Laapata'
Your film is based on a search for identity, much like your name.
Thank you. At the age of eight, I moved to a different country. My parents were trying hard to ensure that I was Indian, no matter what. And so all we got to watch were Indian films — films of Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Ramesh Sippy, Mani Ratnam…. My identity started being defined by the kind of films I was watching.
What made you change the age of the protagonist? In your Tamil original film, the protagonist K.D was 80 years old, right?
It had a lot to do with thalaikoothal, a practice in Tamil Nadu to terminate old people. They gave an old person a vigorous massage with sesame oil and made him drink coconut water. And then they bathed him at 4am. That cooled down the body excessively and he got pneumonia. It also caused renal failure and he passed away in two-three days. That was done only when the family was not able to take care of its old members, and the old people were not able to make any financial contribution to the family.
Tell us about this significant change in the plot.
When I am making the film in Hindi, here the ritual itself doesn’t exist. So I can’t just blindly transport it to Hindi, right? We wanted to make sure it’s an adaptation and not a remake. Even though it’s my own film, I didn’t want it to be a frame-to-frame copy. We wanted to reinvent the wheel a bit while still staying true to the soul of the film. So we decided on an equivalent situation — when physically challenged or mentally challenged family members, be they young or old, are abandoned at the Mahakumbh Mela or at Varanasi, because they believe that if their last years are spent there they will go straight to heaven. So we wanted to take that story, and centre it around a 45-year-old with Lewy body dementia.
The family that Kaalidhar sacrificed his life for has suddenly decided that they don’t need him anymore. It’s an emotion that especially men go through after a certain age, when they retire from work. They feel they are not needed any more because they can’t contribute anything. Kaalidhar faces a similar change, not because he retired, but because he’s got a disease now. So he’s not able to hold a job and contribute financially. He feels like he’s a burden. Then the family decides to abandon him. Memory loss is a very important element in Kaalidhar’s life, which is not there in the Tamil version.
Did you have Abhishek Bachchan in mind when you rewrote the script for the Hindi version?
A lesson I’ve learned in my 15 years in the industry is never to write with an actor in mind, because if they say no, then that script never gets made into a film. We wrote for a 45-year-old man with dementia, and then Nikkhil Advani, our co-producer, suggested Abhishek.
Abhishek Bachchan and director Madhumita check the monitor during the shooting of 'Kaalidhar Laapata'
It was a different role for AB sir, also, because we have never seen him in that rural, unkempt, innocent avatar. When you think of Abhishek Bachchan, you think sophisticated and stylish — Bunty aur Babli, Dhoom.... So it was exciting to play around with the casting.
How tough or easy was Ballu’s casting?
He’s a rank debutant. My casting directors had got fed up as they had looked everywhere — Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh.... We must have auditioned at least about 100-150 kids before we found Daivik (Baghela). The kid is fabulous. He doesn’t look like a new actor at all.
He had big shoes to step into, right? Naga Vishal (who played Kutty in K.D) won so many awards!
Yes, but that’s why they are different, right? Kutty has a bit of a short temper. But in the Hindi version, because Kaalidhar has a memory loss and he’s unwell, I wanted whoever played Ballu to have an empathetic look, because spunkiness can come across as being rude to somebody who’s suffering from a disease. In the Tamil version, the old man does not have a disease, so if the kid is spunky or rude to him, you can still get away with it. But in the Hindi version, he cannot come across as disrespectful. So Daivik was consciously cast because of his innocent look.
An indication of Kaalidhar’s health is the tremor in his hands, right?
That’s one of the symptoms of Lewy body dementia. Actor Robin Williams had it. It’s a mix of Parkinson’s and dementia. However, that’s not what the film is about. These are just little characteristics that we wanted to give the character. His memory loss plays a part. But we have not harped on it.
Daivik hails from Bhopal. When did you decide to shoot there?
We were considering both UP and MP but I somehow felt that the colour tone, the treatment of the architecture, all of that in MP was more suitable for this story. And the fact that the boy was from Bhopal sealed the deal. We shot in different parts — Orchha, Bhuj, Salamatpur.... Daivik’s mom was kind enough to invite me home and serve home-cooked garma garam dal-bati. Daivik should be about 10 right now. He plays an eight-year-old in the film.
Abhishek has posted about his grandmother being from Bhopal.
Yes, his grandmother is 96 years old. She lives in Bhopal. Every time we were shooting, his mausis used to bring food for him on set. We shot there for 41 days.
After your debut in Hindi, what comes next from you?
I speak six languages. As long as I can make content that I like, I’m happy to work in any language. I have a psychological thriller in Tamil that will be shot this September. We are in post-production with a Hindi film that I’ve directed, which is an action drama set in Goa. It will release this year-end or early next year. The lead is Arjun Das, who we are launching from the South in Hindi. I also have a Telugu action film coming up with a major platform — a hostage drama that we are shooting early next year.