Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra — the man behind films like Rang De Basanti, Delhi-6 and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag — brings alive the love legend of Mirza and Sahiban in October 7 film Mirzya. t2 chatted with the filmmaker on the mind, method and mechanics of Mirzya.

Is it true that you have been wanting to make the love story of Mirza-Sahiban into a film for 30 years?
That’s true, in a way. When I first watched the play in college some 30-odd years ago, what first struck me was that Sahiban is a very strong female protagonist with her head on her shoulders… almost vain… she knew she was extremely beautiful and could use her beauty on men... but then, when love strikes and you come across your soulmate, then everything else goes out of the window… there’s no logic then.

So when Mirza came along, it was like two soulmates coming together. But circumstances were totally against them… she was engaged to someone else and their families were at war with each other. So the only way out for them was to elope… and that’s what they did. They rode on Mirza’s horse for three days and four nights and there was a large valley they had to cross to safety, but it was getting dark. So they decided to rest for a bit and when Mirza woke up in the morning, he found himself surrounded by the enemy. Mirza was known for his archery skills and could shoot almost blindfolded, but when he reached for his arrows, he realised that the ends of all his arrows were broken. He couldn’t defend himself and while he was bleeding to death, he had only one question in his eyes for Sahiban: ‘Why did you break my arrows?’

So when the play ended, the director came up on stage and asked, ‘Why do you think Sahiban did this?’ So our hands went up and all of us had a different answer. But deep down, in my subconsciousness all these years, this question has stayed with me. And not just a simplistic question, but why do we hurt those who we love the most? I have always wondered what on earth is this emotion called love? Is it just a boy meets girl and happily living together… or can love manifest itself in different ways? Could it be one-sided, could it be three ways? Love can also manifest itself as jealousy, possessiveness, revenge….

This kind of stayed with me and as a director, you are constantly thinking about what to make next. So one day, I hopped over to Gulzarbhai’s house — we are neighbours — for a cup of tea. I asked Gulzarbhai: ‘Sahiban ne teer kyun tode?’ He says: ‘Bachchu, woh toh tum jaake Sahiban se poochho!’ I told him that I had been looking for Sahiban for almost all my life, but she had been eluding me. I asked Gulzarbhai: ‘Why don’t you tell me?’ That was my proposition to him to write the story. His eyes kind of lit up and he told me: ‘Okay, let’s hold hands and walk this journey together… and we’ll find Sahiban somewhere and we will ask her!’ (Laughs)

This journey with Gulzarbhai was not just a learning process, but also very cathartic. The whole process of converting his words — this is the first screenplay he’s written in close to 20 years — into my cinema has been very beautiful. Of all the five films I have made, Mirzya completes a full circle.

Has making this film changed your idea of love?
I am quite a hopeless romantic (smiles). I feel that love is totally unpredictable… it strikes you when you are least expecting it. I also believe that you can fall in love again and again. I do believe in unrequited love and I also think you can fall in love with the person who hates you the most! My idea of what love is has definitely evolved after making Mirzya. Weaving a story around such a basic emotion like love gives you a deeper understanding of the human heart. Making this film has made me more sensitive about this emotion. It really is a crazy emotion because you can hurt someone so easily… including yourself. 

Unlike Laila-Majnu or Heer-Ranjha, the love story of Mirza-Sahiban hasn’t really been explored on screen. Why do you think that’s happened and how does that contribute to the freshness of your film?
Every individual gets attracted to a certain story in a certain way. Though I have read all these love stories you mentioned, and also Romeo-Juliet, Mirza-Sahiban does something to me much more than any other epic. I remember asking Gulzarbhai whether in today’s time there is a Mirza and Sahiban, and this whole journey of the film has been to find one in contemporary India. That made the exercise so much more interesting. The story we have written is a reverberation of the Mirza-Sahiban legend in today’s time. But at the same time, we enter a folklore world… a world that was purely in my imagination and is set in eternity… and we try and tell that story in pictures, that part of the story is totally silent… there are no sounds and no dialogues. We’ve rendered the story of Mirza-Sahiban by way of a parable and explored that if something like what Sahiban did to Mirza had to play out in the modern world, how would it be? 

Was there ever the temptation to write it as a reincarnation or a historical romance as most people would have attempted it as?
That would have killed the idea, as far as I am concerned. The moment you take the reincarnation route, it becomes too simplistic. My idea of love is not about two people who couldn’t meet in one life, meeting in the next… I am not even convinced about the theory of reincarnation! (Smiles) When we brought together the contemporary and the folklore strands — it’s actually two films in one — we decided to connect them using a narrator. And the narration of this story happens in music. I have always loved musicals and through Mirzya, we have attempted to recreate a first-ever kind of musical experience in Indian cinema. 

Did you always want to cast rank newcomers as Mirza and Sahiban?
Not really. Normally, I never cast for a film till I have the story and screenplay in my hand. For this one, we went a step further. The entire music and lyrics was done first with Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy… simply to make sure that this story was just not in our heads. As the music started developing, it felt more and more doable and then the casting process started. Whenever I closed my eyes, I just couldn’t think of a set actor in these roles. And because the grammar and genre of this film is so new, I was instinctively pushed to look for fresh faces.

Casting was a long process and finally we zeroed in on Saiyami Kher and Harshvardhan Kapoor. There’s another strong character in the film for which we chose Anuj Chaudhary… it’s a love triangle.

We shifted base to Delhi and did workshops with these three. We did a lot of workshops in Mumbai and Rajasthan as well… my actors took classes in mountain archery and we sent Harsh to Seattle for horse-riding classes. My crew is a mix of Polish, Indian and American… the attempt has been to make it more like world cinema.

Your films have always been big on scale and story. But would you count Mirzya as your toughest and biggest yet?
The scale of this film is definitely the biggest. But then again, there is nothing easy about filmmaking. Each film demands something of you, physically and more so emotionally. It leaves you enriched and also leaves you in a vacuum once it goes out of you. Mirzya is not my toughest, but in terms of grandeur, it does feel the biggest. 

You are a filmmaker who hasn’t limited himself to one genre. What’s bubbling in your mind next?
There are quite a few subjects I am thinking of… some screenplays are ready. I work on ideas on a daily basis… I write every morning for a few hours. ‘Raja and the Legend of the Flute’ is ready as a screenplay. It’s a story on Lord Krishna, but is set in the modern day and focuses on his search for his flute in the lost city of Dwarka. Another story is about a seven-year-old in a Mumbai slum who wants to make a toilet for his single mother. It’s a simple story, but big on idea. Then there is ‘2071’, a futuristic film. It looks at the imagined consequences of farmer suicides. There is ‘Casual Kamasutra’, that’s based on fashion. The deeper you travel into India, the more you realise how much fashion has seeped into our consciousness. It’s the story of an India weaver who finds himself thrown into the world of American fashion.

I am sometimes asked if these ideas will work with the audience, but according to me, budgets fail, not ideas. As a filmmaker, you have to be true to your imagination. We are modern-day bards, the only thing that’s different is that we just have a camera. We have to keep telling our stories, without letting the worry of whether they will work or not colour our choices.

Priyanka Roy
I can’t wait to watch Mirzya because.... Tell t2@abp.in