Just days before PK hits theatres, t2 met Rajkumar Hirani at the office of Vidhu Vinod Chopra Productions in Santa Cruz, Mumbai. “The expectation around PK does scare me,” is the first thing the 52-year-old director said as we sat down.”I hope people remember this film with as much love and affection as my previous films,” he added. More than nervous, Rajkumar, or Raju as he is called in the industry, described his state of mind as “edgy”. “You battle your own films. Everyone will compare PK with 3 Idiots. So, in my head I try to figure out which one is the better film and hope that people like this one!”

Over cups of green tea, Raju spoke about why he rewrote PK after watching Inception, how he chooses to see the positives in life and Sanjay Dutt’s fascinating life.

So, out of the four films you’ve done — Munna Bhai MBBS, Lage Raho Munna Bhai, 3 Idiots and now PK — which has been your best work?

You know with every film I do, the previous one seems better. Except for Munna Bhai MBBS, which was my first film. I wasn’t tense at all when it released. I was just happy to have finally made my first film! I wanted to make one film and I had lived my dream. I didn’t even care if people were going to watch it. When I made Lage Raho Munna Bhai, I thought MBBS was better. When I made 3 Idiots, I thought it was a terrible film.

What?!

Yeah! I thought Lage Raho... was such a unique story. In comparison, 3 Idiots seemed like a standard story of three friends. And now that PK is done, I think 3 Idiots was a better film. I go through the same emotion with every film. Having said that, I am confident of the fact that PK has a unique story... unlike 3 Idiots. People should like it.

[Producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra walks into the room to discuss pre-release screenings. “Give me half an hour and we’ll sit,” promises Raju before returning to our interview.]

When you are writing your films, does what people expect from your films play on your mind?

If my films had bombed, I would have been more mindful of what the audience wants to see. I was lucky enough that I chose to do the films that my heart told me to do and not only did people love it, they also commercially succeeded. A flop can shatter your confidence. (With Munna Bhai MBBS) I thought I was making a small-budget, middle-of-the-road kind of film. Films that Karan Johar and Yash Chopra did were the big-budget blockbuster films. When it made money, I realised that I can make the kind of films I believe in and still be successful. People told me ‘You are getting an action hero (Sanjay Dutt) to make a film that’s completely inside a hospital. Your sets are looking so dull and boring’. I did get worried at that time, but I decided to stick to my guns.

It’s been five years since 3 Idiots. Why did PK take so long?

Some scripts get written very fast and others take their own sweet time. When I look back, 3 Idiots got written very fast while Lage Raho... took time. This film took unusually long. We also had a few setbacks while we were writing the film. Abhijat (Joshi, screenplay writer) and I always strive to have a unique story. After 100 years of cinema, every idea you think about has been done somewhere in some language. We try and steer clear of that. When we found one idea, we thought it was very unique and started working on it. After working on that idea for almost a year, someone told us that a film was playing in the theatres that sounded similar to our story. He was talking about Christopher Nolan’s Inception. Our hearts sank when we saw the film. Our story was different, but the core idea that you can change a person by changing his thought process was the same. They had taken a thriller route.

If we had made that same idea, people would have said we have stolen the idea. Like when our first poster (with Aamir in the nude covering himself with a transistor) came out people said that it is copied from some Spanish poster. But I have never seen or heard of the film! Our poster is from a scene in the film. I didn’t want anyone to say ki chori kiya hai. So we decided to scrap that idea. We started writing afresh. There were some delays while shooting as well. We were finally ready by June, but decided December would be a better time to release. I know this film has taken too long… I’ll correct this mistake the next time.

Can you take us through your creative process?

Once Abhijat and I zero in on a core idea…it could be a one line or a theme... for the next month, we don’t write anything. We just take long walks and record our conversations in a Dictaphone like yours. I have a folder on my desktop called ‘Thought for XYZ’ where I put down our thoughts. We keep doing research and digging into our own memories. Then we sit down to write and form a structure. Some things get discarded and others get added. Then we divide the scenes. Abhijat writes half and I write the rest.

Every evening we exchange what we have written during the day and try and improve upon it. This process is almost never-ending. We are changing and tweaking things until the last moment. Until last week we wanted Aamir (Khan) to change something in the dubbing. I tell Abhijat that scripts never get completed... they get abandoned on the release day.

Aamir told t2 this week that there is a little bit of you in every film you write. Would you agree?

(Pauses) Both Abhijat and I made a pact long ago that we will dig into our own lives for scenes. The most interesting are the scenes that you pick from life... otherwise it looks fake on screen.

It’s common knowledge that Madhavan’s story in 3 Idiots is similar to yours. What other instances from your life would one have seen in your films?

In Lage Raho…we needed to demonstrate that it is possible to be non-violent in real life. If we didn’t have this one scene in the film, no one would have believed in the basic premise of the film. There is a scene where someone spits in front of a house. The person calls Munna asking him what he should do about the spitter. Munna suggests that he wipe the house wall in front of the spitter. After four or five days, the man will be too shamed to spit on your wall. This is a very Gandhian philosophy.

Gandhi believed in embarrassing his enemy, rather than fighting or arguing with him. This scene came from what happened with my mother-in-law. She had an upstairs neighbour who’d throw garbage from her kitchen window everyday and the maid of the respective homes would get into a fight everyday. One day, my mother-in-law collected all the garbage and gave it to the lady who lived upstairs saying: ‘It seems you dropped something, so I am returning it to you’. After that day, the lady didn’t throw anything out of the window.

How do you manage to create negative characters that are so likeable?

I learnt this from Boman (Irani), who is one of the closest friends I have. While we were rehearsing for MBBS at Grant Medical College, Boman started saying his own lines. He asked a student: ‘Why do you want to become a doctor’. The student said: ‘I love people and I want to help them’. Boman laughs and says: ‘I don’t love my patients. As a doctor I shouldn’t love my patients. If I was to operate on someone I am emotionally connected to, my hands will shake. As a doctor you need to be clinical and not compassionate’. I couldn’t believe what he was saying. I told Boman that he shouldn’t say these lines in the film. My film would go for a toss because my hero is saying that doctors shouldn’t be compassionate. Boman said: ‘That’s not my problem. As the character, I don’t think that I am the villain. In my life, my character is the hero. Even a murderer will believe that he was justified in killing someone’. Since then, I believe everyone has their viewpoint and no one is wrong. In real life, no one is outright negative.

There is an inherent goodness in the worlds you create. Is that how you see life?

(Pauses) I believe that even if life is not like that, isn’t it better to see it like that? (Smiles) We tend to see only the negative things and then we trouble ourselves. Why not choose to see only the positives? We make stories in our head. If you call me and I don’t take your call, you’d probably think I have become very snooty and am avoiding your call. But maybe I didn’t take your call because I am in trouble or busy with some work. When you meet me the first time, you are already prejudiced against me. I choose to look at the positives and not be prejudiced.

From Sanjay Dutt, Arshad Warsi and Boman Irani to Aamir Khan, you’ve worked with actors who, one assumes, have very diverse styles of working...

You are right. Every actor has a different personality and style of working. As a director, you can’t have a set way of dealing with everyone. Boman is someone who loves to rehearse. When he was playing Lucky Singh in Lage Raho... he’d go to bars or automobile shops in Sion and Chembur to meet lots of Sardars. I remember he was drinking with a group of Sardars one evening and he asked me to join them.

Like Boman, Aamir loves to rehearse. He gets involved with every dialogue and likes to keep working at things until it’s all perfect.

Sanju’s biggest strength is his spontaneity. So you can’t make him rehearse or he’ll fall flat in front of the camera. He is the kind of actor who can give you five variations for a scene at the drop of a hat.

Arshad can’t say dialogues verbatim. He sounds very stiff… like he is acting. So I had to let him say the dialogues in his own way… the language could be all wrong, but that’s how we speak in real life as well.

Boman has been a part of all your films, including PK...

(Laughs) I just love Boman too much. Unlike the previous films, he is not playing the antagonist in this film. I called and told him that I have a small role for him, if he’ll do it. He said ‘yes’ and he elevated that role to another level. I don’t think I’d want to make a film without Boman.

Fans of the Munna Bhai films are still waiting for the next one. Will there be a third film?

Yes. We are working on the third film. We have four-five half-written scripts, but the battle is to find a script that’s on a par with, if not better, than the previous two films. It’s been a struggle. We could have made even a bad film and raked in the money, but that’s not a path I want to take. I could have signed five big films after 3 Idiots and made whatever I wanted and made lots of money. Right now we are writing something that I think is interesting. I am hoping by the time Sanju is back with us, we have the script ready.

The other script you are working on is the biopic on Sanjay’s life...

That’s right. Manyata(Dutt’s wife) was the first one who had suggested that I make a film on Sanju’s life. I wasn’t very keen. This was until I spent some time with Sanjay last year when he was out on parole. I was so fascinated that I asked him to start narrating to me in detail. Abhijat and I ended up sitting with him for almost 25 days. I would edit PK during the day and go to Sanju’s house in the evening. We would sit with him until 3am on most days. Good, bad, ugly… I have never heard of a story like his.