It’s a Wonderful Afterlife started as a horror film. Then it became like an Ealing comedy. It also has Bollywood masala. What exactly is the film?

(Laughs out loud and keeps laughing for some time) Well, the starting point was that I was watching a clip from Bend It Like Beckham and I was sad that I could never do a wedding scene like that again. Unless, I thought, I subvert it somehow. That was the original idea. To do a wedding scene like that but turn it into a scene from Carrie (Brian De Palma’s seminal 1976 horror film). I was also under a lot of pressure to do another film about the west London Punjabi community but I didn’t want to repeat myself.

Then I thought no one has made a horror film in that community. I suddenly got excited about making a film which has ghosts that look like my mother! I have never seen that before! But I didn’t want to make a horror-horror film.

As we started working on the script, it became like the comedies which came out of Ealing Studios in the 1940s. Intrigue, a little bit of murder, mystery, suspense... but ultimately very much a comedy. Also, it was about identity, the English character. My film is like an Ealing comedy but with Indian characters in it. So while it is reflective of the English nature, it is the England I see around me, now. I am making a comment on what is the nature of the English character today.

It also has reincarnation as a plot device. Is that a Bollywood reference or a tribute?

Once I started working on the script, it started becoming very Indian. Reincarnation is a very Indian idea. Also, it’s about marriage. The moment you are doing a film about a strong-willed Indian female protagonist, you have to deal with marriage. Because for us marriage is of paramount importance, in terms of who we are culturally and of what defines us. I don’t want to have my heroine surrender to the pressures of marriage. Even today, both in India and England, when a woman becomes 30-31-32, it’s a dreadful tragedy if she is not married. Especially for the parents. They feel they are the failure. Their life is incomplete. I wanted to take that obsession with marriage and push that a little bit. So it also becomes a moral search kind of a movie.

Isn’t that too many things in one single movie?

I know taken together it all sounds very confusing. (Laughs out loud.) But in my head this all seems to work for me, because I am used to living with multiple identities. I can slip in and out of genres quite effortlessly and it always makes sense for me. I am sure the elements may get interpreted in different ways in different places. Like I am sure that the reincarnation thing will be looked upon as spiritual in India. They would look at it as a reference to Kali or Durga.

Why Shabana Azmi? Have you seen her body of work?

Well, I have seen a lot of Shabana’s films. I was initially very intimidated by her as an actress. I met her five-six years ago when I was doing the lyrics of Bride & Prejudice with Javedsaab. I used to visit their house quite a lot. She is very formidable and quite intimidating and quite the activist, as you know. (Laughs again.) So I was like, “Oh my god, the Shabana Azmi!”

But I sat down with her and she asked me 20 questions, which was all to decipher my politics and my intelligence. Once that was done, I found her to be a completely different person. She was very funny, full of laughter and joy. The relationship with her husband was so beautiful. And I was always thinking, she needs to be in a comedy. In my head, I always thought that if I ever need a woman of her age in a comedy, I will definitely cast her. When I was writing the script, she seemed perfect... she could pull out the serious side, the spiritual, the slightly moving tragic side but then also the comedic side. No one has ever seen her in this kind of part. She has totally been stretched. She is not playing just a Punjabi, she is playing a British Punjabi and those who know the British Punjabis will get the nuances Shabana has so beautifully portrayed.

Your twins, son Ronak and daughter Kumiko, were born in 2007. And you have already made two films — Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging and Afterlife — in these three years. How do you manage?

Oh my god! It’s just crazy! I am so thankful that I am getting some peace now. You know, it’s very hard! Because your mind is always on them — what are they doing, are they sleeping, are they eating.... On the other hand, writing and directing are things I just love to do. When I get locked in a script, there’s nothing like it. My only solution is to compartmentalise my day, so that I have quality time for everything. Honestly, I have less time for work now than I used to.

One of the reasons I made Afterlife was because I was in charge. I was both the producer and director and I could set it up according to myself as a mother. So I made the film very locally — the studios were 20 minutes from my house. I organised the day so that I would be with the children either in the morning or in the evening and they would come on set every second day and be part of the process. And the shoot was over in seven weeks. I don’t think I would be able to do that if I were in America making a Hollywood film. (Gurinder did quit as director of a Hollywood studio version of Dallas.)

This was very manageable and this film has been made in complete accordance with meeting a mother. Also, the film is about how much a mother would do for her children’s happiness. What length she would go to.... Ever since I had my children, I have been fighting the thought of death. Whenever I get into a car or board a plane, I am thinking about, hope I don’t die... what will happen to my children? So death for me looms very much right now. Will I be around to see their families, see their success? So part of that has been explored in the film.

You are still looked upon as the Bend It Like Beckham director. Is that now a film you fight every time you start a new project?

That film is what that film was. People have been asking me to make a sequel and I have completely resisted making it. I feel that film has been taken to heart by so many people that they want me to repeat that film over and over again. But I chose to make Bride & Prejudice and Angus, Thongs... both not set in the British Punjabi community. This one is, but Afterlife’s a completely different genre. Beckham is like the child you are very proud of. It has gone out there and done very well. But it’s not any more than any of my other children. It’s not often in any director’s life that you make one film that connects so much with people. To have done one, it’s a great thing. But I will still carry on.