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| Picture: Anindya Shankar Ray |
POETRY
Saadat Hasan Manto and Ismat Chughtai…
I was unaware of the depth of their writing before I encountered them. The more I read of them the more I realised that these two are fit to be categorised among the greatest short story writers in the world.
Working with Urdu literature…
Urdu literature was something I was not familiar with. In fact I was quite snooty about it. I got cast as Ghalib and that was my introduction to Urdu poetry. I was lucky enough to find a book on Ismat Chughtai’s stories. There was a footnote somewhere where Ismat says that ‘when I write a story I feel as if I am chatting with my reader’. I thought let’s try this. Everybody was sceptical, including Ratna (wife). But later everybody got convinced that this would work.
POLICING
Politically motivated offence
The point is that at least their (Manto and Chughtai) works were not burnt in public, at least they were not dragged onto the streets, they were not banned and banished from the country. They didn’t have to run away. I guess what is happening now and what we have seen happen over the last 10 or 12 years is a very warysome trend where anybody who decides to take offence about anything can create a movement about that. So it’s a terrible situation and the fact is that it is politically motivated now. I don’t know about then. It was probably not. It was just people’s prudery was outraged. But these days it is much more than that.
Dedh Ishqiya being compared to Fire (for its hint of homosexuality between Madhuri Dixit and Huma Qureshi’s characters)…
I don’t think the director of Dedh Ishqiya (Abhishek Chaubey) intended to go the distance that a film like Fire did. The protests against Fire were completely ludicrous. Though the fact is that I do think that the filmmaker (Deepa Mehta) was asking for it somewhere. Because I do not really feel that a lot of those scenes were absolutely essential. There is a power of understatement that we have to try and understand. I think that’s what Dedh Ishqiya manages to do though I have to say that the angle of the two girls is not quite as exciting as it should have been.
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Art and activism going hand in hand…
I believe in that kind of activism in which I can get involved via my work. I will not dump my work and jump on a political bandwagon just like that. I feel that whatever contribution I can make through my work. I don’t intend to spread my wings much further and get singed.
MOVIES
Taking up acting...
I didn’t have the courage to tell my parents that I wanted to be an actor. My brothers were the only two I could confide in. And they were bemused because they could see what actors look like. They said, “Ok, fine. But why don’t you try the IAS first?”
For my children (Heeba, Imaad and Vivaan) it was different. They have been on stage from the time they were born. Both of them as babies have appeared on stage as part of the crowd in Julius Caesar. I think it was just a natural course of things for them in the same way as it was in the natural course of things for both my brothers to opt one for an engineering course and one for a career in the army. That’s what good boys did. I was the black sheep.
Wanting to be the black sheep…
I knew at a time when I was 13 or 14. I had this fantasy world in which I lived, watching movies and watching plays was my only obsession. I couldn’t understand a thing I was taught in class, except the literature classes. I used to get a 100 out of 100 in dictation and I got the highest marks in composition but I had failed in grammar. I am still not sure what a pronoun is or a participle…
If there was any gift that I was blessed with it was the ear for the spoken word. I can recall voices I had heard when I was five years old, the exact quality of the voice and I can reproduce them when I need to.
I knew that I wanted to act but I could see the actors in the movies and it was like dreaming a very distant dream. I didn’t even think about it because there was Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, and here we had Shammi Kapoor... I looked nothing like any of these guys... I looked like the Mad magazine mascot... until I saw a film called The Old Man and the Sea. I think I was 13 years old when I saw it. I did not know it’s a classic of literature. I had not seen Spencer Tracy before. But when I saw this man on screen it struck me that this guy has to be real. He is not a photographic trick, which is what I thought all actors in movies were. He reminded me of my grandfather. Everything he did looked real to me. That gave me a lot of courage because I thought that if this kind of a movie ever gets made in India guess who is going to get the part of the old man! I still haven’t got the part. But that was what made me decide that yes this is what I want to do for sure.
Bhaag Milkha Bhaag being a harmful film….
I think it’s a dreadful film. I think it’s a very harmful film. I think it’s a very false film to start with. And I don’t care who takes offence at this statement. It is a film that thrives on feeding the visceral hatred of Pakistan. Why make the denouement of the movie a victory over a Pakistani runner? I guess that’s the reason why it has been such a big success. And we had Milkha Singh (Farhan Akhtar) looking like Rocky of course! It didn’t seem like an accurate description of him. But who am I to say anything when Milkha Singh himself has no problem?
THEATRE
Shakespeare in school…
Shakespeare is still compulsory in the school syllabus. Tagore isn’t. Ghalib isn’t. Premchand isn’t. But Shakespeare is. We grow up thinking that the only good playwright in the world is Shakespeare. All good poets are from England. It is a British legacy. It’s kind of bemusing to wonder why…. But there is a bad smell attached to it somewhere.
Shakespeare and Bollywood…
Othello is close to being a racist play in itself. I think Othello is an extremely stupid man. I don’t think he is a tragic hero. He is an idiot. He is kaan ka kachcha. He believes everything anybody tells him. He performs some utterly despicable acts in the course of the play. So I don’t think he is a hero.
The reason I will not attempt Shakespeare is because Shakespeare without the words is not much. If you don’t have actors who can speak the words beautifully, it’s pointless doing Shakespeare.
Secondly, Hindi cinema has dipped into Shakespeare so heavily that there isn’t a Hindi film cliche which doesn’t have its origin in Shakespeare. We’ve borrowed so generously that if one does Shakespeare in the way it ought to be done it’s going to look like a Hindi movie, I am afraid!
School theatre to TV serials…
I have done Shakespeare in school, but then everybody knows what Shakespeare in school is like. In fact everybody knows what plays in school are like.... where everyone with powdered faces and pencilled moustaches wears daddy’s coat or mummy’s dress, and is instructed ‘face the audience, don’t turn your back on the audience and so on’ … so you have six characters standing in a row, all facing the audience!
You still see that in television serials, except that you have 12 instead of six and the camera going close so that nobody feels cheated. This is the great tradition of school theatre perpetuating itself via the television serials! And that’s a terrible tragedy. It has been one of my great missions to try and work with school students and tell them about theatre. To try and encourage schools to start theatre as a subject, as an optional subject or may be in colleges.
Shaw vs Shakespeare…
Barnard Shaw has a worldview, which Shakespeare never seems to have. Shaw never only tells you a story..... Shaw’s plays are much more incisive, much more socially and politically aware. And he is talking about the human condition all of the time. He is verbose but what beautiful words!
One milestone performance…
For me the milestone is Waiting for Godot because I found it utterly incomprehensible when I first read it as a drama school student. In fact, I wrote a thesis on it calling it a piece of nonsense and nearly got failed for writing that. Over the years it began to make more and more sense. I can connect with almost every line in that play today.
The theatre he believes in…
For me, words are at the centre stage. I try to make theatre more text-centric and actor-centric. I got influenced by Jerzy Grotowski. I completely subscribe to his statement that our poverty of resources should be our strength and not our weakness. Our plays are completely shorn of extraneous elements. Never at any point are we trying to create the illusion that it is actually happening.
Bond with Pakistan…
How many of us have a friend in Pakistan? Not many. We should try and achieve that. One-to-one connection. Our latest production, A Walk in the Woods, has been staged in both India as well as Pakistan. There is a line by one of the characters that says that he wonders how many missiles would it take to wipe out Pakistan. You know what? At each performance in India, there was an applause after this line. How disturbing! And in Pakistan, there was a hush.
