Amole Gupte; a moment from Stanley Ka Dabba (above)

Amole Gupte researched for Taare Zameen Par for months and even shot for six days before he was dumped as director because producer Aamir Khan felt Gupte was not being able to translate the script on to the screen. That was back in 2007. Gupte didn’t respond then. And now Stanley Ka Dabba, his first official directorial project, has become a darling with the audiences. t2 quizzed Gupte on his dream baby.

After that whole Taare Zameen Par fiasco, when it came to making your own film, why did you have to make one on a schoolkid and his world and thus draw instant comparisons?

The theme of Stanley Ka Dabba, according to me, is not at all like Taare Zameen Par. This is a liberating film about human spirit. That was about someone who has been aggrieved and injured because of society. Just because it’s about a kid, that doesn’t make it the same film. And where does a kid go? He goes to school, to the playground.

Didn’t the whole controversy with Aamir Khan not play on your mind at all when you made Stanley Ka Dabba?

No, not at all. Otherwise one wouldn’t be able to work at all. It was genuinely not part of my thought process.

You shot with the kids once every week with a Canon 7D camera. Was it frustrating not being to able to shoot every day?

I didn’t promise myself that I would end up with a film. In fact, I never told the kids that I was making a film. My thinking was that let me not embarrass the participants by calling it a film and then not be able to finish with a complete movie. So we played it by the ear and kept shooting once every week like an exercise. In fact, we have been doing this for years. Theatre workshops, film workshops, we do them with schoolkids round the year. This was just an extension of that.

Your own son Partho plays Stanley in the film. Was it easier or more difficult to direct him?

I don’t direct anybody. I can suggest, I can excite the children into the scene. At best we are all having fun. It’s like the Mahabharata. Your grandmother read it to you when you were a kid. Later maybe even Amar Chitra Katha. It is a verbal tradition, an oral tradition. So I had this script called Stanley Ka Dabba, which I had written in 2008, and I brought it to the workshop and read it out to all of them scene by scene. And then I would ask one of the boys how he would say the lines if he was playing the character. Then we would go for a rehearsal. And that rehearsal would be the take. Because that’s the pristine first take. Most of the shots in the film were first takes.

You have also acted in the film. Wearing so many hats must have been challenging…

Not at all. These are not different hats, frankly. In the Natyashastra tradition, as a director you have to enact and as an actor you have to enact. So enactment is anivarya… it’s inevitable.

The big twist in the film is also the cause of the film. Were you tempted to reveal it upfront?

It was tricky. But the idea was that you get so severely hit in the last five minutes of the film that it is imperative and mandatory that you take Stanley home. And Stanley will wake up with you and you will be forced to think about Stanley and the state of affairs. Every time you look at a child doing some work somewhere, there will be an instant upheaval from within.

Is that the kind of feedback you have received for the film?

Yes, it’s been something. The website we have given at the end of the film takes you to a page where there is something called the Tree of Hope. It started out as a barren tree and then every time someone made a contribution, one leaf would spring out in your name. And we now have a wonderfully green tree and it will surely grow and grow and grow.

Have the lives of the kids who acted in the film changed in any way?

No, they had been counselled wisely and cleverly by me. The parents and the children. It was a Saturday exercise and let’s keep it at that. And that we have fooled the world by releasing it as a film. But let us not fool ourselves. Otherwise we will not be big stars like Bhimsen Joshi and we will become small stars who will fade away and feel bad when nobody will recognise us in a few years.

Will you make other films?

Only like this. I have realised, with children, this is the way to go. Four hours in their own schools. You can’t pull them out on to film sets because they are always surrounded by adults.

Were you surprised by the kind of support you got from the film fraternity in Karan Johar and Vishal Bhardwaj?

I was overwhelmed. I just shared the dabba with my industry friends and the way they rallied and they brought Fox in. Something like this has never been heard in our fraternity.

Did you get a call from Aamir Khan?

No, Aamir hasn’t called me. No, no….