Last Saturday when t2 drops in to meet director-and-now-actor Prakash Jha in his office in Mumbai’s Andheri, it is the presence of many large bouquets that reminds us it is his birthday... his 64th... and he is busy working. There’s a huge bouquet from Priyanka Chopra, the main lead of his new film Jai Gangaajal, in a corner. “She is such a generous co-star. She knows how to help her co-stars raise their game,” he says, as we sit waiting for his masala chai and then speak about passions old and new...
Happy 64th...
Thank you so much.
With every passing year, you seem to be looking younger. What’s the secret?
(Long pause) I don’t know. Others have also told me this. In between, I had stopped taking care of myself. This was from about 2003 to 2011 when I did most of my major films. I think I was just too distracted by films and politics to pay any attention to myself. It was during Aarakshan (2011) that I realised I had let go. During Mrityudand (1997), I used to play a lot of sports and be fit. When I was shooting Chakravyuh (2012) in the jungles around Pachmarhi (Madhya Pradesh), I started getting up early in the morning for yoga and walks. It’s taken me about two years to get back to normal and I am doing things that I love doing.
Like what? I remember you talking about wanting to learn music and paint the last time we spoke...
It was a dream for me to learn the piano. I have a piano here in the office and another one in Patna, where my father lives. I go there once a month so it makes sense for me to have one there. As for painting, I’ve got an easel in the corner of my bedroom and I’ve been dabbling with colours. I have started doing things that I have been only thinking about for years. I am not a party person… no one in Mumbai invites me because I am a useless chap!
(Laughs) I have my dinner by 7pm and by 10, I am in bed. I wake up really early in the morning and watch this lovely city come to life. I work out in the gym with my instructors and I have the time to pursue my interests. I am loving this period of my life and that’s what is reflecting on my face.
Is there a new passion you’d want to explore this year?
Yes! I am going to learn to fly this year. I am going to move to New Zealand this September for three months to learn flying. This has been a childhood dream. My mother wanted me to become a pilot. I studied in a military school, so I could have tried for the Indian Air Force, but I didn’t. But I never forgot my dream for flying. Earlier when they would allow passengers in the cockpit, I would spend all my time there with the pilots.
How exciting! This year you are also making your debut as an actor. Has acting also been a lifelong passion?
Not really. I have never been excited about acting and even now I don’t see it like a big passion. It’s just a new thing to explore. I love doing that… learning new things. I remember when I bought my first car, I didn’t have a licence and I didn’t know how to drive. I knew the basic theory, so I decided to teach myself. I would take out the car at midnight on a deserted stretch and within a week, I knew enough to apply for a licence.
I think, it was after Raajneeti (2010) when I thought that may be, I can give this a shot. I had begun to enjoy the process of preparing to be an actor. The actors start working with me months in advance and we go through the process of reading, discussing and understanding the scenes and the characters. So acting wasn’t absolutely new to me. Acting is one of the most challenging of all the arts because it demands that the artiste exposes himself.
When I started writing this character of B.N. Singh, the 54-55-year-old policeman who has seen the world, I thought I could play him (in Jai Gangaajal). The more I wrote him, the more I thought I could play him.
So you never thought of any other actor for this role?
No. For me, the most exciting part of making a film has always been writing the script. The rest of the process is semi-mechanical. Jai Gangaajal, I wrote 16 drafts for and I write by hand, so it’s always quite a process. By the fourth or fifth draft, the characters begin to take shape and I write each subsequent draft with actors in mind. So I started seeing myself as B.N. Singh.
It must have been interesting to direct yourself...
It was. An actor’s life on the set is between ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’. When you are directing yourself, you have to say ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’ and perform in the time between those two words. It’s almost like you are a split personality — one that’s directing and the other that’s performing. You just have to multitask. Like when you are driving, you are checking the mirrors, steering, changing gears, deciding on the route, talking to the person with you… but you don’t really think of how much you are multitasking.
What made you want to revisit the police-society relationship that you had explored way back in 2003 in Gangaajal?
It was a conversation I had with an old acquaintance on a flight from Mumbai to Raipur. He is a very senior IPS officer, who was known to be upright and courageous. I met him after a long time, so I asked him where he was posted. After years of important postings, he had asked for and gone on deputation… something away from the limelight. He sounded really cynical about policing in India. He said, ‘The police don’t have any independent authority and they are under the thumb of the local politicians. Even if I manage to get past all this, when I get to the judiciary, the politicians will manipulate there as well. In policing today, inaction has become a virtue and efficiency has become a crime’. This got me thinking of how things have changed so drastically.
We are living at a time when a state minister tells a lady IPS officer to get out of a meeting and when she tries to reason with him, he walks off. Within a day, she is transferred out. The media does report this, but it gets forgotten very soon. The police are being controlled by politicians. And who are these politicians? They are mostly goons who started out small. It’s a vicious circle.
Karishma Upadhyay
