Though only metaphorically, Nawazuddin too has broken a mountain, says Ketan Mehta

What about Dashrath Manjhi drew you to the story?

Unfortunately in India we seem to recognise the value of a person only after they’re dead. I heard of Dashrath Manjhi only when he died in 2007 and there were articles and features in every newspaper, magazines and TV channel. I immediately felt the story needs to be shared. One one hand there was extreme love and passion and on the other, terrific determination and resolve. In the middle of all this, a madness to break down a mountain and carve out a path. That’s what got me hooked.

I was doing Rang Rasiya then. The moment I finished, I went to Manjhi’s village for a recce. As I stood there, I wondered how anyone could even imagine doing what he did, leave alone actually doing it. All this, armed with just a hammer and a chisel, labouring away for 22 years. I couldn’t think of anything more inspiring in today’s times. Seriously for me, he is Mr India! He represents the indomitable spirit of India... of the poorest of the poor... of the lowest among the lower castes fighting all odds, even defying the Gods themselves...
 
Even before its release, the mountain man’s biopic has become a poll plank in Bihar over it being made tax-free...
 
I think this film needs to be seen by everybody. Not only every youth but I want every child to see this inspiring story. Given how tickets are priced ridiculously high, I wish this film gets a tax exemption not only in Bihar, but across the country so that it is watched by everyone.
 
The film was marked by a lot of controversy over the rights to make it?
 
Quite a few filmmakers were inspired by this story and wanted to make it. They were all trying for many years. All the information was already in public domain. We too had done all our research. On the last day of shooting, we got a notice from a filmmaker (Neeraj Pathak) who said he had exclusive rights to make a film on Dashrath Manjhi’s life. We were told that four days before Manjhi died of terminal cancer in an ICU, he’d put his thumb impression on the document which gave away exclusive filmmaking rights to this man. We had to fight a long battle from the lowest courts in Bihar to the HC where we won. The courts said since Manjhi’s life was all out in the open no one could claim rights to it. The court upheld our argument which said, how can anyone have the “right” to make a film on say, Gandhiji’s life? You can have the right to a novel, not to a public figure’s life!
 
Whether Mangal Pandey, Rang Rasiya or Manjhi now, do you go out looking for controversies or is it the other way around?
 
As a people, we seem to love controversies. If we can’t find them, we invent them. If you are doing a film about a real life person, there are bound to be people who feel one way or the other about what that film should be like. Also when one condenses a lifetime into two hours, one has to take a call on highlighting some aspects or leaving out others.
The funny thing is very often these controversies are created by people who have not even seen the film. One wonders what kind of motivation drives them. For example in the case of Mangal Pandey, there were 85 cases filed against the film...
 
85?!
 
Yes. From issues like how can Mangal Pandey be shown having bhang? How could he be shown visiting a brothel? Some cases also wanted to know why we were not shooting in Balia in UP. This just proves - to borrow Dr Amartya Sen’s words – that we are argumentative Indians after all!

Dashrath Manjhi played by Nawazuddin Siddiqui
 
Do you feel the 22-year-long struggle by Manjhi, the media glare and now your film have made a difference to the lives of the people of his village Gehalaur in Bihar?
 
Lives of people are governed by many many forces. As a filmmaker one can only bring attention to something that’s happened or on the other hand, share it with as many people as I can in the best possible manner. And that’s what we're trying to do with this film.
 
Despite the road which her father-in-law cut through the mountain, Manjhi’s daughter-in-law too died without access to healthcare.
 
That region is both one of the most backward and poor regions of the country. After over six decades of Independence, it's shocking to see people there still living like they would a hundred years ago. There’s no electricity. When we used to climb the mountain for our shoot, the moment the sun went down, the region would be enveloped in pitch darkness for as long as we could see. In fact, not just in Manjhi’s village, but in several nearby villages, there is abject poverty. You can’t find any grown-ups because they have all left in search of work, only old men and women and young children remain. Not surprisingly, its a landscape which has a strong presence of Naxals.
   
Development has often come to mean multilane-highways, big dams, malls and multiplexes. Would you agree little has changed for the poor from Jeevo in your debut Bhavni Bhavai to Dashrath Manjhi?
 
It's true that growth has come to mean a greater concentration of wealth in the hands of the fewest of the few. The skewed nature of our development model has to change if this country has to move to holistic development and growth. 
 
You’ve made films on the lives of Sardar Patel and Mangal Pandey too in the past. How’s Manjhi different?
 
Both Sardar and Mangal Pandey were macro-level films with a budget and scale to match. In a sense, Manjhi is just a microcosm of that, but its nevertheless similar in spirit in its trying to make the impossible possible. As an artiste, I look around for inspiration wherever I can. All these stories are special and inspiring in their own way. Sardar Patel was the story of a birth of a nation, Mangal Pandey was about the idea of freedom for this land from her colonial masters. Manjhi is more about individual freedom.
 
What were the challenges of shooting in and around Gaya?
 
The moment we decided to do the film I decided to go and see the location. Many people suggested that I find a location near Bombay. It was repeatedly underlined how this is Bihar with no facilities, no infrastructure and the looming threat of violence from Naxals. But the moment one saw the location, there seemed like there was no option, this film had to be shot there.
You know there are no hotels in a 100 mile radius of that place. So we stayed at Bodh Gaya, an hour and a half commute away. Now imagine 150 people waking up at 3.30 am and setting out for this village and climbing up to the shoot location before sunrise daily. In that sense though it was exhilarating and rewarding, Manjhi is one of the toughest shoots of my life. As if this weren’t enough, we had to work closely with the district administration and local police owing to the potential Naxal threat.

Can you talk about the casting for Manjhi?

Though he was doing small roles and films, people had been talking of Nawazuddin for a while now. Gangs of Wasseypur had still not come out. I saw Kahani and felt we were on to something. The script was ready and we had old photographs of Manjhi. So when I met Nawazuddin, I instantly knew I’d  found my Mountain Man. He had the same kind of frail body, short stature without the mandatory 6-packs most leading men in Bollywood sport.
In many ways both Nawazuddin and Manjhi represent the spirit of India. You know he’s been struggling for 15 years in the industry. Its been a long journey from Muzaffarnagar, UP to the big bad world of Bollywood. Though only metaphorically, Nawazuddin too has broken a mountain.

Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Radhika Apte in a still from the film

And Radhika Apte?

We did several auditions for her character. There had to be earthiness, sensuality, innocence and intensity- all rolled into one... After more than a 100 girls auditioned, I saw Radhika’s audition and knew she was the girl...

Any thoughts on what is going on at your alma mater FTII...

FTII has made a significant impact and contribution to both film appreciation and filmmaking culture in India. In that sense, it is one of the premier film schools of the world. Having said that, it deserves a really inspiring head. In a country with such a large film industry and so many extremely talented people, I wonder if the current head is the best we can do!

What is your take on the 100-crore and 200-crore club and the way films are judged on their box office collections?

You guys in the media are responsible for this in a big way. We are also descending into an era of numbers where they have being treated as the only way of measuring how well something or someone is doing. But life is surely more than numbers and far more enriching. The arrival of corporate funding has worsened the tyranny of numbers. We will have to ensure independent cinema finds space.
You know the biggest hit of recent times PK was seen by less than 1% of our population. That is the kind of shortfall we are talking about. Rs 300 crore is all that PK manages in global box-office collections in a country of 1.2 billion. So where are we? What are we talking about?

But will you concede, from the new wave cinema of the 70s to the art house indies of today, many films which even go to win awards at international festivals simply don’t stand a chance in front of the ‘eight-pack big baddies’ of Bollywood...

You see all my life, my entire filmmaking career’s been devoted to bringing down this Berlin Wall between art and commerce. It's a divide that is motivated and proved counterproductive... a divide which partly was again created by the media.
Today in the era of the internet, a whole new generation of audience has emerged which has access and watches work from all over the world. A whole new era has emerged and we can’t even fathom its implications. In a week since we released it online, 3.2 million have watched the Manjhi trailer and responded excitedly to it. And there is a whole new breed of filmmakers who want to experiment more than ever before have come up. When I made Bhavni Bhavai too, there was a complete breakdown of communication between commercial and new wave cinema but the difficulties of finding space to screen your films has only worsened. The arrival of multiplexes hasn’t really helped create space for the non-mainstream, now we see monopolisation of the exhibition space by big budget films. Hopefully the digital age will change all that and we will find space for all kinds of audiences.

You are restoring Bhavni Bhavai and it will soon be re-released...

You know it was a film I made when I’d freshly passed out of the still-new FTII. TV had hardly reached a few homes. So films were the most powerful medium around. There was a belief that cinema could change lives. All these people – Naseeruddin Shah, Smita Patil, Om Puri, Mohan Gokhale worked for nothing, simply driven by good cinema. Can you imagine making a period costume drama like that with a loan of Rs3.5 lakh from NFDC? There were no hotels or anything to stay. We just had mattresses laid out on the terraces of the havelis we shot at in Vaso village of Nadiad in Gujarat where all of us slept in the night.
Thankfully we have not lost the work irretrievably and we’ll get to see a restored Bhavni Bhavai in a month and a half.

Your next project is on the Rani of Jhansi...

1857 is a period that fascinates me a lot for various reasons. It was the starting point of the freedom struggle in India. It is relevant today too. The Indian sub-continent which was then home to 1/5th of humanity was being governed by a company, an MNC... Mangal Pandey was only the first in a trilogy. While Rani of Jhansi will be the next, the last film will be on Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor.
Rani of Jhansi is rare and completely unlike any other woman one encounters in history. For me she was Cleopatra, Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale rolled into one.

Is the casting for it done?

For the lead character we have decided on Kangana. Look at her work in the last few years. She has a fire in her belly and wants to do different kind of work by continuously challenging herself.  

You can listen to the full interview here: