While in the past too, many
Bollywood films have been shot in Kashmir, nobody has gone as deep as in
Haider, says Vishal Bhardwaj. In the past, while the film was shot in
Kashmir, the central protagonist was always an outsider unlike in Haider, where Shahid Kapoor and his family in the film are local
Kashmiris. With Vishal's aesthetics and his heart placed firmly in
shooting Kashmir the way no one has before, we have no doubt that he
will open us up to an even more beautiful Kashmir. The filmmaker
exclusively spoke to Bombay Times about how his Kashmir is different
than the one we have seen before. Excerpts:
Kashmir has again, in the last few years, opened up for shooting. How difficult was it for you to get the permission?
Omar
Abdullah, the Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, called me home and
said to me, 'Kashmir is mostly misrepresented in films.' I told him I
was adapting Hamlet. He had read Hamlet in his university and asked me to
narrate the whole story to him. I narrated and he got so interested
that he not only gave me the permission to shoot, but allowed us to
shoot wherever we wanted to in the state. We have shot in places where
no film has been ever shot earlier.
Tell us how your Kashmir will be different?
KASHMIRI PROTAGONIST FOR THE FIRST TIME:
If you see the films in the past, the protagonist has always been an
outsider, be it an army officer from another part of the country or
any other, so we have always seen Kashmir from the outside. This
time, we will see it from inside and there is no outside character.
Shahid is a Kashmiri from a middle-class family, whose father is a
doctor and mother, a teacher. I also, like other Indians, have an image
of Kashmir that no one studies there and everyone is walking around with
an AK-47 under their phiran. But in Haider, Shahid is a student and it's
the story of their struggle in the last many years.
SHOOTING IN DOWNTOWN SRINAGAR FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 65 YEARS:
There was
another big film that wanted to shoot there and had also got the
permission. The whole unit was waiting there, when, at the last moment,
the lead actor cancelled it due to his family's safety concerns.
Apparently, the Chief Minister and everybody was keen that they
shoot, otherwise it would give the wrong signal, but it had to be
finally cancelled. We shot exactly there, all of us. No mainstream film
has ever shot there in the last 65 years. Downtown Srinagar is the most
sensitive area. Anything can happen there, so normally there is not only
no tourists there, but even their cars are not taken there by the taxi
drivers. All protests in Srinagar start from there.
SHOOTING IN BARAMULLA AFTER 25 YEARS:
Nobody
has gone there to shoot in the last 25 years. It is a two-and-a-half
hours drive from Srinagar. I got free first from my earlier shoot and
decided to go there ahead of others. When I started travelling, a
protest had apparently started, which I did not know about. When I
crossed Baramulla police station, I saw the cops suddenly getting ready
for something and saw them wearing a lot of pads. My taxi driver said to
me, 'Looks like there is about to be a protest'. He had just said that
when at the turn, we suddenly saw about 300 boys with stones in their
hands running towards our car. It was like a crowd going for war.
They asked us to roll down our glass and for 10 seconds, I thought we
were gone that day. They spoke very aggressively and the driver
talked to them in Kashmiri. I chose to remain silent when they asked me
something. Then, one of the boys, who was the leader, came and said, 'Let them go'. When we left from there, my driver said, 'Thank God you
did not speak. They asked me who you are and I said, you had come here
for apple business'. And the driver told me that if you are a tourist or
an apple trader, they would not let anything happen to you ever, as
that is their bread and butter.
What motivated you to shoot at such tough locations?
Because
the story demanded it and I wanted to go to places where no one had
gone before.
Did your wife Rekha Bhardwaj not stop you?
Rekha knows
me by now. We had shot in Kashmir in 7 Khoon Maaf also, but this time,
we went down very deep and that too, with our lead cast.
It's natural to feel scared while shooting in such sensitive locations. Was Shahid scared?
Yes
of course, initially we were all scared about shooting in
Downtown. But we shot there after we had shot a part of the film
already in other parts of Kashmir. We had about 100 cars with us and they
were all locals and seeing us shoot, they realised the kind of film we
were making. So the word spread that help Haider. So wherever
we went, they would shout
out for us, Hey Haider. They would offer us tea and insist that we
have it.
What is the impression that you carry back from Kashmir?
The people there are so lovely. If we found that kind of crowd in
Delhi, they would pass such lewd comments that you would feel
embarrassed. There, if you asked the crowds to move a little, 1000-2000
people would move so easily. They have problems only if you dont let them see the shoot. Strangers would come and invite us for tea and we understood that they feel offended if you said no. They
make tea with salt and it is called Noon Chai. We were once
shooting at the university there and had a confrontation with one of the
students. Six days later, we were shooting in another college when post
lunch, my production team informed me that the University General
Secretary had come to meet me. Suddenly, we all became serious. He
walked in and I was shocked to see him as in the morning shoot, he was
playing the typist in our film. He had actually come to say a sorry to
me and said, 'I became a typist to only spy on you. I came through one
of the junior artists'. He then invited us for tea. Then there was a
location where we were shooting the Bismil song where over
5,000 people from the entire village came to see the shoot. In between
the song, Shahid was sitting and suddenly we see this boy running
towards him with security running behind him. He slid on the wooden
stage and came and touched Shahid and started dancing. We were all
scared as we thought he had come to harm Shahid, but in reality, we
discovered that he had kept a bet with his friends that if he touched
Shahid he would win Rs 1000. We requested the security to not hit him and
post the shoot, got him to apologise to Shahid. He was so cute and after
saying sorry he tells me, 'Give me a role with Shahid. I can dance even
better than him'. One day again while shooting Bismil, the village mukhia
came to me quite angry.Word had spread that we were shooting so
people from neighbouring villages had started coming into their houses
so their women had to make food for all their relatives. So the women
started complaining to their husbands to go and stop the shooting and
they wanted normalcy to return to their lives. Kashmiris want Bollywood
to come and shoot there and I could just say that they gave us so much
love.
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