Shaad Ali on nani Lakshmi Sehgal and nana Col Prem Kumar Sehgal; making a sports film after love stories and his faith in Diljit Dosanjh
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 11, 2017)

Shaad Ali is shooting for a crucial sequence at the Chandigarh Hockey Stadium with Diljit Dosanjh, who plays field hockey player and ex- India captain Sandeep Singh in his upcoming sports biopic, Soorma. The filmmaker concentrates on the shot while also shouting out instructions to his assistants, one of whom is veteran actor Kader Khan’s son, Shahnawaz. But even after a long day on the turf, Ali looks at ease as he takes up a seat near a glass window of a five-star that offers a view of the adjacent mall, visibly satisfied with the day’s work and all charged up for the 6 am call time of the next one. Soorma is his sixth directorial outing after Saathiya, Bunty Aur Babli, Jhoom Barabar Jhoom, Kill Dil and OK Jaanu, which released earlier this year. Is it intimidating to helm a sports biopic after a series of love stories? The answer is a resounding “no”.

“In fact,” Ali goes on to explain, “I was excited by the story and the idea of a sports film. As a filmmaker, we want to do one war film, one sports film, one chor-police film and also an out-and-out masala film. Soorma falls in the slot of a human-sports drama and has completely sucked me in.” By his account, more than 35 days of work on the film, which is produced by Sony Pictures Networks Productions, Chitrangda Singh and Deepak Singh, has been wrapped up.

Ali knew he wanted Diljit as his protagonist from the outset. “And his first appearance on screen reaffirmed my faith in the decision. He doesn’t let go of a scene; he is a sharp and aware actor but different in the sense that he doesn’t take himself seriously. He gets a sense of the moment and gives it his best shot. So much so, that his routine is to pretty much just show up, deliver a scene, and leave. Apart from that, he sits quietly in a corner,” Ali marvels, adding that he’d wanted someone who looked honest and was without baggage of any kind.

OK Jaanu, featuring Aditya Roy Kapur and Shraddha Kapoor, didn’t fare well at the box office. While Ali admits to having been deeply affected by its failure, he is quick to add that he hasn’t brought the baggage over to the next film. “All I can know is that maybe there were things with that film that were wrong but I can’t put a finger on it. Ultimately, you have to trust yourself and hope that somebody else will trust you enough to give you the next job because it’s a tough industry. If you don’t do well, you will get neither the stars nor the money; these are tough challenges to deal with. That said, if you haven’t done well and still land a film because the makers think you are good, that really boosts your confidence,” he clarifies, reiterating that he doesn’t think that there was anything “drastically wrong” with OK Jaanu. “Maybe people want different stories now,” he keeps it short and adds that Mani Ratnam, from whose Tamil film OK Kanmani the Hindi one was remade, had in fact thought that a subject like live-in relationships would work better in Hindi than in South.

The two filmmakers go back a long way – Ali had first served as an assistant director on Ratnam’s 1998 Hindi film, Dil Se, returning for Guru and Raavan, in 2007 and 2010 respectively. Ali had also joined his favourite filmmaker on two schedules of his last outing, Kaatru Veliyidai, in Ladakh. “You have to have at least one person in your life besides your mother, father, wife and child, for whom you’d do anything. He (Ratnam) is that person in my life. He has been a boss, mentor, friend, elder brother and sometimes, even like a father, at different points in my life,” Ali asserts. “All his other assistants (including Bejoy Nambiar) also works on his films as it is like a boarding school and a reason for a reunion. He doesn’t even have to call us.”

Meanwhile, plans are afoot for a film on his maternal grandparents, freedom fighter Lakhsmi Sehgal and Colonel Prem Kumar Sehgal. “It’s only when I grew up that I started thinking of them as someone other than my grandparents. As a filmmaker, I want to make a film on them. It will happen one day. They were like my parents, as I grew up in Kanpur with them. My grandfather had a story to tell every day to his friends over a drink,” Ali reminisces.

What about Tigmanshu Dhulia’s Raag Desh, which was based on the INA trials of its officers, his grandfather, Colonel Gurbaksh Singh Dhillon and Major Shah Nawaz Khan? Ali says that he hasn’t seen the film but it got a clean chit from the rest of his family. “Tigmanshu was really relieved. He had done all the research, had even met my nana’s bother. I just gave him one or two scenes between my grandparents which he had asked for.”

Do we dare venture into his past filmography, including Kill Dill and Jhoom Barabar Jhoom? “I can’t feel bad about them as the audience that rejected them had previously gone to watch Saathiya and Bunty Aur Babli. The audience is always right,” Ali signs off with a smile