Aarushi Nigam (BOMBAY TIMES; January 12, 2018)

Akshat Verma’s first film as a writer, Delhi Belly (2011), was a product of his Delhi experiences, even though he grew up in the “bubble of Delhi University’s North Campus” where both his parents were professors. His second film, and first as director, Kaalakaandi, is being watched for the same promise of irreverent realism.That irreverence is very much a part of his psyche,with his honest take on cinema,as well as how the country consumes it. This Kirori Mal College (KMC) alumnus, who was also a part of its celebrated theatre society The Players, talks to us about how censorship holds a country back, why we give cinema too much power and also beat it up for our ills, and, given the bountiful usage of cuss words in his films, having to answer that question on cinema influencing youth (by the way, his Delhi equivalent of the Marathi kaalakaandi would be something like ‘bhasad- square’ or ‘bhasad-ganj’, for those interested). Excerpts:

When we interviewed Saif for Kaalakaandi, he told us that one of his younger co-actors said to him that Saif used to be the ‘flag-bearer of this kind of cinema’ at one point. Do you think ‘this kind of cinema’ needs more flag-bearers?
We need flag-bearers because we need them to get these films made. It’s all very well to want to do these things, but if you can’t get someone to believe in it, to say, ‘I want to make this,’ they’re not going to happen.So, we definitely need people who believe in it enough to say, ‘I’m willing to put my name behind it’. I don’t have any particular leaning towards,that only a certain kind of films should be made. I think all kinds of films have enough room to co-exist. We are just a little bit underrepresented. To modify audience tastes too takes a little bit of time and effort. Also,as our audiences are consuming stories and material from all over the world, the bar is shifting. They see what is possible, and they’re also willing to be open to what is possible here, in terms of storytelling. So, the more we can begin to shift the needle by putting more films out, the more interesting it will be for everyone.

The film got 73 cuts from the CBFC, and then was passed by the FCAT with one cut. Speaking about censorship, there are those in the industry who believe it doesn’t matter who is heading the CBFC as long as the guidelines remain the same. Then there are others who say that under different regimes, the CBFC’s interpretations of those guidelines has been stricter or more flexible. Do you think within the guidelines, there is room for interpretation?
Certainly. It was a different time when Delhi Belly came out, they were very open — ‘We’ll give you an ‘A’ with no cuts’. So certainly, there was interpretation. But when we went this time, the officer who was reviewing the film — it was really sweet, actually — said, ‘I really loved your film.’ I was like, ‘Oh, but why these cuts?’ He said, ‘Who I am in a personal capacity is different versus an official capacity, and I have guidelines to follow. So, it’s out of my hands’. But he also said, ‘Feel free to go to the Revising Committee, or the Tribunal’.

So he gently suggested to us that there is recourse. I also don’t know whether there’s a climate... It’s an individual, case-by-case thing. The interesting thing about the Tribunal was that they were so open to looking at it contextually. They said, ‘We see that there are characters who are talking like this because they are who they are, something’s going on, if someone’s under stress they behave differently’. It wasn’t just a blanket thing that we have to be completely cut and dried about this. So I can’t complain. It was a roller-coaster, for sure, but I can’t complain how it turned out. The very fact that this mechanism (FCAT) exists is a good thing.

So who was the CBFC chief during this time?
It was Pahlaj Nihalani, I think it was the last couple of days of his tenure.

Do you also believe that it’s time the guidelines changed?
Absolutely. This is a mindset that holds a country back. When you bring in censorship, you’re telling people what to think, and it’s a fine line to cross to becoming an autocratic state. You have to be able to trust your citizens to let their minds go where they need to. That’s how change happens, that’s where ideas come from. And as one of the youngest countries in the world right now — we have a population of which 60% is under 25 — it’s really important that we don’t hold them back. Creative people, by design, are meant to question and challenge the way things are. And people who don’t — conservatives — are trying to conserve a way of life. There will always be conflict between these two. As an artist, I want to go and look at things,turn them upside down,and ask, ‘Why not?’. If something is not allowed or not kosher to say, we say, ‘No, I want to see what happens’. Because if you can’t explore it in storytelling, then where can you? And that includes desires which might seem not right, plots that might seem illegal — whatever it is, how far can you go? That’s where great storytelling comes from. Censorship affects us as a nation, in terms of quality of ideas and what we can do as a country.

In an interview, you said about the film industry that there is no point trying to overhaul the system, just try to stay in it and make small changes. What small changes have you, and other filmmakers, have made, and has the sum of their parts made some sort of impact?
It begins to add up. When you see films like a Court, or a Sairat, or Masaan...These are cumulative things and they add up. When you look at a large machine, where do you even begin? And there are so many forces vested in the way that machine functions. I can only be responsible for the kind of work I want to do, I can’t go and dictate to someone, why are you making a certain kind of film, they have as much right to do that. So the kind of stories I choose to tell, how I tell them, the kind of performances, how we hopefully connect to an audience,those are the things I can try to do. And hopefully, if it’s demonstrated once, maybe some other filmmaker says, ‘Hey, it’s possible to do this’. So it’s a domino effect, and hopefully, it spreads.

You’ve also said, while describing how you convince producers of something, that ‘every hustle is a small victory’. How often are you hustling?
Oh, you’re hustling all the time. The difference is that production makes films on Excel sheets, and the creative department makes films on final draft and final cut and all of that. At some point if both these departments come together, it can be a fantastic experience. But there’s always conflict. Money can’t be the only leading way to put a production together. Sometimes, you have to find elasticity between your constraints. My desire is to not throw money at a problem,my desire is to solve it with brain power. Even if you have this much money, how do we make it look like it was shot for much more?

Is making a film like Kaalakaandi just a long series of hustles?
Absolutely. That’s why it takes the time it does, because you’re constantly,in a sense,you’re conning people, right, into believing in what you think is right, to bring them to your point of view,and you do it endlessly till you release. In fact, here we are, trying to hustle the audience to come to our film. And with filmmaking, when you’re done and you go back, you start with zero. It doesn’t accrue, it’s not like staying in a job for a long time where you work your way up. It’s like running a marathon,and just because you’ve run one marathon, the next one isn’t going to be a shorter distance. So it never stops.

In reference to a question asked in the film’s press conference, that it has so many cuss words,and ‘gaaliyan humare youth ko galat tareeke se influence karti hain’.All of us know that the language exists, people talk like this. But we don’t want to watch it in our films, or we only want to put this question to the film fraternity. What does that say about us?
Cricket and cinema are, in a sense, our holy cows. There’s a reverence we have for both, which is why we’re so loving and angry at the same time with them. So,when we see characters on screen,that reverence translates. My desire is to bring them down to the way things are, and I think that conflict and tension comes through because people don’t want to...which is strange, because everywhere, I think people want to recognise themselves in the stories.

But there is always a way of thinking, to say, ‘this can’t be like this’. That same head-in-the-sand reaction when a Slumdog Millionaire comes, and you say, ‘this is not like this’. No, but it is. You talk about it, you face it, and then you fix it. We’re lying to ourselves about the way our country is as well. Because we want to pretend, ‘all is well’. Which is the same thing as saying, ‘Indians are not like this. Hum logon ko AIDS nahin hota hai, hum bade bhale log hain...’ No, we’re as messed up and as good as anybody else. We have to embrace our essential humanity, and all storytelling comes from imperfection. You know, when you’re sitting down to write, one of the things they say is ‘make your characters go through hell’. That’s how you find out what they’re made of. In our storytelling, we protect our characters, nothing bad can happen to them, they can beat up anyone... What’s the point?

And when people say, ‘because of this the youth is going to be affected’, I’m like, show me how. Because then the opposite is also true. If I make, say, a Geet Govindam, then everyone should turn into a saint. That doesn’t happen. So, on one hand, you’re giving cinema too much power, but it becomes a whip to beat the movies with. If we could solve the world’s problems through storytelling, through books, through movies, we would have a perfect world. Storytelling is not a way to change the world, it’s a way to understand the world. S**t will continue to happen, the world will always be like this. But when you see why someone did what, that’s storytelling, whether it’s Ulysses, whether it’s Sophocles, or Deewar. The more flawed characters you have, the more room you have for storytelling.

Your short film Mama’s Boys (2016, a modern interpretation of the Mahabharat) also rubbed the right wing the wrong way. But more than three decades ago, there was Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, about which Naseeruddin Shah, after the whole Padmaavat blow-up, said that the Mahabharat scene couldn’t have been made today. Between then and now, what do you think has changed?
You know, the Mahabharat itself is a political document. Everyone is grey, everyone is sc***ing everyone over, the Pandavas are not really sweet guys, everyone’s stabbing each other. Again, it’s the same reverence — ‘We will now act as if this is a holy document,everyone is holier than thou’. That’s not what that story is. The people who wrote the story about that world recognised that, and that’s why it has survived for so long, because it’s such a truthful, human, document. Now there’s a kind of whitewashing going on, that we’re a certain kind of ideal nation, we’ll whitewash our history, we’ll whitewash our mythology. People who are defending what they’re defending don’t know what they’re defending. When did the Pandavas become gods, number one? If you were to sit down with the people who are making this noise, they can’t defend this. It’s just about whoever shouts the loudest. And whoever is more thoughtful, or trying to make a point, will get drowned out. So again, we’re going away from the essence of who we are.

All this business of changing the names of cities, trying to erase history — we have to embrace the good, the bad, the ugly, everything that has gone on with us historically, because that’s what makes us who we are. It’s like every crazy ex-girlfriend makes you who you are. You don’t want to forget them, because whatever you went through, at whatever point you are in life emotionally, they contributed. So, who we are today as a nation, everyone who’s run amok through us and stayed, it shouldn’t become ‘we’re going to erase you, you never happened. We’ll change the name of this street, change this history’. It’s bulls**t. We are cutting our noses off to spite our faces. There is no place like India in the world, and we are, in a sense, slowly destroying it.