Anshul Chaturvedi (BOMBAY TIMES; February 20, 2018)

 The Jaipur attack: ‘I HAVE NOT SEEN ANY FILMMAKER IN THE WORLD GO THROUGH THIS’

What was that moment of being actually attacked, slapped around,on Padmaavat’s set?
I am rehearsing a shot, where people have to say that ‘the enemy is in the fort’, and we come down, and we see the soldiers running to fight. ‘The enemy is in the fort’ — how prophetic is that? So we are rehearsing, and I was in a very good mood. We are sitting, and we started hearing these sounds. I said the crowd here is very conscientious! They are rehearsing the roars. I was like, ‘Damn cool, this never happens in Bombay!’ And suddenly, one of the union members came running in and said, ‘People are coming!’ And before I could say, ‘what people?’ there was an attack. They started throwing things, breaking things. They beat two girl assistants up, one whack came on me, my specs flew off.

(Silence) I never expected this. Even if you have a doubt and you wanted to protest, would you raise your hand? They could say, please talk to us, please stop shooting, or please leave the place. But a protest also has to have a certain dignity about what you are protesting, and I could say yes, you have a point.

This is extremely angering, it is extremely humiliating. And you sit back and wonder, could this have really happened? I have not seen any filmmaker in any part of the world go through this. Where is this coming from? So then you go to Kolhapur, because you realise it is not possible to shoot there (in Rajasthan). And then the set is burnt. I went back to Kolhapur and said, enough is enough, I am shooting exactly where I want to. I am not going back. Enough!

For that year, I went through all this trauma, where on one side you are saving and preserving what you are creating, and not allowing your anger and bitterness, depression, disturbance — nothing can reflect on the shot you are taking, the scene you are constructing or the way you are giving your everything to this film.

Not like, let’s just finish this off and get it out of the way fast. No! You have to pursue and keep searching for excellence and keep searching for mental peace. I am shooting in Film City in Mumbai, with 52 cops surrounding my set. I have never shot like that.

You just want to take a breather and think, and you have people following you, protecting you.

And protecting you from what? I never understood.

But I at least got that protection from the government — make your film peacefully, don’t go through the stress of not knowing what is going to happen.

Having said that, I am making such a big film — this is the biggest film of my life — how do you sustain it? How do you hold on to it? What is happening to your face, your health, your mental peace? You have to keep yourself upbeat because you can’t go in looking unnerved, because your unit, your actors pick your vibe. And yet, you don’t know what protest is going to happen tomorrow.

We complete the shooting, and the first trailer comes out, and again the reactions start coming in.

It was a life-changing experience according to me. In a good way, because I became stronger. I realised that I could not break so easily. I realised that I love my filmmaking to the point that I could have had a road roller run me over for my film.

Did you at any point think that it will not make it to the screens?
Yes. There were times when I got very nervous that it is taking some other route, it is getting too big, it is getting too misunderstood. It is getting to the place where I want that first ticket to be sold at the box office, it is very important. I want to see that ticket Number 1 being torn.

I, at one point, did feel that it may not happen because it was beyond our control, or beyond anyone’s control. It had reached bizarre proportions, where people were sitting on national television with swords in their hands, saying we will behead him, we will throw acid on Deepika’s face. All that, and much more... There were more things that I would rather not discuss.

Ghoomar & Rajasthan: ‘IT’S A CELEBRATION OF RAJASTHAN, WHY HAVE THEY TAKEN IT AWAY FROM THEMSELVES?’

How prolonged was the debate on the ghoomar song — to keep, to modify, to cut?
Ghoomar Rajasthan ki glory hai. Folk music ki. Every wedding, every part of the world, ghoomar is being played everywhere. I have revived ghoomar in so many ways. Why are we wanting to justify it? It’s a folk form. Even if they had taken Ghoomar away from my film, ghoomar cannot die. But today, ghoomar is revived, everybody’s discovered it, they understand that this taal and this laya means ghoomar, this is the rhythm pattern, and this is how we dance to it. A Punjabi or a Gujarati is also dancing to Ghoomar. But for that, I was told, ‘Woh, rani toh dance nahi karti ghoomar ka, yeh toh ho hi nahi sakta, woh toh karna nahi chahiye, midriff nahi dikhna chahiye’... history in so many ways is not one file you can take out from a shelf... it’s interpreted over the years, it’s told, it’s re-told. It’s changed according to convenience over the centuries. But how do you justify that? How do you say, historically, a rani didn’t dance? They would have danced in the zenana, they would have danced in the women’s chambers...

Ghoomar’s set had to wait for one-and-a-half months, because Deepika thought she was not ready to shoot that song, she needed to train more. Mehboob Studios waited, said, no issues. And I shot the song, and today people say it’s the best song I’ve shot.

It’s still not playing in Rajasthan’s halls.
Look at what this film’s going to do. Folk musicians are going to be called all over the world to perform, Rajasthani folk people. Every marriage is going to call them. Every marriage is going to have Padmaavat and Rajasthani influence. So look at what it’s going to do to the tourism, to the music, to the folk art... it’s huge for Rajasthan. It’s to celebrate Rajasthan in the right sense of the word. Why have they taken that away from themselves? Why have they deprived themselves of the glory when they should have actually said, ‘do the premiere here, under the fort, we will do a screening, we will release the film and say, this was our queen, this is our film, and it’s a chapter of our glory.’ Why did they not own a film which would actually celebrate what Rajasthan is? They took it away from us. They took it away from themselves. Every dance opportunity that anybody gets in a marriage or in a school performance or anywhere, is playing Ghoomar. Or a reality show, or anywhere. Aaj tak koi ghoomar... kitne saalon se Rajasthani music ka istemaal hua hai in Hindi cinema, when has ghoomar ever become so popular? So instead of celebrating it with me, and instead of expecting a little bit of, ‘ok fine, thank you for doing this for us’, you’re actually accusing and saying, ‘you’re doing something wrong’. And how will you survive this fact when you see the film and see there is nothing wrong in it? Ghoomar aapko cover karna tha, humne cover kar liya midriff. Nazar nazar mein farak hota hai. Agar zenana mein rani perform kar rahi hai aur aapki nazar khali unki midriff pe jaa rahi hai, toh dekhne waale ki nazar pe hai.

Government support: ‘WE GOT PROTECTION, THEATRES GOT PROTECTION, MY AUDIENCE GOT PROTECTION’
Every theatre in Maharashtra, UP, in every other state, first week, was given full police protection. So I’m very grateful to the Chief Minister of Maharashtra, or UP, or... First row — cops. Outside — vans, wireless vans. Full protection. The first two days people didn’t go in with that kind of conviction, ki kya hoga maloom nahi, uncertainty thi. But we got full support from there.

My actors got protection, I got protection, theatres got protection, my audience got protection. Every theatre in Mumbai had a wireless van and cops sitting in the theatre. I was like, amazed. And I heard that was the scene in the other states also where the film was released.

One year of drama: ‘MY FACE HAS CHANGED’
For one year — from January 27, 2017, when we were attacked in Jaipur, right up to January 26, 2018, when we released — exactly one year. I had to continue doing this while I was being pushed.

Some artistes are destined to go through chaos, trouble. It has been traumatic, and constantly being put in this state of confusion, you get battered, bruised, scarred.

But I still feel good saying I have gone through it all, and achieved it. And something extra comes from it, something special. Because it is a matter of survival. You start doubting that if I don’t survive this I will die as a filmmaker. And if I die as a filmmaker, then I don’t need to live as a human being. So you put in all that you have to cross that river. I have been growing through it. I think when you get the wish, you also get the power to fulfill that wish. That has to come from somewhere. For me, it comes at a cost, at a big cost.

All that I have gone through — how much has it changed my face? If I were to make my portrait, I have changed so much in the last one year. Which filmmaker has been attacked physically? Assaulted, with a whack given on the neck and the face? Nowhere in the world. Which filmmaker has been told that we are burning your set right in front of you?

Did your actors handle it as well as you did?
I never allowed anybody to be rattled. They were angry, they were upset, but they never let that anger show on the screen. It was always simmering behind, in their thoughts, in their minds. But they all gave wonderful performances. Any artist who is painting in a complete sense of distress or angst — that painting is something else. It goes to another zone, because energies flowing from the body out of anger for injustice, circumstances, chaos, are of another level.

As a consumer of your own art, what do you get from the movie?
Immense joy. Because what a lot of people did not want me to ever witness was unfolding in front of me on the screen. My first screening is always with my mother, and there is one empty chair in between for my father, who always wanted me to make films like this — Mughal-e-Azam and Pakeezah. And I saw the film, and turned around, and with all modesty, said, ‘Ma, I think I am a damn good filmmaker!’ And she just smiled and continued watching.

I wanted to just feel good about something. When I saw it, I didn’t think the film would reach the theatres. I didn’t know if the film would really get released because it was at the peak of its chaos. So I wanted to praise myself ! (laughs) I got a lot out of it in terms of what I wanted to tell — a story of a woman who fought the war after her husband died in the battle, to defeat a strong opponent like Alauddin Khilji. And I found that the whole jauhar, the power generating from the way I shot it, the way it fell into place, the way Deepika played it, the way we all got it right, I was very moved by it.

Because this was a dream, right from Nandini running on a bridge alone in a red sari in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, to 16,000 women running in red towards fire — for me there were so many images that had now magnified, or become bigger, or had its own connotation, it had its own language... so all that was coming to my mind as I was seeing, vis-à-vis my work, motifs that sometimes were getting repeated from my earlier work to now, or the new ones I was very fascinated by and said (clicks fingers), how the hell did I get that one? When did that come? And there were a lot of improvisations that I was doing through the film. It was all written, but it was not really storyboarded, it was not framed and formed and choked to with the paper, it was left, I would go there and react and respond and you do this and let’s do this and let’s do that, change that dialogue — I was living it at that moment.


‘I HAVE REVIVED GHOOMAR’
GhoomarRajasthan ki glory hai. Folk music ki. I have revived ghoomar in so many ways. Why are we wanting to justify it? Kitne saalon se Rajasthani music ka istemaal hua hai in Hindi cinema,when has ghoomar ever become so popular? ....(The film) is to celebrate Rajasthan in the right sense of the word. Why have they taken that away from themselves? Why have they deprived themselves of the glory when they should have actually said, ‘do the premiere here, under the fort, we will release the film and say, this was our queen, this is our film, and it’s a chapter of our glory’. Why did they not own up a film which would actually celebrate what Rajasthan is?

‘PRASOON JOSHI STOOD UP AND FOUGHT BEAUTIFULLY’
Prasoon Joshi — full marks to him for having gone through the kind of pressure he did, the kind of nonsense outside his office, the I&B Minister being abused and threatened — he stood up and gave the CBFC certificate the way it should be, with no cuts, except saying that make it Padmaavat, which I didn’t mind, because the original poem is called Padmavat.

Did he deserve the amount of flak he got for it?
Not at all! Consider the situation he was going through. He wanted to stand by a good film and stand by the intention of the film and the film fraternity, so that other filmmakers don’t go through this, where the fringe attacks you, the fringe dominates you and the fringe permits you. So, he really stood up and fought beautifully. I think he brought in a great amount of reassurance and belief that there are people who can take a stand. And when on January 24 we did the first prepaid show and the first ticket was sold, I said, nothing is going to stop the movie now.