Neha Maheshwri (BOMBAY TIMES; August 14, 2019)

When Nikkhil Advani came on board as the director of Batla House, he barely knew about the controversial encounter that shook the Delhi Police in 2008. However, it was his urge to tell the story that kept the writer-director-producer intrigued and invested in the subject. In a chat with Bombay Times, Nikkhil talks about what went into the making of Batla House, what the experience has taught him, and how he has tried to present an unbiased narrative. Excerpts…

Your last directorial venture was Guddu Engineer (2016). While you have written films like Baazaar (2018) and produced films like Lucknow Central (2017) and Satyameva Jayate (2018) after that, you stayed away from direction. What’s it about this subject that made you want to direct the film?
I am not a producer who has become a director; I am a director who turned producer, so that I could tell the stories that I wanted to. I am not a producer, who wants to make Rs 200 or 300 crore from my films, I don’t choose a script thinking about its box-office performance. If I knew how to do it, I wouldn’t be making a film like Batla House. With this movie, John Abraham, Ritesh Shah (writer) and I hope to trigger conversations and make people aware of this incident. The (glossy) films I made earlier also had a dose of reality in them, but today, it’s all about content-based cinema. And, that’s the kind of cinema I would like to associate with.

The fact that we hadn’t yet documented an incident (Batla House) of such magnitude, drew me to it. Still, it took me four years; we made 30-40 drafts, and I felt that the story was missing something until we hit upon the final draft. Around a couple of years ago, I suggested to Ritesh that we swap the beginning and end. We got flash cards, wrote a line for every scene and laid them down on the floor of the office. And then, we rearranged them. That’s how we threaded the story together. Besides the encounter, the personal journey of Sanjeev Kumar Yadav (the real-life police officer, who inspired John Abraham’s character) and his wife Shobhna, caught my interest. I told Sanjeev Kumar that I wanted to know everything that happened in his personal life. The aftermath of the incident made him wonder if he was actually guilty, as assumed by the rest of the world. He even tried to commit suicide thrice. Come to think of it, he won three medals post that incident. When I met them in 2015, Shobhna told me that she had asked him for a divorce just a few hours before the encounter, but later, decided to be with him. Sanjeev had thought that he would emerge as a hero after the encounter. On the contrary, he drew a lot of flak.

Was DCP Sanjeev Kumar Yadav (then ACP) open to the idea of baring his life for a Bollywood film?
He isn’t open about such things; Shobhna is. I think that’s also because she shielded him and bore the brunt — she was subjected to nasty remarks, rants and accusatory glances, almost implying that her husband was a murderer. He believed so strongly in the system that he was sure it will exonerate him. However, the system kept playing games with him till he realised that he would have to fight it out. The incident changed him; he feels that he has become smarter. He wanted me to get the details right, so much so, he insisted that we use the same model of the car, which was used by him and his team. He told me, ‘Tum log Bollywood mein kuchh bhi karte ho. Aisa mat karo, because a lot is at stake for many people with this film’. He is very quiet and cautious. I have to give him credit for allowing me to present the other viewpoints.

While doing research on the film, you must have visited Batla House (the place where the encounter took place) and interacted with its current inhabitants. The incident must have left them scarred for life…
Yes, it has and will continue to, even after this film. We visited Batla House like any other naive film unit, taking photographs, while people stared at us in bewilderment. We realised that L-18 Batla House (the building where the alleged terrorists were holed up) is stuck in time. It’s unusually quiet, people hardly look you in the eye. My narrative is around Sanjeev Kumar, his wife, the special cell, the group of boys and what led them to court. I can assure you that the residents of Batla House will find the film biased, though I have shown both perspectives. The moment I cast John Abraham to play the police officer, I knew that everyone would assume that my perspective is in Delhi Police’s favour. That’s why for me, the most important casting in the film was of the defence lawyer. I wanted a strong artiste to convince the audience that I have not cheated them. Hence, I got Rajesh Sharma on board, he is ruthless in the court scenes. Though we have stuck to facts, I grappled with my own biases. The film is about perspectives — who is right and which side is to be believed, and how a particular perspective can change the entire narrative.

You have made several typical Bollywood commercial movies over the years, including Kal Ho Naa Ho (2003), Salaam-E-Ishq: A Tribute To Love (2007), Chandni Chowk To China (2009) and Katti Batti (2015). Some were commercial successes, some were critically acclaimed, while there were a few which didn’t leave a mark. However, with outings like D-Day (2013) and now Batla House, have you found the zone that you really want to be in?
I like stories that are a little politically motivated, thrilling and edge-of-the-seat. So, if this is my zone, I accept it whole-heartedly. Having said that, my association with glossy cinema is something I will cherish for life because it allowed me to make my first film. My friends Irrfan, Saurabh Shukla, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Anurag Kashyap and Manoj Bajpayee would often call me a sell-out (laughs!). Before Kal Ho Naa Ho, Shah Rukh Khan and I wanted to make a film on the lines of Dil Se, but we couldn’t get the right script and Yash (Johar) uncle told me that we should make a love story first. He said, ‘Uske baad tujhe jo karna hai kar’. On a serious note, a lot of hard work went into making Kuch Kuch Hota Hai (1998) and Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (2001), I was an associate director on both movies. Kal Ho Naa Ho also took a lot of hard work and all these are iconic Bollywood movies. As a generation of filmmakers, we brought organisation to our craft. We decided that we will no longer make a film over three years. We would work on one film at a time and expected the actors to be invested completely in it, unlike earlier when an actor shot two projects at a time. Big stars like Shah Rukh, Salman Khan and Akshay Kumar accepted the change and are advocating it themselves. A lot of change, that nobody gives us credit for, was done behind the camera, too, like the way we approached production, scheduling and budgeting.

You spent almost four years to complete Batla House, including research and filming. That’s a lot of time to invest in a film. What has this experience taught you?
It has taught me patience. I feel that after D-Day, I should have waited for Batla House. I am not saying that Hero (2015) and Katti Batti are mistakes; they are missteps. I don’t think I gave enough to those films, because I didn’t believe in them as much as I should have. As filmmakers, our decisions are governed by several factors, like running the house, paying instalments, rent, school fees or going on holidays and that’s when we start compromising. The decision to make a film should only be governed by a good story. If you can take care of other factors, you are in a wonderful space. That’s what I aspire to do.