Hiren Kotwani (BOMBAY TIMES; May 21, 2018)

In a career spanning over four-and-a-half decades, Danny Denzongpa has essayed a variety of roles. The 70-year-old, who has declined offers for want of novelty in characters and films, now spends most of his time at his farmhouse in his home state Sikkim, where he has a successful brewery business. When he’s not acting in movies, the Padma Shri recipient paints, carves, treks, till an interesting role and project beckons him to Mumbai. With his next, Bioscopewala releasing on May 25, we catch up with the actor. Excerpts...

In the recent past, you have been a part of movies like Jai Ho and Bang Bang (2014), Baby (2015) as well as Naam Shabana (2017). But it has been long since you have had a full-fledged role in a film…
Maybe you feel that because you’re used to seeing me in powerful roles. But in Baby, I had maximum scenes, and we shot according to the script. Having said that, there has been a gap, but during that time I was shooting for Bioscopewala and then I took up Manikarnika - The Queen Of Jhansi. The latter is mounted on a huge scale and took time to make. I still have to do some patchwork on it. That’s my other release this year.

Do you attribute your missing-in-action to lack of good scripts, interesting characters and films?
Many offers that came to me were conventional roles, which I had played before. Most new directors have that image of me from the movies, which I did in the ’80s and ’90s. That was too monotonous and I wanted to do something different. So, I chose these two movies.

What made you take up Bioscopewala?
It’s based on Rabindranath Tagore’s story Kabuliwala. When I was a kid, I had seen Bimal Roy’s Kabuliwala, in which Balraj Sahni played the protagonist. It’s a nice emotional story, which revolves around the relationship between the protagonist and the little girl. That film really moved me. In the ’70s, I wanted to do a film on Kabuliwala and requested Bimal Roy if he could part with the rights. But that time, it didn’t materialise. So, when this offer came to me, I was excited as I wanted to do this role.

It’s been 47 years since you started as an actor with Mere Apne (1971). How do you look back at the journey?
It has been a pleasant journey. When I came into the industry, I was like an alien as I looked different (laughs). Filmmakers would make movies on subjects in which I didn’t fit in. Somehow I got a chance to act in Gulzar saab’s Mere Apne. Then B R Ishara chose me for Zaroorat (1972). Finally, B R Chopra cast me in Dhund (1973), which made me a star. People have been kind after that. Then filmmakers started making lost-and-found stories. Manmohan Desai made many of them, which became huge hits. I couldn’t fit in them as I couldn’t look like anyone’s son or brother. So, I didn’t accept many of those offers. Then, N N Sippy offered me Fakira (1976) and interestingly, I was supposed to play Shashi Kapoor’s brother. It became a golden jubilee hit. That’s when I realised that once the public accepts you, they will accept you in any part. Thereafter, I played everyone’s brother or father (smiles).

In hindsight, do you think you got your due as an actor?
I have been blessed to be successful. However, sometimes I feel I didn’t get the kind of roles I wanted to play. I did Frozen (2007), which was a nice subject and a different take on cinema. It won two National Awards, bagged honours and won acclaim at several international film festivals, but it didn’t do well commercially. I was still waiting for interesting parts. Bioscopewala is one of those films that has a simple, yet different story and is made very well. Director Deb Medhekar and his crew have worked hard. The response to the trailer is good and I hope people like the movie, too.

Having started in 1971, you wanted to quit acting around 1980. Then again sometime in 2003, you wanted to take a break. Why did you want to quit and what made you change your mind?
When the roles got monotonous, I took a break. In fact, I wanted to quit and attempt something different. I went through that phase several times. In the ’70s, I was doing many films and suddenly I got so fed up with the routine work that I stopped signing movies. I directed a horror flick, Phir Wohi Raat (1980) with Rajesh Khanna. Then I took a break for two years as I was fed up. I went trekking, started painting, carving... I do all these things as they give me immense pleasure. Cinema is an expensive art form whereas painting requires just some paint and a brush. If you don’t like it, you can trash it and restart. So, it doesn’t cost much. I follow my heart. Fortunately, people accepted me when I resumed working in movies.

Phir Wohi Raat is still considered as one of the best Hindi horror films. Why didn’t you direct again?
I had some scripts when I got more acting offers from major filmmakers. While shooting those movies, I discussed the subjects that I wanted to explore with those producers. But they felt the stories were either like Hollywood movies or not too commercial. Since I got good acting offers, I took them up and didn’t pursue direction the way most people do. Someday, if I feel like, I might make a different movie.

You played some of the most memorable antagonists on screen... With heroes playing negative roles, do you think it’s the end of villains in Bollywood?
I think so. I remember, many years ago, before I joined films, Dharamji played a character with grey shades in Aayee Milan Ki Bela (1964), which starred Rajendra Kumar and Saira Banu. He was even nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Those days, heroes never did negative roles. In the ’70s and ’80s, villains became the most important characters after heroes. In the stories, their roles were written larger-than-life. They had wonderful dialogues, they were loud and seemed gimmicky, but it made a lot of impact on the audience. There was Pran saab, Prem Chopra, then I came in, then Amrish Puri, Amjad Khan, Ranjeet, Gulshan Grover, Shakti Kapoor, everyone had their own parts. But when heroes started playing grey characters, the parts for villains gradually diminished. Now, if it’s written in a believable way, we can still do it.

Most star kids follow their parents’ footsteps into Bollywood. Is your son, Rinzing, too gearing up for his debut?
Rinzing has been training himself. He’s even getting offers, but he will have to decide for himself what is right for him. For a newcomer, picking a wrong movie at the beginning of his career can prove to have an adverse effect for a couple of years. He’s a grown-up boy who can look after himself. What’s the use if I have to make a film for him or call friends to cast him? He should achieve his goal on his own merit.

The reclusive Danny Denzongpa rarely gets chatty with the press, but when the actor does, he makes it worth your while
Kusumita Das (MID-DAY; May 13, 2018)

When we dial up Danny Denzongpa’s number on a Friday evening, we are greeted with a faint “hello”. The network is choppy, his voice drifts in and out. “I am in a cool place,” he says, referring to Sikkim, where the actor is at the moment. His film, Bioscopewala, based on Rabindranath Tagore’s renowned story Kabuliwala, is prepping for release, but Denzongpa chooses to stay far from the hustle and bustle of promotion. “I like it here,” says the man of few words.

The 70-year-old actor was a little boy when he saw the Balraj Sahni-starrer Kabuliwala (1961). He had also seen the Bengali film earlier, starring Chhabi Biswas. The Sahni film, however, had an impact on him altogether. “I remember our teacher had taken us to see the film and I was howling in the theatre,” Denzongpa says.

When he first read Tagore’s story in school, he made a drawing inspired by it. “There was a man with a pagdi, standing in a hilly backdrop. There was a stream flowing by, and across it, was a little girl.” Bioscopewala, he tells us, was originally supposed to star Amitabh Bachchan. “But somehow, that did not materialise. I have always been a huge fan of the film, so, when Sunil (Doshi, producer and cowriter) approached me, I jumped at the chance,” he says.

Doing the film was like going back to his college days. “Most of the crew was from my film institute (FTII) — the director, writer, sound designer Resul (Pookutty). I was the senior most among them. I remember when we were shooting in Ladakh, and I would go jogging at early morning, they’d be surprised and tell me ‘you’re supposed to rest for two days’. But, I am from the hills!” laughs Denzongpa.

He also knew his co-actor Geetanjali Thapa, who plays Minnie, well. His other co-actor Tisca Chopra also doubled up as his Afghani tutor. “I had a tutor on sets to correct my diction, but I would always turn to Tisca. She has stayed in Afghanistan for over 10 years and is fluent in the language.”

Unlike the original film that was set in the 1940s, Bioscopewala comes forward in time, in the ’80s, during the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Having also wrapped up shooting for the Kangana Ranaut starrer Manikarnika - Queen of Jhansi, where he plays an army general who was like a father to the queen, the actor is now enjoying the quiet. He is not Mumbai-bound anytime soon, not even for the premiere of Bioscopewala. “This is the person I am. I’m very shy, I don’t party, I stay away from events, I have not had a PR in 45 years. You don’t see me talking to the press either, nor I am on television. It’s not on purpose. I just don’t like attracting attention towards myself.”

And of course, he’s not on social media either. “The only thing I am on is my phone, and that also I forget about at times,” he laughs.

Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; May 10, 2018)

On December 14, 1961, Rabindranath Tagore’s birth centenary (he was born on May 7, 1861), Bimal Roy’s Kabuliwala, based on a short story by the Nobel Laureate, opened in the theatres. I watched the film as a teenager, on Doordarshan, and it was made unforgettable by Balraj Sahni who lent warmth and dignity to the Kabuliwala who in Kolkata befriends five-year-old Mini, who reminds him of the daughter he’d left behind in Afghanistan. There’s a heart-breaking poignancy in the Pathan’s story as just before he is to return, he gets into a scuffle with a neighbour who ows him money, and accidentally kills him. After an eight-year jail term, he comes with dry fruits for Mini, to find her in wedding finery, all set to go off to her father-in-law’s home for real. He realises then that even his daughter, whose palm imprint he carries, must be all grown-up too. It is at this crucial point, that Mini’s father decides to give the money kept aside for lights and a band, to the kabuliwala so that he can go back home to his own daughter.

On Tagore’s 157th birth anniversary, when I quizzed Amrit Shah, Roy’s long-time associate, about Sahni, he revealed that he’d first made the actor’s acquaintance at the Communist Party Headquarters he’d go for his meals where as a student council member. “After the party was banned, he was arrested and would come for shoots with cops, returning to the Arthur Road Jail after pack-up,” says Shah, who on Sahni’s request, let his Bengali director-friend, Prabhat Mukherjee, share his apartment for a couple of years. “By the time he started working on Kabuliwala, he was a big name.”

Shah adds that when the film was nearing completion, as was his habit, he went to Roy with a proposal to send to distributors asking for advance (Minimum Guarantee). To his surprise, the producer insisted they sell it on a simple commission, as they were flush with funds thanks to the overflow they were getting from Madhumati and Sujata. “There was no arguing with Bimal da so I informed the delighted distributors that they’d only have to pay for print and publicity,” he says.

Buzz is, after seeing the rough cut, Roy reshot certain scenes directed by Hemen Gupta, perhaps because he wanted his tribute to Tagore to be perfect and true to his craft. Shah won’t comment on this but acknowledges that the film was a failure commercially and cost their company big money. “Bimal da was unperturbed, moving on to his next project,” he marvels.

Roy’s son, Joy, who was around six then, recalls a hideous apparition from a dream sequence and two little boys playing the tabla. “They were Nikhil Ghosh’s (Padma Bhushan tabla maestro) sons, Nayan Jyoti and Dhruba Jyoti,” he smiles. Sonu, who played Mini, was his neighbour who lived in the bungalow across and came to play with him. “One morning, baba came down and whispered something in her ear and Sonu raced home. Five minutes later, she was back with a “Yes”. I presume he’d offered her the film and she returned with her parents’ consent. That was the only film Sonu ever did, moving away after some years,” Joy flashbacks, adding that by a strange coincidence a week ago, he made the acquaintance of her young nephew at his gym and learnt that Sonu was living in the US. We tried getting her to share her memories with us but she stayed out of reach.

However, Gulzar saab, who penned “Ganga Aaye Kahan Se, Ganga Jaye Kahan Re” which with its philosophy of universal acceptance, informs that he landed this opportunity after a song by his friend and the film’s original lyricist, Prem Dhawan, was rejected by Roy. Since they were recording the songs first, they needed an immediate replacement. “I was assisting dada by then and he asked Salil da (composer Salil Chowdhury) to get me to write one. I’d penned “Mora Gora Ang Lai Le” for Bandini aur mera reputation ban gaya tha. I demurred, even calling up Prem who begged me to do it or else Bimal da would stop him from going off on a tour with IPTA,” he narrates.

Gulzar saab had seen Rajen Tarafdar’s 1960 National Award-winning Bengali film, Ganga, and suggested to Chowdhury that they do something along the lines of his composition “Amar Dubaili Re”. The music director who was playing ping pong in the bedroom listened absentmindedly till the sound of Roy’s station wagon had him scurrying upstairs. The filmmaker watched him playing the piano silently from the door and Chowdhury nervously blurted out that he was wondering if they could do something on the lines of “Amar Dubaili Re”. Roy responded sardonically, “Dubane ke liye itna nahin sochna padta hai, gana banao,” and walked away.

“Salil da continued playing till he heard Bimalda’s car drive off, then told his assistant Kanu Ghosh to write the song with me and went back to his ping pong. 'Ganga Aaye Kahan Se' was on the same metre as the earlier song and five decades later, reminds us of a Kabuliwala and his story that still strikes a chord,” says Gulzar saab.

Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 30, 2016)

Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 12, 2015)

Soumitra Ranade grew up in a safe and happy Afghanistan. During his four years of schooling in Kabul, he'd read Rabindranath Tagore's Kabuliwala. Two years ago, he started scripting his version of the eight-page story for an animation film which has no resemblance to the Bengali or Hindi adaptations. "I've added my own fantasy to the story which wouldn't have been possible in a live action film," Soumitra says.

The film is one of the six projects in the National Film Development Corporation's (NFDC) Children's Labs, being mentored by three filmmakers from Europe, Mieke de Jong, Rasmus Horskjar and Anna Tamara Bos. The project is spearheaded by Nina Lath Gupta. The film has an Afghan telling a little Bengali girl, Mini, stories from China, America and other parts of the world.

"In the original story, Mini asks Kabuliwala what's in his bag and he takes out an Arabic horse. Since this is an animated film, you'll see the horse galloping around while Mini looks on in amazement," Soumitra smiles. "Also, it's important that children learn to not see Afghans as terrorists. That's the beauty of this story," he says.

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; June 25, 2014)

Producer and founder of a newly-launched initiative, Sunil Doshi is collaborating with filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, actress Sharmila Tagore, French screenplay writer Jean Claude Carriere and ad filmmaker-lyricist Piyush Pandey to reinvent and reinterpret long and short stories for cinema, television, mobile and online platforms. These stories can be from a book, blog, film or even a newspaper article.

Eighty-two-year old Carriere who adapted Peter Brook's play The Mahabharata for a 1989 film of the same name, is working on Rabindranath Tagore's iconic short story Kabuliwala for the screen. "If we can rework Shakespeare, why can't we contemporise Tagore?" argues Doshi, pointing out that they have given Kabuliwala a new back-story and purpose.

This character is a theatre owner and film lover from Kabul whose livelihood is destroyed by the Taliban and his wife and daughter killed. "He's smuggled into Kolkata by an Afghan woman who's into burqa boxing and he goes from house to house with his bioscope showing children films, which is how he meets his Mini. We're targeting a 2015 release for our film," says Doshi.

His team of writers is also working on other ideas. In the works are Hindi adaptations of a Thai film, Headshot, a Korean film, Crying Fist and another film called Three Star Bhangra Boys. While Crying Fist, a 2005 South Korean film, is about two men who take to boxing to turn around lives gone astray, Headshot is a 2011 thriller which was Thailand's entry for the 85th Academy Awards in the Foreign Language category. It is about a cop struck in the head by a bullet who now sees the world upside down.

Three Star Bhangra is worlds away from the grit of the former two stories and traces the journey of a girl from Amritsar who gets the chance to go to London and jam with the Bhangra Boys after coming second in a reality contest. "And there she finds out that the boys are 50-year-old musicians but one has a 24-year-old son and there begins a journey of music, love and family," says Doshi. "If Q and A could be adapted into the Oscar winning Slumdog Millionare, why not such stories?," he maintains.