In India for research and the shoot of his much-awaited film Paani, and in talks with a Hollywood studio for his next tryst with eyeball-grabbing cinema — a biopic on mountaineer George Mallory — Shekhar Kapur straddles time zones and cultures with insouciance. Rajashree Balaram meets the man who answers all our queries and then leaves us with some provocative questions of his own — on life, cinema, karma and conscience

 
If a man’s preference in food is supposed to offer insight into his character, Shekhar Kapur is a man of great extremes. He likes his toast burnt to a crisp. “This is not as charred as I like,” he says, holding up a slice to examine it closely in the subdued daylight filtering through the windows of the banquet room of the JW Marriott Hotel in suburban Mumbai. The room looks into a lotus pond where the quivering lotuses brave the vigorous onslaught of early monsoon. The watery landscape is a fitting backdrop for a man who is making his next movie on water — or the lack of it. Paani marks Kapur’s return to Indian cinema after 12 years in Hollywood. Indeed, his long years of absence from Indian cinema have only heightened the value of the handful of movies that he made here. No one can quite forget the touching innocence of Masoom, the wild abandon of Mr India or the brutal intensity of Bandit Queen.

The last shocked audiences all over the world with its gut-wrenching portrayal of female oppression and power, but it was Elizabeth (nominated in seven categories for the 1999 Academy Awards) that brought Kapur international glory. And though he has made three other noteworthy films since — Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Four Feathers and a contribution to the 10-vignette series New York, I Love You — Hollywood, clearly, can’t get enough of him. The studios are now chasing him to direct a biopic on mountaineer George Mallory.

With so much celebrity resting on his shoulders, you’d expect him to talk movies all the time. He doesn’t. At 64, Kapur refuses to be defined by his oeuvre. When he is not making movies, he speaks at conferences on new digital media; writes poetry on love, loss and existence; discusses philosophy with spiritual leaders; builds awareness on environment through his blog www.shekharkapur.com; studies politics; and irons out his next business collaboration for a social media enterprise. And though he is voluble about everything he thinks and does, he also manages to be startlingly detached. The only time you see his heart in his eyes is when he talks about his nine year-old daughter Kaveri.

Most people occupy different points on the continuum of character; Kapur covers the entire continuum: “I am mad,” he says repeatedly through our interview. His body language is restless but his gaze supremely steady.
Which one is the real Shekhar Kapur, we wonder? As we talk to him, it becomes evident that it’s something he is still trying to figure out.

IN HIS OWN WORDS

Paani has been in the making for 12 years. The problem is, I have put too many conditions on myself. “I will do it this way; I won’t do it this way; I will approach a studio; I will do it on my own….” For 12 years I couldn’t find anyone interested in the project. Now suddenly everywhere I go, people ask me when I am going to make it. People are calling me up and proposing to fund it and distribute it. [Long pause] Or maybe its time has come. The sheer force of the film has captured me and it’s driving me. Even if I tried not to make it now, it will still be made. So the point is, when you lose control things happen [laughs].

The anger that drove me to making Paani was against the exploitation happening in our society. Paani is about water being used as a weapon for social control and exploitation. The story is about a city divided into two parts — an upper city that controls water and the lower city that is exploited. Though the movie is set in the future, it mirrors what’s happening around us now. And between all that chaos there lies a love story, of course [smiles].

Hindi cinema has its own culture and it revels in that culture. The whole world is curious about it; therefore it gets a lot of attention. But I wonder; how far can we go by living in this particular culture? It’s all neatly cocooned. People are happy with the kind of returns they get. Stars are happy with the kind of roles they do. And directors are happy with the kind of stories they get to do. If a culture doesn’t constantly react to change, it becomes incestuous, which ultimately brings it down. I think it needs to be thrown into chaos.

Sometimes I do watch movies for fun. I watched Om Shanti Om and I enjoyed it. It was pitched to me in a certain way and I didn’t bother to dissect it any further. Recently I watched Rajneeti. It had an interesting touch of realism. But let’s face it — most of our cinema is still rooted in nautanki. And by nautanki I don’t mean anything derogatory. Nautanki is a traditional folk music and dance theme revolving around nine different forms of expression. And it’s not so much melodramatic as mythic. Amitabh Bachchan’s greatest strength is his ability to perform nautanki…to move effortlessly in and out of those nine different expressions. Mr India was full of nautanki. Of course, when I made Bandit Queen I moved away from that completely.

Bandit Queen became quite a rage in the UK and Hollywood, so initially I was treated with a lot of mystery in the West. And I took advantage of that curiosity. But like everywhere else they got used to me. For a while though, I was like an alien from another planet.

There is a different approach to performance in Hollywood. There is much more addiction to the character. In India the problem is the compromises you have to make in what you do. I believe we should not approach work if it’s not challenging and provocative. I love working with Cate Blanchett. She challenges you all the time. She knows a lot more about films than you do. She is too bright for me. Normally I can talk my way out of anything. But she will not let me do that. So it’s been a fascinating collaboration. Very bright and beautiful and alive. I plan to make Elizabeth III with her some day. Similarly, in India, I find Naseer [Naseeruddin Shah] extremely challenging.

I enjoy doing biopics because the story already exists in people’s subconscious. And then it becomes even more interesting to be able to take that story and give it a different twist. Elizabeth is Indira Gandhi’s story. Bandit Queen wasn’t as much a story of Phoolan Devi as it was about caste exploitation and the exploitation of women. Of course, sometimes when I have tried to make a biopic I have failed and given it up. When I wanted to make a film on Buddhism, people expected me to make a movie on Buddha’s fairytale. Similarly when I wanted to do a film on Mandela, I didn’t want to do a story on apartheid, I wanted to do a modern love story. There was some resistance to it. So I couldn’t do it.

I would like to make a film with kids, though I am not too sure if the film I want to make is Mr India II. How do you reinvent that film? Science fiction is something else I love. According to me all great science fiction is a world of philosophy. If you see a movie like Space Odyssey it’s all about conjecture, potential and possibility. If you read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, it’s fascinating because there is so much philosophy in it. It’s also very mythic. And I think that’s the greatest advantage of using mythology. It offers a great way to explore our own mind and our own selves.

I cannot say I am unaffected by criticism. If I say I don’t care, it only reflects my inability to deal with it. If I say they don’t know what they are doing, it’s again my inability to deal with it. One can deal with it only if one thinks, ‘Okay, here’s the film and here’s how it’s done. I am now separated from that film. I am not the creator. It’s just something that evolved with my presence.’ Then, and only then, can one deal with it. But then you have to deal with success the same way. You have to tell yourself, ‘It’s just happened in my presence.’

I often feel I am like a gardener. How do you feel when you water the plants, you water the seeds and then step back and wait for the sun, and the rain? So who are you then? The farmer or the doer? And if you are going to believe that you are the doer and it’s completely about you, you are going to suffer. You are not the doer; you are just the conduit.

I do worry when my movies are approaching release. It eats me up. But I try to overcome it. And the sooner I do that, the easier it becomes to give up the addiction to the result or the addiction to the idea of me being the doer. The stronger the connection between the doing and the done, the more doubt and fear there’s going to be. The tighter the connection, the more you invest in terms of ego and bravado. The looser it is, the more vulnerable you are. Then fear and doubt just vanish. Isn’t that what the Bhagavad-Gita says?

I have evolved into this state of detachment with time. I have been through a lot of ups and downs. I have been hailed as the best director and then I have been criticised as the worst and then again as the next best thing in Hollywood. I have been pushed up and pulled down. Amid all that, if I try and keep my sanity, I would go insane. So I just go mad [laughs].

A lot of people wondered how I could cry on TV while judging India’s Got Talent. The way I see it, there are two ways to look at it: you could be manipulative or totally vulnerable. And there is no greater strength than absolute vulnerability. If you are completely vulnerable everything passes through you, you become like the river. I want to be 100 per cent vulnerable. By constantly building walls against the rest of the world, sometimes you end up building walls between you and yourself.

We spend our entire lives proving ourselves to other people. We see ourselves as the way we are reflected in other people’s eyes. But that reflection is not a pure reflection — not unless that person is completely compassionate towards you or there is a great relationship of absolute love there. If there isn’t, that reflection is based on that person’s insecurities. The day you understand that, you let it all go and stop judging yourself. And the moment you stop judging yourself is when you stop judging others. With the years I have evolved into someone who has nothing to prove. The biggest burden we carry is our own sense of individuality. And when you carry that burden, that’s the first thing you want to get rid of.

Life is chaotic with all that I want to do. As I am talking to you, I am doing a hundred things in my mind. But I am okay with all that chaos. I believe we could fight a million battles every day if we don’t consider it fighting. Often we mistake action for reaction. For a large part of my life I have made that mistake and I am not going to make that mistake again. Action has a concept of purity to itself where you detach yourself from what you are doing. What stops you is the hunger for result. I launched Virgin Comics some years ago. I am no longer involved with the company but I did it because I wanted to do it then.

I wake up every day and ask myself, “Am I mad enough to let it all go?” It’s not just about being mad, it’s about being mad enough; to accept the storm and the waves; and live beyond a sense of individuality. Rumi said, “I am so madly in love that mad people come to me and ask me to calm down.” You could say that it’s gradual madness seeping in or you could say it is wisdom creeping in. But isn’t it one and the same thing: to let it all go? When I am not able to express my madness, I am frustrated, schizophrenic and ill, and I end up with a headache. Because then I have to be correct and reasonable, and life lies in the unreasonableness. How can we be reasonable when everything by which we define ourselves is completely unreasonable — love, birth, and death?

I don’t mind ageing, but I hate being tired. I have always waited for the time when I won’t be driven by my hormones [laughs]. But then with time, I realised that that which I thought hormonal is also the spiritual. So it’s not till I reached 60 that I realised that the hormonal and the spiritual combination is quite a killer [laughs]. The very thought of mortality is a big driving force.

I have a greater intensity when I fall in love now. The madness only comes with a greater understanding of the wisdom of madness…the understating that if there has to be love, it can only come from finding who you are. Love is not about ownership. What you thought was ownership of love was only your insecurity and your desire to control. People ask me why I am not jealous. I just did a 20-minute film on how true love can only exist when you let each other go. In freedom lies true intimacy. Even in my 40s and 50s, I didn’t know that. It was all one big game then.

I don’t think the relationships that didn’t work out were failures. To define them as failures is tragic; it’s as good as denying them. No relationship can be defined in terms of success and failure. The relationships may not continue in the form you expected or intended them to continue…that’s all one can say. It always continues in some other form.

My daughter Kaveri has taught me a lot of things. I see great thought in her paintings. She kept telling me that angels exist in imagination as well as reality. That’s what our sages have been telling us for ages. I was amazed she could think like that. She told me that and believed in it till her teachers told her that’s not true. She has taught me to see the world through new eyes. And yes, she is teaching me patience all over again [laughs]. Last year, she and I drove all across Kerala. Earlier we used to just take off on holidays overseas in the middle of her term and her school would get upset with me [laughs]. She is a crazy kid; crazier than me. And I don’t discourage her from being crazy. I think our education system is such we have to unlearn a lot of what we have learnt.

I became a father rather late in life and that has its advantages and disadvantages. My daughter is just nine. She still expects me to pick her up and drop her down, and wrestle with her. I used to twirl her on my back. Now I might just hurt my back if I do that and may not be able to take my next flight to Europe. So yes, physically, I feel a little tired. Nevertheless, I am glad I am her father now. I don’t know what kind of father I would have been in my 20s or 30s. Less compassionate, for sure. I have a greater compassion for everything now — especially for my daughter. Compassion comes out of a process through which you let go of things. At 40, I would not have been ready to let go of anything. Now I believe things come to you and go away because they are supposed to go away.

I started blogging as much for the chance of utter personal expression that it offers as for my daughter. I want her to be able to look back and say, “This is my father and this is how he thought.” I wish I had that about my parents. I did not know if my father believed in God; he was a doctor. There were are so many questions about those experiences that have now become relevant, especially when I travel with people like Deepak Chopra or Dalai Lama. When I talk to them about consciousness and the meaning of death, I wish I had talked to my father about those things. I wonder what he felt when he saw people being born and die, saw my mom die, and then saw death engulfing him slowly. I wish he had kept a blog. I would have learnt so much from it. I write a blog so Kaveri would know what shaped her genetics.

My obsession with predicting the future got me involved pretty early in the Internet space. Where’s the human race going? A part of me is constantly eating at that question. I am planning to do a lot in new media in the Internet space. [Kapur is in talks with Nobel prize-winner and economist Muhammad Yunus for collaboration on a social media enterprise.] I think our virtual lives are going to be more important than our real lives. It can create a lot of problems. But a large number of us are going to live, study, explore and entertain ourselves more and more virtually.

Many of us — whom we call the bottom of the pyramid — in India will also have the opportunity to connect through this space. If they connect, they will add up to tremendous power. Connectivity is a great driver — and a highly democratic one at that. I think India’s rise, if it has to come, will come through connectivity. So I will try and invest very heavily in that space.

I think our summits exist within us. We don’t need to scale the mountains to find ourselves. The human race will conquer every space only to discover that all we want to do actually is go home. And home lies in our own hearts. There is no summit, because if there was life would end. We often think, ‘This is where I got to reach in life.’ But then when we reach the destination, can we define where we started from? We always start with a question and end with one.

Not winning the Oscar was certainly disappointing. When you make a film you hope someone will give you the money to make it; that you will complete it; that people won’t laugh at it; that it will release and critics will like it; that it will do well commercially; and now that all that is done you will be nominated and win the award. There’s no end to it. Instead of whining about racial discrimination, I can be happy that my film was nominated as one of the five best films that year. What else could I want?

My favourite line to my agent is, as long as you see that tramp sitting on Hollywood Boulevard and he doesn’t remind you of me and my future, we are fine. Whenever I see this tramp sitting on the road outside a restaurant with his long beard, I always thank myself that I am better off. I am sitting inside the restaurant and someone is happily paying for my lunch, and he is sitting outside, begging for lunch, hoping someone will pay for his. And all that separates us is a glass window. I am happy I am on this side of the glass.

Featured in Harmony – Celebrate Age Magazine
July 2010