Waiting in Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s cozy office in Bandra, I cannot stop my gaze from sliding across the many bookshelves that line the room’s walls. The titles cover filmmakers from Martin Scorsese to Sergei Eisenstein. But talking with the screenwriter, director and producer, I realise Mehra is equally passionate about Indian cinema. The conversation leaps from how expertly Bimal Roy’s Sujata commented on untouchability, to how Shammi Kapoor became Bollywood’s first dancing hero during the country’s trying times when films began offering escapism. Mehra’s films, on the other hand, are rooted in his experiences and beliefs.
Take for instance Rang De Basanti (2006) – a socio-political film about corruption that was born directly from Mehra’s experiences with Delhi politics in college and in Air Force Bal Bharati School. Even Delhi-6 (2009) borrowed from his years growing up in an Old Delhi neighbourhood. For his upcoming film, Mere Pyare Prime Minister, Mehra shifts his usual setting from Delhi to Mumbai.
City stories
The story came to the filmmaker around three to four years ago. “Since I moved to Mumbai, the city has grown in a very unique way,” Mehra explains. “When you’re landing in Mumbai, what you see are the slums. It’s a big part of the city’s visual imagery.” He found himself wondering about the stories ensconced amongst the crowded shanties, and decided three years ago to walk through these areas of the city. It was when he was sitting with the children on the pipes that ran through the slums behind Powai when the idea came to him.
“Where we sat, around a dozen kids were frantically scrolling through their phones. When I asked them what they were doing, they said they got free Wi-Fi from Renaissance Hotel there,” and he breaks into laughter. Mehra then shares that the children and he began counting the floors the skyscrapers around had, and soon they started calculating the approximate number of bathrooms in each. “About a 1,000 in 50 storeys,” he shares their findings. “While there was just one being shared by the hundreds of families in their slum.”
Hygiene revolution
Around the same time, Mehra visited YUVA Unstoppable – an NGO in Ahmedabad that works towards educating underprivileged children. While discussions about initiating projects with the NGO were shaping up, Mehra had visited Sabarmati Ashram and was overwhelmed by Gandhi’s achievements in such humble surroundings. “Among the things he did I was amazed by how involved he had been in sanitation and toilets,” says an enthused Mehra. “I realised that he was just trying to empower people, and change mindsets about cleaning toilets through this revolution of sorts.”
It then occurred to the filmmaker that with YUVA he could build toilets. “For the rest of our lives we’ll only do one thing, we’ll only build toilets,” he says. YUVA soon raised donations to install, improve and maintain the sanitation and infrastructural facilities in municipal schools across Ahmedabad, Baroda, Jodhpur, Barmer, and now in Thane, among other areas. “The idea is to make children the agents of change,” explains Mehra. “I asked 800 students in Kandivali to promise me that some of them would build a toilet in a different place with their first salary.”
Inspired to approach this situation through cinema, Mehra has built a plot that revolves around a 10-year-old boy wanting to make a toilet for his single mother in Mere Pyare Prime Minister . Despite Akshay Kumar’s Toilet: Ek Prem Katha dealing with a similar theme, Mehra doesn’t seem concerned about any overlap. “The more the merrier,” he says.
Censorship conundrum
Apart from highlighting causes he is passionate about through his works, the filmmaker was a part of the Shyam Benegal Committee which submitted its proposal in April 2016 for rules and regulations the Central Bureau of Film Certification (CBFC) should follow. Despite the detailed report, the CBFC continues to censor film content when certifying is within its capacity. “We’ve done our bit. Even the government was proactive then,” Mehra says. “I don’t believe in censorship. If you can choose the Prime Minister of the country once you are 18, then you should be able to choose the movie you want to watch,” he emphasises.
Mehra is also thinking of future projects, “There’s an idea about sports, about the pressures of education, and about a journey to look for Krishna’s lost flute,” he says in conclusion.
