Love is one emotion that every creative person wants to explore at some stage of his or her career. For Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra the time to listen to heart ache has come with “Mirzya”. A contemporary musical based on the legend of “Mirza Sahiba”, Rakeysh, known for his socio-political narratives, admits that it is a new space for him. “I am extremely nervous. We have lived romance but what is actually love we still don’t know. It is such a deep emotion that you cannot arrive at a definition. Here I am trying to marry my socio-political instincts with broader cinema.”
He is carrying the idea with him since student days in Delhi when he would pick “ The Hindu from Marina hotel” and watch theatre. “In those days ‘Mirza Sahiba’ was often staged in college festivals. It is almost a Shakespearean tragedy. It stayed with me.” For a reason. “When the moment comes Sahiba breaks Mirza’s arrows and when her brothers come and kill Mirza they find there is a bow but no arrows. While he dies in her arms, he looks at her as if asking, why she did it. The narrator used to ask this question to the audience and it stayed with me.” Over the years Rakeysh kept on thinking about it. “People you love the most, you hurt them the most. That’s the answer I got.” Still there was no closure and he took the question to Gulzar with the request to adapt the folklore into a script. “He could sense my interest. He has his own way of writing and has written the screenplay the way he sees it. I feel every director has to make a work his own. So I worked on the shooting script and I hope I am able to do justice to his writing.” He says he had the basic script of “Mirzya” ready when he went to shoot “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”. I decided to go with Milkha first because there was an autobiography available and I understood Milkha’s demons. This had to be more organic. I had to be convinced about every word I got and for that I had to understand Gulzar bhai’s writing totally.”
Love stories are for the young audience and romantic tragedy seems out of sync with these materialistic times. “Love is a deep set emotion and the greatest of love stories are of unfulfilled love and as the story is set in today’s Rajasthan the spirit of the story reverberates in 2016. Having said that I agree the challenge was always how will it play out and how will it connect. If we knew how it is done we would not have been storytellers and there would have been no discovery. At times you connect; at times you don’t and when you don’t you learn something.” No one knows it better than Rakeysh who experienced a heart break when “Delhi-6” failed to connect. “I was totally heart broken because I was telling my story. Waheedaji (Rehman) was playing my mother’s role. It was a very personal story. But over a period I realised that somewhere I made a mistake. Connection ke chakkar main , you know. Going with your instincts is always better,” he reasons.
Connection also works at different levels. One is thematic and the other is pace. This generation doesn’t seem to have the patience to experience the simmering in love. “Each film unravels at its own pace. It could be a cheetah or an elephant; one should leave each animal to its own,” says Rakeysh. Is “Mirzya” more like an elephant? He pauses for a moment. “It is more like a bird. A chakor, who looks towards the moon and says, mujhe pyaar hai ….”
Talking of chakor , he reminds that it is his first musical as well. No Rahman this time as he carries forward the bond that he developed with Shankar Ehsaan Loy during “Bhaag Milkha Bhaag”. “It is more like World music. We are taking Indian folk and then there are elements from the musical tradition of North East Frontier and Persia. The folklore is told in all these regions.”
The fairly big budget film is pegged on newcomers, Harshvardhan Kapoor and Saiyemi Kher. Rakeysh admits casting was the most challenging process. “Harsh comes from a Bombay film family. Anuj Chaudhary is from a middle-class family and plays basketball. For me Anjali Patil is more of a traveller than an actress. And then there are K.K. Raina, Art Malik and Om Puri, whom as we say in Hindi ghat ghat ka pani piya hai (They have seen it all). It was a strange kind of mix. It is coming together of different approaches and hell of a ride,” he exclaims.
Once Pavan Malhotra told me that Rakeysh is one of the most actor-friendly directors around as he allows actors to improvise as much as they can. “For me, script is the Bible but how it is practised depends on the technical crew and cast. All of them bring something unique and my job is to keep them into the character. To take a reference from football, I just have to blow the whistle when you are offside. You have to score the goal by playing football. You can’t suddenly start catching the ball.”
A new lead pair and lots of VFX make it a risky affair in traditional Bollywood jargon. Rakeysh is quick to retort, “I don’t have dollar signs in my eyes. I don’t look at filmmaking like that and it is good for longer innings. Of course I expect favourable returns but the bottomline is there are so many stories to tell and there is absolutely no time.”
Still, I don’t get Rakeysh’s compulsion to explore pure love at this stage of his career. Usually, filmmakers start with love stories or some like Sanjay Leela Bhansali keep exploring different shades of love through their careers. “May be I am looking for love. Now that you are asking me I also feel that somewhere you forget where you started form. I feel the need to rekindle love. And I feel the need very badly. I want to feel eternally romantic. It has a different high,” Rakeysh opens a window to his heart.
But can one fall in love multiple times and still feel the freshness of the emotion? “I feel you can fall in love multiple times. That you fall in love only once, is the biggest lie, I believe. Yes, you can stay loyal to one person but you can experience the emotion many times. Every time the space will be different, the meaning will be different and the kick will be different, and it helps you fill the gaps. Roz wohi try kartein, main bhi aur aap bhi ….” Indeed!
